Group Admins
Description
Session Description
Large scale financial incentives are not always necessary for the development of a campus-wide culture of open practice supporting and encouraging faculty to adopt, adapt, or create OER. Large scale grant programs can result in a significant proportion of resources being committed to long-term projects requiring ongoing management. This presentation describes an incentive program through which a combination of smaller scale financial incentives and instructional design support enabled a nimble approach to the achievement of sustainable goals related to the classroom incorporation of open practices.
The “Hack Your Syllabus Mini-Grant” encouraged faculty and instructors to explore the use of open textbooks as an alternative to traditional commercially published textbooks and course materials. Faculty received a small ($750.00) financial incentive and instructional design support to redesign or develop courses and materials to incorporate open practices. This presentation will describe the materials and process necessary to implement the HackYourSyllabus mini-grant project at other institutions.
We found that the smaller scale approach broadened participation and drew in scholars from fields underrepresented in OER. One of the funded projects will result in an anthology of flash fiction intentionally curated to achieve diverse and inclusive representation the faculty member had been unable to find in commercial textbooks. Another funded project is adapting resources used to teach nutrition to represent and include local cultural practices, opportunities, and challenges. Additionally, the project timeline was friendly to non-tenure track faculty, instructional staff, and graduate students who provide much of the hidden labor associated with the design and implementation of open practices. We will share successes and lessons learned, as well as project management templates developed to help others implement similar projects.
References
Iakovakis, C., Essmiller, K., & Upson, M. (2019). Memorandum of understanding template for open educational resources (OER) projects. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.10135043
“Office Hours Transcript: The Invisible Labour of OER.” Rebus Community, 29 Apr. 2019, https://about.rebus.community/2019/04/29/april-office-hours-defining-the-invisible-labour-of-oer-audio-and-chat-transcripts/
Reed, M., Currier, B., Mirza, R. & Ossom Williamson, P. (2017). Memorandum of understanding for UTA CARES grant program. University of Texas at Arlington Libraries ResearchCommons. Available at http://hdl.handle.net/10106/26740. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 United States (CC BY-NC).
Wiley, D. (2007). On the sustainability of open educational resources initiatives in higher education. Paper commissioned by the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) for the project of Open Educational Resources.
