The 2025-27 OER grant cohort has saved over 1600 students an estimated $170K since July 2025. The cohort represents 30 different projects to adopt, adapt, and create OER for courses at 12 institutions.
Finished projects to date are collected in an OER Commons folder. More information is available at Grant Updates and below.
Congratulations grantees!
Introduction to Criminology
Stephanie Wiley, Instructor and Director of the Criminology Minor at the University of Oregon, developed course materials for the prelaunch edition of Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System: An Equity Lens, available as a course pack through a federal grant with Open Oregon Educational Resources. Stephanie received an open application OER grant to develop new course materials aligned with the launch edition of the open textbook. Stephanie writes:
Using OER for SOC 280 Introduction to Criminology means hundreds of students are accessing the OER each year and saving thousands of dollars on textbook costs. My grant project involves redesigning course materials using an updated, equity-focused version of Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System. This text’s incorporation of equity-focused issues, such as Critical Race Theory and the defund the police movement, show my students real-time changes in criminology and criminal justice. I am actively updating slides and quiz question banks with these materials to be ready for sharing by the end of March!
Criminal Law
Anne Nichol, Criminal Justice Department Instructor at Portland Community College, is also a returning grantee from the federal grant project, where she authored the open textbook Mental Disorders and the Criminal Justice System and created an aligned course pack. Anne received an open application OER grant to work with her students to significantly update an outdated open textbook. Anne writes:
I’m very excited to be creating an open text for my criminal law (CJA 212) class at PCC, which I teach three terms per year. I have tried multiple commercial texts for the course and found them lacking. I wanted a text that is accurate and substantial, yet not overwhelming. I also wanted something relevant and appropriate for my modern Oregon students, so they can find the topic as thought-provoking and entertaining as I do.
I started my two-year project this fall with a 2011 Pressbook published (and then un-published for being so outdated) by the University of Minnesota. I am planning a complete overhaul in phases. For my first round, I reduced the text from 13 to 10 chapters, tried to make it functionally accessible, replaced the most cringe-inducing language, and started teaching with a very rough draft this Winter term. I enlisted PCC pro Tim Krause to help me specifically with the Pressbook formatting and he has proved himself exceedingly useful, both in Pressbooking and in general words of OER wisdom.
My assignments have engaged students by encouraging them to explore how the criminal law has changed from 2011 to 2026, as well as how it looks different in Florida or Texas than it does in Washington or Oregon. They seem to be enjoying helping create this textbook as they learn how to read, analyze, and explore the law. Not only have my 27 students avoided buying an expensive textbook (the previous one was $183, realizing a single-term savings of $4941), but I’m loving teaching this class and interacting in a collaborative and creative way with my students (aka my law clerks!).
World Schools Debate
Kelly Kehoe and Li-Ren Chang, communication instructors at Portland Community College, are revising course materials currently shared as Google Docs into an updated and accessible open textbook for COMM 112. They write:
This project reimagines how students are introduced to World Schools Debate by replacing costly commercial materials with a practical, strategy-focused OER textbook. Many debate resources tend to be overwhelmingly Americentric (focused on U.S. policies or values) and/or heavily emphasize the competition aspects of debate, which can make the activity feel intimidating, inaccessible, and even exclusionary to newcomers and international students. As former debate competitors, coaches, and judges ourselves, our #1 goal has been to make debate more approachable for all students by clearly explaining argument structure, strategy, and rebuttal techniques with an emphasis on critical thinking over competitive success.
Early use in a COMM 112 class suggests students are more confident identifying key clashes (areas of disagreement) and supporting arguments effectively. The project continues to grow as we expand our collection of globally-centric debate motions (topics) and refine examples based on student feedback.
Ancillaries for Statistics in MyOpenMath
Jennifer Ward, Sonya Redmond, Sah Hanna, Peter Banwarth, and mentor Cara Lee, all math instructors at Portland Community College, use the open textbooks Advanced High School Statistics 3rd ed and Introduction to Modern Statistics (2e) for STAT 234Z. They teach statistics using resampling methods and theoretical methods and needed more practice questions for their students. The team writes:
A group of Portland Community College statistics instructors are developing new questions that use Simulation Based Inference, to a bank of questions for the free homework platform MyOpenMath. The questions will allow faculty more choice of what questions to offer students, and students can have more opportunities to practice their skills. Faculty show students how to use free, online applets that use real data to simulate statistical concepts, and the applets give students a visual way to understand these concepts quickly. The questions we add to the repository will be available for other instructors to modify for their own use. Using Simulation Based Inference to teach introductory Statistics has been one way PCC instructors follow the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education. Using MyOpenMath and open textbooks like OpenIntro’s Advanced High School Statistics and Introduction to Modern Statistics have saved Portland Community College students thousands of dollars every term.
Math in Society
Larissa Shatalova, a math instructor at Lane Community College, received a grant to redesign MTH 105Z using a pedagogical model called Layered Active Integration. Larissa writes:
As part of my OER grant project, I am developing open course materials for Math 105Z (Math in Society), a non-STEM course with a strong emphasis on accessibility and universal design.
The project follows an accessibility-first approach in which AI-assisted narration and interpretation are integrated directly into the course materials. Slides are designed to be shared via URLs within commonly used platforms (such as Microsoft 365), preserving presenter view and optional audio narration. Detailed, plain-language descriptions of slide content are embedded directly in the presenter notes, supporting screen readers, reducing cognitive load for non-STEM learners, and providing multiple modes of representation without altering academic rigor or requiring individual accommodations.
The materials are currently being used across three sections of Math 105Z delivered in both face-to-face and online formats. Across multiple terms (summer, fall, and winter), this approach has shown consistently positive results in both modalities, suggesting that the design is robust across instructional settings rather than dependent on a single format.
To ensure broad reuse and sustainability, materials are intentionally modular and lightweight, making them easy for instructors to adapt to their own teaching contexts while remaining compatible with standard accessibility and file-sharing constraints.
The project will continue through iterative refinement based on classroom use and accessibility feedback, with the goal of releasing a fully open, adaptable OER package.
That’s fantastic news about the impact of the grant on student savings. It’s wonderful to see such a positive result.