Open Educational Resources

Purpose

• Provide funding opportunities for faculty to convert courses from commercial materials to open and zero cost materials.
• Provide guidance regarding how to integrate adoption and/or creation of open educational resources in the promotion and tenure process.
• Collect and compile data related to the use of open and zero cost educational resources within the Berea College community.

Goals for Fall 2024

• Evaluate grant proposals, and select funding recipients
• Create guidance for faculty on how to best fit their OER work into their Berea College tenure & promotion process

If you are interested in participating in this group to expand the use of OER at Berea College, please contact Maria Taylor.

The OER Faculty Advisory Group accepts applications for Berea College’s Open Educational Resources (OER) Grants. These grants are intended to encourage and support the replacement of commercial textbooks and other course materials with relevant, high-quality OER. 

Program Goals

• Produce course materials that are more engaging and better support course learning objectives
• Incorporate open pedagogy into courses to transform how students engage with course content 
• Increase equitable access to course materials for all students
• Eliminate or reduce the cost of textbooks and other course materials (such as access codes for online course content) for students
• Share materials openly with the international teaching and learning community

Grant Tiers

OER Adoption ($500) - Locate, Evaluate, & Adopt OER

Existing open resources meet the needs of your courses with little or no modification

Requirements:

• Locate & evaluate openly licensed materials to adopt for your course.
• Integrate the OER into your credit-bearing Berea College course.

OER Modification & Creation (up to $1000) - Adapt, Update, and Combine OER/Create Supporting Materials

No single OER covers the content that you teach or supporting materials are not available for an existing OER

Requirements for adapting, updating, and combining existing OER:

• Locate openly licensed content to adapt. 
• Publish completed OER with a Creative Commons license that allows for modification and share publicly in appropriate repositories.
• Integrate the OER into your credit-bearing Berea College course.

Requirements for creating ancillaries: 

• Create ancillaries, such as openly licensed video series or open course lecture notes.
• Publish completed OER with a Creative Commons license that allows for modification and share publicly in appropriate repositories
• Integrate the OER into your credit-bearing Berea College course

Requirements for creating open pedagogy assignments: 

• Create open pedagogy assignments.
• Publish open pedagogy assignments with a Creative Commons license that allows for modification and share publicly in appropriate repositories.
• Implement your open pedagogy assignments into your credit-bearing Berea College course.
• Give students the choice to publish their OER under a Creative Commons license and share publically. 

Author an Open Textbook (apply for a course release to support this work) - Create an original open textbook

No OER exists for the topic of your course

Requirements: 

• Create a new, original open textbook and adopt it for use in a credit-bearing Berea College course 
• Publish open textbook with a Creative Commons license that allows for modification and share publicly in appropriate repositories

 Criteria for Proposals

• The proposal should be submitted by one or more Berea college employees with teaching responsibilities
• Successful proposals will require the use of an open textbook or other open educational resources (library licensed content/open access resources will be considered if no high-quality, relevant OER are available) in a credit-bearing course at Berea College
• One proposal may be submitted per academic year

Expectations of Grant Recipients

• Meet with the OER Librarian after grant is awarded to discuss the work plan and project timeline 
• Publish any new or derivative OER with a Creative Commons license that allows derivatives and include any content in appropriate open repositories (Open Textbook Library, OER Commons, Open Pedagogy Portal, etc.)
• Share your grant program experience with the Berea College community and provide feedback on this initiative and how we can improve
• Continue to use adopted resources (or other OER) for a minimum of two years
• Awardees are strongly encouraged to assess and report a summary of findings in their final report

OER Support Available

• Consultations with the Open Educational Resources Librarian to find existing OER
• OER, copyright and open licensing resources on the Hutchins Library website
• Copyright and open licensing support provided by Hutchins Library
• Workshops, Learning Circles, and other faculty development related to OER, open licensing, open pedagogy, and more

Where can I find OER and open textbooks? 

There is a list of recommended repositories of OER and open textbooks on the Open Berea website. 

How will the final product be made available to students?

You will be able to link to or upload your content into Moodle. If you have questions about having OER printed for students, please contact the Open Educational Resources Librarian.

Who do I contact with copyright and open licensing questions?

If you have questions related to OER, copyright, and/or open licensing, please contact the Open Educational Resources Librarian to schedule a consultation. You are responsible for following copyright laws.

When will the funding be dispersed?

Stipends will be dispersed in the semester the OER is adopted, once the final report has been submitted to the OER Faculty Advisory Group, and any OER have been uploaded to appropriate repositories.

Will this project count toward promotion and tenure?

Faculty regularly highlight innovative curricular work in pre-tenure, tenure, and promotion portfolios. Please refer to the Tenure and Promotion Review Criteria section of the Faculty Manual to see how this kind of work could be incorporated into a portfolio.  

What can the grant funding NOT be used for?

• The adoption of commercial textbooks
• The creation or adaptation of textbooks for commercial publication;
• The creation or adaptation of textbooks and other materials without the accompaniment of a Creative Commons license;
• Releasing a resource with a Creative Commons license with a “NoDerivitives” provision.