OER for an Integrated CS / Web Dev Pathway

Peer Group Meeting: Open Educational Resources, Distance Learning, and Technology, February 2026

Chris Jones | Jeff Elkner

Intro / Summary

Intro / Summary

  • Dual Enrolled CS / IT Classes in Arlington, VA
  • Our school has a unique student body, including full- and part-time students
  • We’re developing an integrated CS pathway
  • Project-based learning:
    • Real projects, real customers
    • Collaboration with professional developers around the world
Rendering of the future Grace Hopper Center

Radical Transparency

You can find everything we do on our website:

https://ict.gracehopper.center

On our homepage, a link to these slides, and an accompanying PDF that has additional notes, links, and examples.

CS @ The Grace Hopper Center

Dual Enrollment

  • Our students:
    • Earn normal high school credits
    • Sit for industry certification tests (82 certifications so far this year, and counting!)
    • Earn 7 college credits per year-long class
    • Connect with resources and faculty at NOVA
    • Graduate high school with an A.S. in CS

Our DE Program Has Some Unique Differences

  • Cohort model - we have the same students all four years
  • Mixing CS/IT Courses
    • Thanks to NOVA for working with us on prerequisite requirements
  • Backwards Design
    • At the end of second year, students have a portfolio demonstrating full-stack web development experience
    • And are prepared to continue to a four-year universty

Integrated Pathway

  • Tightly-coupled courses
  • Strict pre-requisites
  • Emphasis on full-stack web development
  • Online portfolio maintained throughout the pathway

Our Courses

Flow chart of computer science classes offered at Grace Hopper Center

OER @ GHC

Teaching without OER - a parable

  • My first year as a CS teacher, a colleague showed me an exciting online learning / coding sandbox. Together we convinced our school system to buy expensive licenses, and I spent a ton of time building lessons and coding problems on the site
  • When we shared this story with a colleague, they wrote back with some questions:
    • “When we write material, who owns it? If we end contract in 2 years (or they go belly up), do I still have all of my questions, and in a usable form?”
    • “If I keep my materials on {platform}, what happens when I want to share or give to students that are not subscribed? Will my NVCC students not be able to use those materials?”
  • At the end of that school year, the system was acquired and closed down. All my materials were lost :/
  • Our school system moved to another big name online CS curriculum vendor and spends >$2000 per section for access
  • It’s a good system, but I don’t love the way some of the lessons were presented, and had no ability to create my own exercises, re-mix materials, etc
  • Occasional payment glitches leave us locked out with nothing

OER

  • Everything we do is based on OER resources that we either find or create
  • Class websites <ict.gracehopper.center> licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Textbooks released via https://openbookproject.net/

Open Source Software

  • Strong emphasis on low-level, open source software for all of our in-class exercises
  • 9th graders spend a lot of time learning unix command line, git, vim.

OER - Student Contributions

  • Students are part of the system!
  • All of our work is contained in public git repos, students are invited to contribute
  • Students select licenses for each repo they create
  • Student project work becomes part of future classes

Project Based Learning (PBL)

PBL - In Theory

  • We love it!
  • Dogfooding - develop projects that help our own communities
  • Technical and durable skills develop together

PBL - In Practice

Questions / Contacts

Thanks!