OER Heroes
An OER Hero is a faculty member who has displayed great dedication to using Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) or developing Open Education Resources (OER) for their classes. We admire these heroes for their courage in forging a new pedagogical path, for their achievement in developing or adopting new resources for their students, and for the dedication to helping students overcome financial barriers to academic success.
Fall 2022
MJC celebrates Dr. Derek Madden, our Fall 2022 OER Hero!
Dr. Madden is a Professor in the Biology department and has done an incredible amount of work over the past two years to make all his courses Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) through developing a lot of materials and adapting, mixing, and remixing Open Education Resources to fit his pedagogy. His ZTC courses include Human Anatomy, General Biology, Biology: A Human Perspective, and all respective labs.
Dr. Madden has dedicated countless hours to the development of instructional materials such as pdfs, power points, and videos, and has taken time to rethink and redesign how he teaches the new generation of students who come to MJC with different technological needs. One of Derek's students says,
"Being able to interact with clay in the lab and then go home and watch the videos he has created helps me increase understanding and gain more knowledge of the muscles I am studying, all without having to pay for an expensive textbook." ~ Marie Raymond
In the past Dr. Madden served MJC as the Dean of SME, and he was recently recognized as the top Biology Professor with the California Colleges International Education Award. In 2019 and 2020 he was nominated for the LIGHT and LIFE leadership award at MJC. Access a list of Dr. Madden's research projects.
On behalf of our students, MJC Thanks You!
Spring 2022
Malerie Fernandes is our OER Hero for Spring 2022.
Malerie Fernandes is committed to student equity in online education and through Open
Educational Resources and Zero Textbook Cost. She was active in seeking training and
resources in making her courses OER/ZTC by participating in the OER/ZTC training course
online.
Her full time work in the field at Stanislaus County Office of Education contributes
a great deal to her success as an Part-Time Instructor in the community. Her currency
and knowledge in the subject matter is demonstrated by her use of the OER resources,
materials, and content used in the course learning applications.
Malerie is a valuable part of the Child Development department. Her shared enthusiasm
for promoting current and best practices allows the rest of the department the ability
to support student success with the community and workforce preparation through the
use of OER content.
2021
Our inaugural OER Hero is Rebecca Reyes.
Before Rebecca’s untimely and tragic death, the OER/ZTC Team had chosen her to be our first OER Hero. We still want to honor her for her hard work and dedication to her students.
Rebecca's commitment to increasing student access was made obvious when she enrolled in the ZTC/OER online training course. Upon completion of this training, she developed her English 103- Advanced Composition & Critical Thinking course as a ZTC course. Following this process, she took it upon herself to convert all of her classes to ZTC, which we know, was an incredible investment of effort and time. Her colleague, who nominated her writes, “Rebecca worked so hard on transitioning all of her courses to ZTC. She was very proud of all the materials she was able to find and provide for her students."
One of the textbooks she adopted for her English 103 course is Arguing Using Critical Thinking.