College of the Canyons (COC) announced Thursday that the school is set to receive over $370,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Education to further expand its Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative. The $370,149 grant gifted to COC is planned to benefit their OER program, an initiative that utilizes textbooks released in the public domain or under an intellectual property license as a no-cost alternative to costly commercial textbooks, officials said. “We are honored to have been granted this award from the U.S. Department of Education along with three other California community colleges,” said College of the Canyons Chancellor Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook. “This grant will be instrumental in supporting College of the Canyons’ efforts to continue eliminating the barrier of the cost of textbooks, which often can be higher than the cost of tuition.”
