Deadline to apply – March 12, 2024

Overview 

The Dean of the Faculty and the Library OER Committee invite Colorado College tenure-track faculty, tenured faculty, and lecturers to apply for a grant to adopt or adapt Open Educational Resources for upcoming courses. Applicants need not have knowledge of or experience with using, adopting, or adapting OER. The library will provide experienced professionals to support faculty and instructors throughout the process.   

 To learn more about OER and this grant, we invite you to a workshop on Tuesday, February 20 from 1 to 2 pm in the Tim Fuller Event Space (Tutt Library Room 201). The workshop will be led by the librarians facilitating this grant. Refreshments and snacks will be provided. Please let us know you are coming to the workshop by filling out this form by February 16. 

Grant Goals 

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt, and share the resource – anytime, anywhere. “Open” permissions are typically defined in terms of the “5R’s”: users are free to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, and Redistribute these educational materials.  

These will be summer salary grants that fund the work of adopting, remixing, and adapting Open Educational Resources to eliminate existing costs to students of commercial textbooks and other course materials. These grants are intended to lower barriers to education by increasing access and lowering costs to students, advancing ADEI initiatives, promoting collaboration, and advancing Open Education at Colorado College.  

The typical project should be completed and ready to be implemented in your 2024-2025 course(s). Depending on the nature of the work, the largest projects of creation of OER do not need to be fully completed by the end of the summer, though substantial progress and a plan for completion will be expected.  

Salary Grants: Types and Amounts  

Grants ranging from $1,500 to $2,500 per person (most awardees will receive $1,500) will be awarded to support the following types of projects –  

• Adoption: Finding, evaluating, and utilizing an openly licensed text or course material to replace paid course materials. 

• Adaptation: Finding, evaluating, and modifying or remixing openly licensed texts or course materials to replace paid course materials.  

• Major adaptation and/or creation: Authoring or creating course texts or course materials that will replace paid course materials and be published with an open license.  

Requirements for the Grant  

• Implement your use of the new OER the next time you teach the course, which must be in the 2024-25 academic year. 

• Complete grant surveys before curriculum development and once the course is taught.  

• Agree to participate in an interview, workshop, or panel discussion about your experience, if requested. 

• Agree to allow the library to promote your OER material.   

• Agree to the possibility we may anonymously survey your students after the course. 

• OER creators and adapters agree to license your OER text/course material with an open Creative Commons license, and to deposit the material on our institutional repository, digitalCC.  

 Selection Process  

Grant proposals are submitted via an online application form, and those received by the deadline (end of day Tuesday, March 12, 2024) will be reviewed and selected based on the following criteria:  

• Expected cost savings for students: The proposal/application form includes information on current material costs, usual or expected student enrollment, and the frequency of the course offering at CC.  

• Objectives: The proposal’s objectives are clearly articulated and well planned. The rationale for approaching the project is clear, and the applicants have reflected on the work necessary to make it a success.  

• Impact: The proposal articulates how the OER will make a pedagogical impact in the course and/or how it will fill a disciplinary gap in open content.  

• Feasibility: The proposal’s timeline is feasible and aligns with the work required to complete the project in a timely manner.  

Selection emails will be sent Monday, March 18, 2024.  

Additional Information – OER Library Guide 

Grant selection committee will be led by College Librarian, Dustin Fife.    

Grant support committee –  

Patrick Mundt, OER & Lead Research Services Librarian 

pmundt@coloradocollege.edu, (719) 389-6996 

Nicole Gresham, Languages Librarian 

ngresham@coloradocollege.edu, (719) 389-6669 

Rebecca Floyd, Digital Scholarship Librarian 

rfloyd@coloradocollege.edu, (719) 389-6875  

Apply here – Open Education Curriculum Development Grant 

In Spring of 2023, 14 grants were awarded to Colorado College Faculty to adopt, adapt, and/or create OER course materials for courses being taught in Academic Year 2023-2024.  The grant awardees are: