Moving Texas Forward DIGITAL LEARNING AND OPEN EDUCATION INITIATIVES OF THE TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION COORDINATING BOARD By Michelle Singh and Kylah Torre The disruption to higher education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic spotlighted the vital importance of digital learning for Texas institutions and students. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) recognized that strengthening current practices and supporting innovation was imperative as we entered a new normal for teaching, learning, and student success. In November 2020, THECB launched the Division of Digital Learning (DDL). Its mission is to provide leadership and advocacy for digital learning in higher education and promote, sustain, and advance a quality digital learner experience to position Texas as a world leader, resulting in globally competitive, digitally proficient citizens. THECB appointed Dr. Michelle Singh as Assistant Commissioner of the DDL. Dr. Singh came to THECB from Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi, where she had served as
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Associate Vice President of Teaching & Learning Technologies since 2018. Over her 20-year tenure in higher education, Dr. Singh held positions as Chairperson of the Board for the Texas Distance Learning Association, member of the United States Distance Learning Association Board, Chair of the Texas A&M University System Council for Academic Technology and Innovative Education and Chair of the THECB Learning Technology Advisory Committee. Under Dr. Singh’s leadership, the DDL aims to raise awareness of best practices in digital learning, build capacity of institutions to achieve and innovate in that space, and recognize digital excellence across the state. The DDL is currently developing a digital learning clearinghouse (DLTX), a comprehensive digital learning resource, program, and service site to facilitate community connections and knowledge sharing to move toward those goals. Over the past year, the DDL has also built on existing THECB open educational resource (OER) programs including grants, professional learning, and the OERTX repository, and expanded the agency’s portfolio of digital learning initiatives
with a special focus on post-pandemic research. CONNECTING COMMUNITY THROUGH SHARED RESOURCES OERTX Repository is a public digital library of OER for higher education, but more than that it is a place for collaboration, sharing, creation, and adaptation. Since it was launched in fall 2020, the site has attracted over 106,000 users across all continents. The site holds over 8,000 curated resources and 1,500 items that have been created with the embedded authoring tool. OERTX allows for users to build groups for discussion and curation of materials, to create and co-author OER, and to remix materials. All educational resources on the site are openly licensed and free to all. The Texas Legislature has appropriated funding for building and maintaining OERTX, and for OER grants, which were awarded to individual faculty members who created and/or curated OER for core curriculum courses. In 2020, the agency also received $175 million in federal Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funding, a portion of which went to additional grants to aid faculty
