Columbia State Community College has recently received $49,000 in funding for two separate grant projects involving instructors from three Tennessee Board of Regents colleges.

The funding has helped launch pilot courses for two TBR Open Educational Resources grants during the Spring 2025 semester.

The OER grant program provides opportunities for teams of faculty members to convert courses currently using commercially published textbooks to courses using OER. In addition to increasing access through the affordability that OER provides, faculty have the opportunity to maximize student engagement and success by aligning materials with learning outcomes and customizing tools to support their unique educational approaches.

Yvonne Mills, a Columbia State English instructor, leads a team that curates English as a Second Language materials designed for easy integration into any course to support English Language Learners. The team also includes Columbia State Reading and English instructor Scott Beard and Caroline Froc, a humanities instructor from Northeast State Community College.

“While there is an abundance of ESL-specific OER materials available, many require significant adaptation to meet the needs of diverse student demographics and institutional objectives,” Mills said. “Tailoring these resources to align with my students’ academic and cultural backgrounds meant modifying existing examples and developing supplementary exercises to ensure accessibility and relevance. This project also reinforced the critical role of collaboration in curriculum development. Working closely with colleagues, particularly Caroline, highlighted the importance of a shared understanding of student needs and the value of cross-disciplinary feedback. This teamwork not only strengthened my own instructional strategies but also underscored the power of adaptable, student-centered materials in maximizing learning outcomes.”

In a separate project, Dale Hobbs, Columbia State assistant professor of mathematics and Charles McCauley, an instructor of mathematics at Volunteer State Community College, co-led the development of a Math 1530 (Introductory Statistics) course. This course utilizes GeoGebra — an interactive application designed to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics and science as the primary tool for managing data and performing calculations.

“This project provided valuable insights into my academic discipline, instructional approach and course content,” Hobbs said. “Integrating interactive GeoGebra applets has proven to be a powerful way to make abstract concepts more accessible and enhance student engagement. The experience also reinforced the importance of accessibility in content creation. Ensuring that all materials are inclusive remains a challenge, but this project has helped me develop a stronger awareness of how to approach accessibility in course design. Moving forward, I’m eager to expand the use of OER and advocate for their adoption to help reduce cost barriers and enrich student learning.”

Around 80 students are enrolled in multiple pilot courses which began in the Spring 2025 semester. After the pilot courses are completed, teams will review and update the materials and courses using feedback from students and instructors.