Open Educational Resources Grant Winners Start Saving Their Students Money This Fall

Last spring the Office of the Provost and the University Libraries announced that they are joining together to support faculty interested in providing their students with a less expensive yet educationally rewarding alternative to expensive commercial textbooks.  Ten $1000 stipends were granted to faculty as an incentive to encourage the faculty to use low-cost or free alternatives to expensive course materials; these can include open-access scholarly resources, library-licensed and owned resources, and learning objects and texts that faculty create themselves.
                                                                                       OER Logo 2012 J. Mello, used under a Creative Commons license CC-BY

The winners of the grants are: 

•         Robert Anemone , Professor and Department Head, Anthropology
•         Heather Helms, Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Studies 
•         Channelle D. James, Lecturer, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Hospitality and Tourism
•         Liz McNamara, Lecturer, Political Science
•         Carrie A. Wachter Morris, Associate Professor, Counseling and Educational Development 
•         Nancy Myers and Brenta Blevins, College Writing Program Director and Asst. Director, English
•         Terence A Nile, Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
•         Elizabeth Perrill, Associate Professor, Art
•         Jennifer Reich, Associate Director/Lecturer, College of Arts and Sciences Advising/Art 
•         Kelly L Wester, Associate Professor, Counseling and Educational Development.

The faculty used their time this summer to research and create resources that their students could use in class without having to purchase an expensive textbook. Grant recipient Jennifer Reich says, “The resources I found are much better than the textbooks and the students can do more with them.”  

At the end of the fall semester the University Libraries and the grant winners will assess the effectiveness of this initiative in their classes.