By Asha Mehta ’27
Ten faculty from the 2024 Open Educational Resource grant program will be awarded at least $5,000 per project to develop free teaching materials for a Northwestern undergraduate course. The grant committee estimates that the completed projects will save 530 undergraduates $53K in the first year, and every additional year the materials are assigned. Savings are calculated based on a commonly used estimate of $100 per student in every class in which OER are used instead of commercial materials.
The Open Educational Resources Grant (OER) Program is designed to support faculty who are interested in developing and using OER 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 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 sets. 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 give 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.
7 projects were chosen this year:
| Course | Project Description | Faculty Name | Award Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish 125-0: Accelerated Intermediate Spanish | Create an open textbook to teach Intermediate Spanish with a global, Universal Design for Learning framework | Irene Finestrat-Martinez | $5,000 |
| STAT 301-1: Data Science 1 with R | Develop and adapt an open homework package that teaches students to code and provides feedback in real-time | Danielle Sass and Arend Kuyper | $5,000 |
| COMP_SCI 497: Advanced Database Systems | Create open course materials, including slides, companion notes, and video lectures, to supplement a new course | Andrew Crotty | $5,000, generously funded in part by the Department of Computer Science |
| ELEC_ENG 202: Introduction to Electrical Engineering | Create an open textbook to teach a wide array of electrical engineering concepts at an introductory level | Ilya Mikhelson | $5,000 |
| ChBE 422: Heat and Mass Transport | Create an open Jupyter Book integrating coding and text, including computational packages, course notes, and assessments, to be posted on Github | Jeffrey Richards | $5,000 |
| GER 102 (1-3): Intermediate German, and GER 201, 203, 205 | Build upon an open grammar learning software for German students, and update it to be more technologically advanced and culturally sensitive | Martina Kerlova and Franziska Lys | $10,000 |
| ITALIAN 102 (1-3) & 133 (1-2): Intermediate and Intensive Italian | Create a flexible grammar textbook that will complement thematic units and build intercultural competence | Daniele Biffante and Daniela Pozzi Pavan | $10,000, generously funded in part by the Department of French & Italian |
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 2025/2026 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.
Asha Mehta is the Engagement and OER Publishing Assistant and a first-year Physics & Astronomy student.