Current Status of the Child Development/Early Childhood Education Discipline
The Child Development/ECE discipline was surveyed in Fall 2018. The survey results showed that:
- 61 faculty responded (including 11 part-time faculty)
- From 38 CCCs and 1 CSU
- Almost all surveyed faculty had at least heard of OER (only 5 had not)
- A third of surveyed faculty are using OER (although many faculty reported using free resources, ZTC, not necessarily OER)
- The most common reasons given by faculty who are not currently using OER included
- Not having enough time to look
- Not knowing where to look
- Not finding any available resources OR not finding resources that meet their needs
- Only two faculty not currently using OER chose the following (1 each):
- The OER material would not be better quality than the commercial resources
- Their department would not support using OER
- Here are the results of averaging their reports of importance of ancillary materials
- Question banks and online quizzing - slightly/moderately
- Instructor manuals - moderately
- PowerPoint slides - slightly above moderately
- Videos - very/extremely
General overview of the status of the discipline.
- There is very little ready to use OER in Child Development/ECE
- Several CCCs have or are currently working on compiling zero cost alternatives for several courses
- One CCC is working on OER textbooks for the core 8 classes (which are the C-ID courses for Child Development and Early Childhood Education)
- There is an effort to foster collaboration in Child Development/ECE across the state and beyond to leverage the time and effort of faculty and avoid duplication of work
- There are several CCCs and at least one CSU that have or are developing a zero cost pathway for Child Development/Early Childhood certificates and/or degrees
Special needs of the discipline.
- In addition to the 8 core/C-ID courses, most colleges have 15-20 additional courses in the discipline
- There is strong need to develop contemporary video to supplement the coursework