The Affordable Instructional Resources (AIR) initiative invites Northwestern faculty to apply for $5,000 grants to develop Open Educational Resources (OER) for undergraduate courses. OER are teaching, learning and research materials that have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, editing and sharing with no or limited restrictions (UNESCO). OER includes textbooks, modules, presentations, workbooks, videos, and any other openly licensed educational content.
Funded by the Office of the Provost and University Libraries, these grants are intended to encourage the creation and use of OER as alternatives to commercial course materials for their courses.
In addition to saving students money, OER provides faculty with the option to customize their course materials and edit them as needed. New this year is access to Pressbooks, a user-friendly OER Publishing platform designed for those interested in creating open course materials with interactive exercises, embedded media, and collaborative editing options.
The OER grant program is now in its fifth year. Here are a few examples of projects in development:
- Introduction to Statistics (STAT 202): Professor Danielle Sass is creating an open source, interactive workbook to accompany the existing OER that was created through the grant program in a previous funding cycle.
- Introduction to Arabic (ARABIC 111, 1-3): Professor Ragy Mikhaeel is creating a flexible online textbook with interactive exercises, videos, and vocab lists.
- Thermodynamics & Phase Equilibrium and Staged Separations (CHEM ENG 211 & 212): Professors Jennifer Dunn and Jeffrey Richards are creating an OER for computational engineering methods using Python.
To browse other projects, including live example texts, visit the OER at Northwestern page.
Grant funds can be taken as a stipend or used to pay for aspects of OER development such as student assistants, travel, or recording equipment. Standard taxes and fringe benefit deductions apply.
In addition to monetary support, each grant recipient will receive individualized support from the Libraries, including:
- Consultations to discuss publishing platform options
- Finding existing OER to adapt and build upon
- Copyright guidance on the use of third-party materials
- Formatting support, training, and hosting on the publishing platform Pressbooks
- Working with AccessibleNU to ensure accessibility
- Assigning a Creative Commons license, DOI, and ISBN
- Creating exports of your OER in HTML, PDF, EPUB, or print format
- Sharing your OER and making it discoverable via OER repositories
- Maintaining persistent access and storage via Arch, Northwestern’s institutional repository
If you’d like to discuss a project idea before applying, contact Lauren McKeen McDonald, Open Education Librarian, at lauren.mckeen@northwestern.edu. Applications are due March 24, 2023, and recipients will be notified in mid-April, 2023. Learn more and apply.