Texas Business reports:  A group of California community colleges and open-education advocates announced a partnership with the Rice University-based open-education platform Connexions and the California-based 20 Million Minds Foundation to enable their new course materials developed with a $20 million federal stimulus grant to be available free online for any educator to use, modify and tailor for their own needs.

The C6 Consortium of Central Valley Community Colleges won the federal grant to create a comprehensive "turnkey" set of course materials for students in allied health and nursing, clean technology and agricultural occupations.

The grant -- part of the $500 million Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Program administered by the Department of Labor and the Department of Education -- specifies that all materials must be created under an open-copyright standard known as the Creative Commons' Attribution license, or CC-BY.

“We have created an streamlined approach to ensure that all materials developed by the C6 Consortium meet the TAACCCT copyright and access requirements,” said Dean Florez, president of the California-based 20 Million Minds Foundation. “Our approach makes it faster and easier to develop high-quality CC-BY content for high-enrollment courses, and we're going to share C6's national leading approach with other TAACCCT grantees next week in Washington. A common standard -- particularly one that speeds up the process like this one -- can make us all more effective.”

Connexions, founded in 1999, maintains an online repository of more than 20,000 free lessons -- all created under the CC BY license. Connexions' materials are accessed by more than 1 million people per month. The 20 Million Minds Foundation has been an open-source proponent and is set to manage this unique assignment.

“By partnering with Connexions, the C6 Consortium is ensuring that its new courses will have a significant impact both inside and outside of California,” said Rice engineering professor Richard Baraniuk, the founder and director of Connexions. “Through Connexions, students in every U.S. state and in more than 200 countries will be able to download free digital versions of the C6 material on any device, in any format, and at any time.”

The nonprofit organization 20 Million Minds is dedicated to greatly reducing textbook costs. Headed by Florez, a former California Senate majority leader, the foundation is currently leveraging leading-edge technologies to create more affordable, engaging and effective educational materials for college students throughout the nation.

“The partnership with 20 Million Minds and Connexions puts our colleges, in the C6 Consortium, in the forefront of developing open-source e-textbooks for our students,” said Frank Gornick, chancellor of the West Hills Community College District. “It becomes a great tool to develop collaboration among faculty to focus learning on what is needed to develop the pathways for student success and the acquisition of the skills needed for gainful employment.”