Sixteen applicants of the 2022 Open Educational Resource grant will receive at least $5,000 to develop free teaching material for a Northwestern undergraduate course. The grant committee estimates that the completed projects will save 1,650 undergraduates $193,000 in the first year, and every additional year the materials are assigned.
The Open Educational Resources Grant (OER) Program is designed to support faculty who are interested in developing free teaching materials for their undergraduate courses, from textbooks to websites, videos, and homework sets. Funded by the Office of the Provost and University Libraries, the grant program supports the work involved in finding, creating, using, and sharing OER as a replacement for commercial textbooks and courseware. In some instances, schools and departments have stepped forward to co-fund a grant.
OER are licensed for unrestricted distribution and modification so instructors can tailor them to fit their specific needs. While most OER start in digital format, text files can be converted so faculty and students can print the materials at home or through a printing service. OER support is part of the Affordable Instructional Resources (AIR) initiative, a multi-departmental effort across Northwestern to address the impact of rising cost commercial textbooks and course packets.
The grant program, which is currently in its fourth year, has supported the implementation of 18 projects from across disciplines so far. With the addition of this year’s selected projects, a total of 27 OERs will be made available to students and faculty at Northwestern and beyond.
In addition to saving students thousands of dollars, the completed OER texts have given faculty the opportunity to provide customized course materials that are available to students on the first day of class and in a variety of formats. A sampling of completed projects can be viewed on Northwestern’s OER website.
9 projects were chosen this year:
| Course | Project Description | Grantees |
| Thermodynamics and Phased Equilibrium and Staged Separations (CHEM ENG 211 & 212) | OER for computational engineering methods with Python | Jennifer Dunn and Jeff Richards |
| Linear Algebra (MATH 240) | WebWork assignments and SageMath computations to accompany existing OER text | Aaron Greicius and Apurva Nakade |
| Structural Analysis (CIV ENV 320) | An executable OER text packaged as a Jupyter Notebook | Sinan Keten |
| Data Science with Python (STAT 303-1) | An OER textbook using real-world datasets for analysis with Python | Arvind Krishna and Arend Kuyper |
| Current Topics Through Media (SPANISH 201) | An online textbook with both A/V and written materials, plus instructor materials | Elena Lanza and Reyes Morán |
| Introductory Arabic (ARABIC 111, 1-3) | A flexible online textbook with interactive exercises, videos, and vocab lists | Ragy Mikhaeel |
| Intermediate French (FRENCH 121: 1-3 and 125: 1-3) | An OER grammar text to accompany a newly developed interactive website | Aude Raymond, Christiane Rey, and Patricia Scarampi |
| Introduction to Statistics (STAT 202) | An open source, interactive workbook to accompany the existing OER textbook | Danielle Sass |
| Upper-level Neuroscience electives (NEUROSCI 377 & others) | Short, digestible videos to reinforce key concepts | Tiffany Schmidt and Justin Brown |
Grant funds can be taken as a stipend or used to pay for support like student assistants or any materials that aid in the development of the materials. In addition, each grant recipient receives individualized support from librarians on finding, using, and publishing OER. Work is scheduled to begin over the summer with grant projects expected to launch before or during the 2023/24 academic year.
If you are interested in applying for this opportunity in the future, please note the program timeline is shifting to earlier in the year, with the next call for proposals in October 2022. Work on projects is expected to begin in summer 2023. OER specialists at the Libraries are available to speak with you or your department about OER options and support. Contact lauren.mckeen@northwestern.edu to get started.