2015 OER Special Project Grants Awarded

The 2015 Open Educational Resources Special Project Grants have been awarded. Congratulations to our grantees!

Taken together, the projects represent collaborations with 13 different institutions that have the potential to save thousands of Oregon students an estimated $227,175.26 to $386,921.50 per year. Two projects are not associated with a specific savings goal, but instead create important infrastructure that makes it possible for faculty to more easily create and adopt OER for their courses. Beyond the pilot phase it is expected that these fully accessible and openly licensed course materials will be used more widely and increase the impact of the grants.

Many thanks to the Oregon Community College Distance Learning Association for sponsoring this grant funding, and to the Special Project Grant Committee members for their teamwork in evaluating the grant proposals.

Follow this link to read about the grant projects in more detail. 

Enabling Successful, Accessible OER in Mathematics with a WeBWorK-MathBook XML Bridge
Alex Jordan, Instructor of Mathematics, Portland Community College; Michael Gage, Professor, University of Rochester; Geoff Goehle, Professor, Western Carolina University; Rob Beezer, Professor, University of Puget Sound
Two powerful and successful OER tools for mathematics (WeBWorK and MathBook XML) will be combined in a way that will enable OER in mathematics to have accessible, interactive homework embedded in an online textbook. This project doesn’t aim to replace textbooks in any specific course; rather, it creates infrastructure for math instructors to write and adopt fully accessible open math textbooks in the future. University of Puget Sound is providing a matching grant for this project.

Geology and Environmental Science sequence redevelopment
Alexandra Geddes, Adjunct Instructor; Paul Ruscher, Department Chair, Lane Community College
This project will examine the textbooks and other materials associated with 7 courses offered in the department of Earth and Environmental Science at Lane Community College. Up to 500 students will save approximately $50,000-75,000 per year once the project is complete.

PCC Health Studies OER Team
Valerie Limbrunner-Bartlett, Alissa Leavitt, Shari Rochelle, Rachelle Katter, Michael Meagher, Portland Community College
The Portland Community College Health Studies department is excited to develop the Personal Health course with OERs as a basis for course material. If every student that enrolled in 2014-2015 bought the textbook, that would translate into $200,625-$254,125 per year – up to a quarter of a million dollars in savings!

OER and Eastern Promise
Jacquelyn Ray, Director, Library and Media Services, Blue Mountain Community College; Theresa Pihl, Adjunct Instructor, History and Social Science, Eastern Promise Professional Learning Community (PLC) Leader; Aaron Davis, Faculty, Hermiston High School and Eastern Promise Instructor; Kris Pepera, Faculty, Baker High School and Eastern Promise Instructor
This project will develop and implement an OER text and supporting resources for U.S. History courses taught by both Blue Mountain Community College and the local high schools through the Eastern Promise program. With approximately 200 students enrolled in History 201,202, and 203 per year, savings for students and school districts is projected between $7,698-18,458 annually.

To Be Free: An OER Project for Rock Creek Developmental English Online Rd 115 Courses
Theresa Love, Department Chair, Faculty; Robbie Pock, M.F.A, PT Faculty, Developmental English; David Pontious, M.S., M.A., PT Faculty, Developmental Education Instructor, Portland Community College – Rock Creek campus
The purpose of this project is to adapt, create, design, and publish an OER course, including textbook and activities, with a Creative Commons license to be used in all Rock Creek Developmental English Department’s online RD 115 classes in order to benefit Developmental English students at PCC. With 150 students in the pilot courses, this project expects to save $5,422.50-8,758.50 for the coming year.

Teaching Technical Writing with OER
Annemarie Hamlin, Associate Professor of English; Chris Rubio, Assistant Professor of English; Michele DeSilva, Emerging Technologies Librarian, Central Oregon Community College
A team of two faculty and one librarian at COCC will redesign a technical writing course using open educational resources to eliminate the need for students to purchase textbooks. With 156-260 students enrolled each year, this project will save $11,700-19,500 annually.

College Now/CGCC OER Collaboration
John Schoppert, Director of Library Services, Columbia Gorge Community College; Chauna Ramsey, Eng/WR instructor, Hood River Valley HS and Columbia Gorge Community College; Jennifer Hanlon-Wilde, Eng/WR instructor, Columbia Gorge Community College
Hood River Valley High School and Columbia Gorge Community College instructors will redevelop Eng 253/254 – American Literature courses that will be used for College Now high school students and CGCC students, many of whom are first-generation college students. With 140 students enrolled in these two courses per year, students will save $6,650-8,610 and learn about ethical use of copyrighted materials.

OW!: An Oregon Writing OER Collection
Jennifer Kepka, Instructor, English, Linn-Benton and Lane Community College; Christopher Roethle, Instructor, University of Oregon
This proposal seeks to bring together front-line English instructors to create a scalable collection of Oregon’s Writing Open Educational Resources (OWOER) for first- and developmental-level composition courses while also supporting collaboration between institutions to fill in gaps. This project doesn’t have a specific savings goal; rather, it lays the groundwork for instructors to easily adopt OER for writing courses in the future.