CCCOER/Members Guiding Principles

Members - Guiding Principles
1. CCCOER Members can be State organizations, Districts or individual colleges (if their state or district doesn't join or if they are independent/private). Each member designates one primary contact person who a) votes on Consortium membership issues,       b) elects the Steering Committee (call it Board of Directors if preferred) and c) insures that membership paperwork and dues are kept current.

There are over 2,000 community and technical colleges in North America. If they join and conduct business via these larger aggregates we can keep the voting body of the Consortium down to a more manageable number.

2. Number of votes per member is determined by FTE. One vote per member up to 10,000 FTE. One additional vote for each additional 10,000 student-FTEs. (It may be 5,000 FTE would be better. We didn't decide, we just outlined the principle.)

3. Dues are assessed on the same basis as above.

4. Every college, regardless of district or state membership is invited to select a Communication Contact. This person a) brings best practices, training and other OER goodies to the campuses; b) receives invitations to events and other communications from CCCOER and extends them campuswide; c) communicates the needs and desires of the faculty, students and administration to the Consortium; d) identifies individuals from his/her college who want to serve on Consortium working committees/groups; e) serves as liaison between the college's primary Consortium member and its subsidiary colleges; f) the Primary Contact and the Communication Contact can be the same person only for colleges that are under 10,000 students or those that have no State or District member. g) If a State or District joins the Consortium after one of its colleges has joined, the college's dues will be prorated up to the time the larger entity joins. The larger entity will become the voting, dues-paying member. The former College Primary Contact person will become their college's Communication Contact and will handle the relationship between the State or District and the College. The question of how dues are managed thereafter is between the college and the larger entity, not up to CCCOER.

In trying to write this out I may have gone a little further than Lorah intended so we may need to talk a little more. Our idea was that we wanted to keep the business functions of the Consortium slim and affordable while recognizing that some organizations serve a very large number of students. On the other hand, the Consortium's raison d'etre is to get OER to the faculty and students so we need to encourage broad and active participation at the programmatic level.

The attached list can be interpreted in the light of this discussion. I listed all the colleges for the States and Districts that were on the EORConsortium web site list and/or that Jacky told me wanted their colleges listed individually. In addition, I listed a few colleges that are not and never have been members but that had individuals nominated by Jacky, Una Daly or Judy Baker for the Steering Committee. One purpose for this list is to provide Jacky with relevant email addresses for invitations to the September 2010 Quarterly Meeting so being inclusive seemed like a good idea. The meeting is open to the public and not designed for conducting Consortium business even though there will be a report of Consortium Steering Committee activities.

Another purpose for this list is to give John, our Interim Secretary, a place to begin creating an official membership list. It's up to Jacky, as Director, and the Steering Committee whom to keep on and whom to strip off but I do have some suggestions.

1. We need a master database of everyone we may want to contact about CCCOER. This should include 'friends of', interested parties, people and entities not eligible for membership as well as current, former and prospective members. This is likely to be a large and changing data set that may be beyond the scope of the Secretary's formal duties. This function could be outsourced or handled by a specific member of paid staff. However it is done, different functional working groups of CCCOER are likely to want to be able to search and select from this information. I suggest that the maintenance of this database should be someone's primary job and not seen as an add-on to other assignments. Also, we need a formal procedure by which Member Contacts and others can submit new information to this database.

2. Let's create a sublist that includes only primary contacts and their institutions. This is the basic membership list. To have a person listed as a primary contact is a strong indication that we have an MOU (either current or expired) from that institution. Jacky and John should compare notes on that list and determine who has not been heard from in the last year. John, or his designate, should get in touch with that person to find out whether s/he is still willing and able to continue to serve as the primary contact or to get a new primary contact. Of course, having the conversations is not the end. The database must be updated. It is the Secretary's responsibility to keep that official list so that we can rely on it. Although someone else may update the database and/or the web site, the membership should hold the Secretary accountable for accuracy, not the worker bee.

Once we have a reliable membership list we can start to conduct business, collect dues (no matter how small), hold elections, create a formal structure and maybe even receive some grant money!

In the attached spread sheet, I've tried to get a count of how many members we have by putting a '1' in column I for each individual college listed. When a college's membership is through a district or state I did not count the collective organization. When we have an MOU from both the college and its district I did not count the college twice.

Although it is helpful to have contact information for billing, press, and IT staff on various campuses, these people do not belong on the list of official member institutions and their representatives. These peripheral people do not vote and many are not going to be interested in the activities of the Consortium. On the other hand, faculty support, librarians and bookstore staff may want to be very active both on their campuses and through the Consortium even though they may not vote directly.

Access to both the Membership list and the wider database could be a very important benefit of membership.

3. The Consortium Steering Committee has discussed its desire to have participation from organizations that do not grant degrees and are not recognized as 'colleges'. Therefore, I've kept the names of many such people and organizations on the attached list but did not include them in the membership count. At the same time, Jacky has emphasized the KISS principle to me and prefers not to have a proliferation of membership categories (after the example of OCW Consortium). I don't know how to resolve this question and hope we make some headway at the Monday steering committee meeting (Aug 9). If we decide to have a dues structure based on FTE for colleges, districts and state, what will we do for members that don't have students?

4. When the College Open Textbook Collaborative has interacted with fans, advocates and trainers at colleges across the country, the Collaborative has asked those participants to encourage their colleges to join CCCOER. As a result, CCCOER's membership has grown rapidly. At the same time, the individual people have been encouraged to sign up on the Collaborative's professional networking site. There is no comparable networking activity within CCCOER. I believe these people, already committed to open textbooks and advocating for at least one form of open educational resource on their campuses, are the individuals most likely to volunteer for CCCOER's working groups if we ask for their participation. They are also strong candidates to replace missing Primary Membership Contacts and College Communication Contacts. Very few of them are now on the attached list.

Cheers,

Liza Loop