History of this work and links to other ECE OER textbooks

[Jennifer Paris]

In 2018, College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California received a grant from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office to create a Zero Textbook Cost pathway in Early Childhood Education. They chose to create Open Educational Resources to do this. Because of the limited amount of openly licensed content in early childhood education, they decided to write 7 OER textbooks. These textbooks have a CC BY 4.0 license allowing anyone to use, adapt, and remix the books for their own use.

In the summer of 2019, they released their first openly licensed textbook Child Growth and Development, which was followed in the fall by Introduction to Curriculum and Child, Family, and Community.

Early in 2020, they released two more books The Role of Equity and Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Observation and Assessment. Their last two books Principles and Practices of Teaching Young Children and Health, Safety, and Nutrition are being finished and will be released late spring/early summer 2020.

Each textbook can be found in Word and PDF in its own Google Group, where faculty can find and share resources they have developed while using the books. The books are also being uploaded into LibreText.

The Google Group links:

·         Child Growth and Development (also referred to Understanding the Whole Child: Prenatal Development through Adolescence)

·         Introduction to Curriculum

·         Child, Family, and Community

·         The Role of Equity and Diversity in Early Childhood Education

·         Observation and Assessment

·         Principles and Practices of Teaching Young Children (not yet released)

·         Health, Safety, and Nutrition (not yet released)

 

Faculty and student feedback is gathered for each book using the provided survey (linked to in the front matter of each book and in each Google Group).

In addition to the OER textbooks, the ECE Department at COC is also in the process of building openly licensed Canvas courses around the OER textbooks. The release date of these is to be determined (between March and July).

Questions about the books or courses can be directed to Jennifer Paris at jennife...@canyons.edu.

In addition to the books and upcoming courses, there is a general ECE OER Collaboration Google Group for compiling resources that are freely available (some are openly licensed) for any and all ECE coursework. Faculty that have developed content or that have found resources that can be used to replaced commercial textbooks are encouraged to share those by joining the group.

Faculty wanting to be provided with updates of newly released OER, ECE OER/ZTC webinars/virtual conversations, and future summits (that provide the option of virtual attendance) can email Jennifer Paris at jennife...@canyons.edu to be added to an informal email list.