Seven faculty-led projects will receive at least $5,000 from the 2023 Open Educational Resource grant program to develop free teaching material for a Northwestern undergraduate course. The grant committee estimates that the completed projects will save 940 undergraduates $110,000 in the first year, and every additional year the materials are assigned.
This year’s projects are led by 13 Northwestern faculty:
- Accelerated and Intermediate Hindi-Urdu (HIND_URD 116, 121-1, and 320): Associate professor David Boyk and assistant professor Daniel Majchrowicz will create an open textbook to teach two scripts used in Hindi-Urdu language.
- Formal Advanced and Accelerated Chinese (CHINESE 311 and 315): Associate professor Jingjing Ji and incoming faculty member Yangtian Luo will lead a cross-institutional project (with Yingling Bao of Indiana University and Hsiang-ning Wang from the University of British Columbia) to create a flexible and inclusive open textbook.
- Introduction to Programming for Data Science (STAT 201): Assistant professors Emre Bessler and Arvind Krishna will develop an open textbook that introduces Python and R programming languages in flipped classroom approach.
- Accelerated Intermediate and Advanced Spanish for Heritage Learners (SPANISH 127 and 200): Associate professors Julia Oliver Rajan and Maria Teresa Villanueva will lead the creation of OER through project-based activities completed by students within authentic Latinx contexts.
- Data Structures (COMP SCI 214): Associate professor Vincent St-Amour will begin an expansion of existing OER textbook currently used by multiple NU professors.
- Molecular and Cell Biology for Engineers (CHEM ENG 275): Adjunct professor Abigail Stringer, along with faculty sponsor professor Julius Lucks, will develop an open textbook that incorporates engineering perspective into course material with highlights Northwestern research.
- First Year Chinese, Regular and Accelerated (CHINESE 111 and 115): Associate professor Jili Sun and assistant professor Yan Zhou will develop a multimodal supplementary reader with authentic content and contributions by students.
The OER program is designed to support faculty who are interested in developing and using open resources in their undergraduate courses. 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 free teaching materials that are licensed for unrestricted distribution and modification to fit the course-specific needs of instructors. Some examples of OER include textbooks, websites, videos, and open homework platforms. While most OER start in digital format, text files can be converted so faculty and students can print their materials at home or through a printing service.
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.
Grant funds can be taken as a stipend or used to pay for support, such as student assistants, or materials and equipment to aid in the development of the materials. In addition, each grant recipient will receive 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 2024/25 academic year. If you are interested in using or creating OER, contact Open Education Librarian, Lauren McKeen McDonald at lauren.mckeen@northwestern.edu to get started.