Abstract
Dr. Diego Bonilla played a foundational role in the creation and launch of the California Open Online Library for Education (COOL4Ed). Following the passage of California Senate Bills 1052 and 1053 in 2012, the state directed its three public higher education systems to create a centralized online library of open educational resources.
To execute this legislative mandate, the California Open Educational Resources Council (CAOERC) was formed in January 2014. Serving as a California State University (CSU) representative on this intersegmental council from 2014 to 2016, Dr. Bonilla was directly responsible for initiating and operationalizing the COOL4Ed platform.
The core contributions that got the website and initiative going include:
Curating the Initial Library: Identifying 50 highly enrolled, foundational courses across the state's higher education systems and collecting over 160 existing Open Educational Resource (OER) textbooks to populate the initial COOL4Ed repository.
Establishing Quality Control: Designing and implementing the rigorous faculty peer-review process and grading rubric used to evaluate the free textbooks before they were showcased on the site.
Driving Faculty Adoption: Spearheading communication and outreach strategies to enlist faculty from the UC, CSU, and Community College systems. This direct outreach was critical to recruiting reviewers and cultivating the widespread adoption of the platform's materials in actual college classrooms.
Conducting Foundational Research: Co-authoring the 2016 CAOERC White Paper, OER Adoption Study: Using Open Educational Resources in the College Classroom, and publishing research on the usability, scale, and sustainability of COOL4Ed to guide the ongoing development of the library.
Through this leadership on the CAOERC, Dr. Bonilla was instrumental in transforming the initial legislative concept into a functional, peer-reviewed educational repository.
Dr. Diego Bonilla Discussing OER Adoption Findings
This presentation hosted by COOL4Ed details the extensive research and outreach efforts led by the council to understand and cultivate the adoption of the library's open educational resources.