North American Council for Online Learning

NACOL is seeking support to continue to build a coalition to advocate policy changes to accelerate the adoption and implementation of open educational resources (OER). The coalition currently includes the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA), EducationCounsel, and Monterey Institute for Technology and Education. NACOL will coordinate a multi-prong strategy aimed to (a) leverage federal policy to support OER (eg. ESEA); (b) align OER to national initiatives such as the common curricular standards initiative that involves 49 states; and (c) bring together 10 states to collaborate on the development of OER and at least 5 states to implement statewide OER programs.

North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) (Vienna, VA) requested operating funds to support its communication strategy. Earlier in 2009, NACOL was one of our stimulus grant recipients for OER advocacy under the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As we move our funding strategies to make OER sustainable-hopefully with the assistance of governments worldwide-it is important that the OER message is presented clearly. (New, $50,000/10 months; 5% of organizational budget)