Open Educational Resource Grant
To nominate a faculty member for the ASG Affordable Education Leader Award use the link below:
Goals
- significantly lower the cost of textbooks to enrolled students in a specific course;
- maintain or improve student learning outcomes and satisfaction with the required materials;
- contribute to the growing body of affordable materials or Open Educational Resources (OER) available to the global higher education community
The Affordable Learning and OER initiatives are open to all full-time instructional faculty members responsible for teaching courses in any department and campus at Miami University. Priority, however, is given to continuing faculty coordinators of courses with higher enrollments and to situations where it is likely that the textbook change will have a lasting impact.
Full-time Miami University educators interested in working to lower the textbook costs for students in a specific course using Open Educational Resources (OER) or affordable textbooks may apply for these opportunities and, if successful, receive compensation in the form of professional development funds.
Initiatives
Open Educational Resources (OER)
- OER - Explore: Participate in a two-hour overview workshop; review an Open Educational Resource for possible use in a course; and publish review online.
- OER - Adopt: Identify, adopt and evaluate an Open Educational Resource in a course.
- OER - Create: Focus on evaluating the need for an Open Educational Resource in a course and then receive support to develop, use and assess it. This program is being piloted this academic year.
OER Initiative applicants may work individually or as a team. Team members may divide the professional development funds among them if working on the same resource. They may each receive the full amount if working on different resources. All applicants are strongly encouraged to consult with a liaison librarian. Applicants may also confer with staff from other units, such as eLearning Miami (Oxford), Regionals e-Campus, Center for Teaching Effectiveness (Oxford), Center for Teaching & Learning (Regionals), and/or Carla Myers, Assistant Librarian & Coordinator of Scholarly Communications.
Professional development funds provide faculty an incentive for the time it takes to identify new resources, adjust syllabi, and modify assignments and/or may be used to cover any instructional expenses incurred by the instructor.
Awardees will receive assistance from librarians and staff to locate course materials and provide other services.
Affordability Initiatives (AI)
- Course Pack Consultation Service: Meet with Carla Myers, Scholarly Communications Coordinator and Subject Liaison Librarian to review course pack contents and identify possible free or open use resources to replace existing contents.
- Alternate Textbook (Alt Text) Initiative: Work with Carla Myers, Scholarly Communications Coordinator and Subject Liaison Librarian to identify free library or other resources which combined can serve as a substitute course textbook.
- Inclusive Access E-Textbook Project: Miami is working with the eCampus bookstore to deploy an This e-textbook platform which allows interested faculty to order an electronic textbook from select publishers that is integrated into the Canvas course site. Students can review the textbook online or download and print portions of it out. Textbook costs are reduced significantly, and students are billed via their Bursar account. The planned launch of this project will be fall 2021.
Professional development funds are made available to successful applicants for the Course Pack Consultation Service and Alternative Textbook Initiative and are meant to offer an incentive for the time it takes to identify new resources, adjust syllabi, and modify assignments and/or to be used to cover any instructional expenses incurred by the instructor.
Consultation
Applicants are strongly encouraged to consult with a librarian about suitable existing open or affordable educational resources before applying for one of the initiatives.
