This spring, Open Oregon Educational Resources piloted mini-grants of $300 for very small open education projects that take approximately 6 hours of work to complete. This was an opportunity to fund ideas that just needed a little bit of support to get over the finish line.
Examples of very small open education projects can be found in our OERCommons Mini-Grants folder and some of the mini-grant projects are described below.
Thank you to the Local OER Funds Workgroup for sharing this idea!
Robert Asaadi, Portland Community College
This mini-grant project aimed to identify high-quality, accessible open educational resources (OER) for PS 204: Introduction to Comparative Politics, to support a future course redesign prioritizing affordability, accessibility, and inclusion. The project involved researching OER repositories such as Open Textbook Library and OERCommons, focusing on resources that align with the course’s core themes like political systems, ideologies, and comparative case studies.
Key findings highlighted comprehensive open textbooks, such as Introduction to Comparative Government and Politics and Comparative Politics, as adaptable and well-suited for the course. However, supplementary materials like multimedia and quizzes were scarce, with a need for greater representation of non-Western perspectives.
The next steps will include pursuing a larger OER grant proposal to further develop inclusive and accessible materials, potentially creating new resources that better reflect diverse global viewpoints.
Shaun Huston, Western Oregon University
My mini-grant was for investigation into OER for introductory courses in sustainability, especially with an emphasis on human social, cultural and political dimensions. I searched the Open Oregon Resources page, Open Textbook Library, and OERCommons. I spoke with Stewart Baker, the OER librarian at Western Oregon, about my research and what kind of additional resources might be useful.
There is one well established textbook with the kind of focus I was looking for, Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation by Tom Theis and Jonathan Tompkin, as well as one with more of an environmental science approach, Introduction to Environmental Sciences and Sustainability by Emily P. Harris. There are also more specialized texts in fields like business, urban planning, and transportation that may offer chapters that could be incorporated into a broader introduction to the field. There’s a variety of other resources, including class activities, course modules, learning objects, and assignments that could be adapted or incorporated into a course or into a new resource.
Dr. Mary Ann Woodman, Rogue Community College
This grant updated an existing OER adopted for Abnormal Psychology (Fundamentals of Psychological Disorders, 3rd Ed.) with minor editing, without major changes to the content. It also created a new module in the learning management system with supplemental resources and a weekly assessment. The module was extracted into a package to be openly licensed and shared via OER Commons.
The new online course materials offer opportunities for students to listen to real life stories of people suffering from mental illness and to observe how they move toward healthy recovery. Students recognize symptoms, causes, and treatments associated with the various disorders studied in the course. Ninety multimedia stories in the module cover the following groups of disorders: mood, trauma and stress, dissociation, anxiety, somatic, OCD, eating, psychosis, personality, and neurocognitive.
Monica Olvera, Oregon State University
For this mini-grant, I expanded on the work that has already been done to create course packs for HDFS 201, Contemporary Families in the US, which uses the OER by Elizabeth Pearce, Contemporary Families in the US: An Equity Lens 2e.
One item is an assignment that could be used for students to create OER content, which is for students to create or explore an artifact of artistic representation that portrays aspects of their social identities, family, and/or community. This assignment is meant to accompany chapter 12 of the textbook, Visual Culture.
The other two items are updates to content in my course pack about work-life integration for contemporary families in the US. After talking to scholars in the field who research work-life integration about the problematic phrase “work-life balance,” I wanted to include content that moves away from the expectation that families must exist in separate realms from career and work responsibilities, and that family and work obligations must exist in some semblance of static balance. I created a new set of lecture slides that include more discussion questions, aimed at helping students think about what makes life meaningful for them, and how things like career and family can fit into what students visualize for their ideal futures. I also created a new assignment that is meant to be given at the end of the term, wherein students reflect upon their ideal future and their goals, and create specific steps towards two of their goals.
Megan Faust, Portland Community College
This past year has been a fun adventure of teaching oceanography as a hybrid course while using OER resources. During the first term teaching oceanography in the hybrid modality many of the assignments for the course were similar to what I use in my fully online oceanography course. I soon realized that I wanted to have assessments be a part of the in-person portion of the class rather than the online portion of the hybrid class. This would allow for students to ask questions during exams. It would also make it possible for assessments to involve taking measurements or making observations and interpretations much like what we do during the in-person lab portion of the class.
For my Spring 2025 Mini-Grant, I created a new set of pre-lab quizzes designed for the in-person oceanography labs that are part of my hybrid course. One of my goals for the pre-lab quizzes is for students to be able to recall information and make connections between the online portion of the course where most of the new content is presented and the in-person labs. One of the primary OER resources I use for the course is Paul Webb’s Introduction to Oceanography, and my new pre-lab quizzes align well with content from this text. I recommend fielding questions over the new content prior to using a pre-lab quiz and then following up after the quiz with further conversation to ensure that students feel comfortable with the relevant material for the lab activity that follows.
Rebecka Tumblin, Oregon State University
My pedagogical goals for a PH213 course are to incorporate new ideas involving electric and magnetic phenomenon into the existing physical ideas explored through concepts learned in PH211 – motion, kinematics, energy, momentum, conservations laws – with ideas from PH212 – oscillatory motion, orbital motion, and wave motion – to build robust coursework that connects various areas of the general physics with calculus coursework.
This project seeks to use observation and model building to help students explore electric fields. The project centers around having students watch a video of an experiment where astronaut Don Pettit deposits positive charges on a knitting needle by rubbing it with paper, and then squirts small drops of water near the needle. Students explore the orbital motion and oscillatory motion exhibited in the video of an experiment taking place on the International Space Station by building a physical and mathematical model of the motion drawing from their knowledge of both electromagnetism and mechanics. The project is scalable from high school through graduate school depending on the instructor’s emphasis and expectations.
Andrea A. McCracken, Ph.D., Oregon Institute of Technology,
Mini grant 1: Review of OER three OER for use in Health Communication
I reviewed three Open Education Resources for use in my Health Communication course. The resources were: Patient communication skills, Effective Communication in Nursing, and Compassionate Communication using the Human Caring Theory. All were helpfully identified by Kristin Whitman, Library Director of the Oregon Tech Portland Metro Campus.
While each resource had both strengths and areas for improvement, broad themes emerged across these resources. The resources generally excelled in applicability, which is particularly important for technical and skill-based institutions and student populations. Patient communication skills, in particular, provides both performance keys and video examples that instructors can use to either supplement their instruction or that students can use to identify communication strengths and opportunities for improvement. Additionally, all three OER provide concise and pithy explanations. Learners who are quick to grasp concepts, or who struggle with traditional or verbose texts, may benefit from this approach.
Conversely, the resources lack certain instructor support materials. Instructors who might benefit from test banks, problem sets, or other ancillaries might struggle with Effective Communication and Compassionate Communication using the Human Caring Theory in particular. Finally, while Effective Communication in Nursing excelled in their incorporation of cited scholarly work, the others were not as explicitly steeped in cited scholarly work. Students utilizing these texts may be less familiar with accepted vocabulary of their disciplines and lack understanding of theoretical underpinnings behind applied recommendations made by these resources.
It is crucial that instructors evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of their resource selection to meet the unique needs of their pedagogical approach and student population.
Mini grant two: Conference panel proposal on pedagogical experiences with open education resources
An increase in computer and web-based technologies has led to heightened interest in ‘open’ movements dedicated to democratizing access to knowledge. In particular, higher education has seen an increase in emphasis on Open Education Resources (OER) in course materials. OER are tools and resources to promote the use of high quality, affordable course materials for teaching and learning.
OER generally enjoy support from administration, pedagogues, and students, yet widespread implementation of OER materials in education has remained elusive. Three common initial obstacles to OER adoption cited by scholars are concerns about (1) faculty time, creating a strong course using OER frequently requires significant time locating and evaluating materials, (2) quality, materials have improved recently, yet disciplines vary in the quality of available resources, and (3) sustainability, pedagogues express concern over the continued update and reliability of works.
Our panel responds to these interests and concerns by sharing tips and advice related to our training and forays into the use of OER in curriculum. We share a joint interest in democratizing access to knowledge and will present on how to locate, vet, and incorporate OER to address the faculty time, quality, and sustainability concerns discussed above. We will also provide reflections on the broader implications of each of our unique experiences for the ‘open” movement in education more generally.
