What Exactly are OER?

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.”  UNESCO

Check out the UNESCO recommendations on OER here. 

Stipend 

For the initial phase of this project, we will focus simply on OER adoption Our ultimate plan, however, is to include not only OER adoption stipends, but also OER adaption, creation, and peer review honoraria. OER Adoption means finding appropriate Open Educational Resources that are already available and adopting them into a course to replace a commercial textbook. This could include anything from 1 OER for 1 publisher-text trade to a curation or remix of multiple OERs for multiple commercial pieces. Ideally, there is an elimination of textbook costs to students, but proposals with a significant reduction in student costs will be considered. 

• Adoption Stipend ($1000 each) - Identify and adopt and existing open textbook or other Open Education Resource. This could involve aligning your course learning outcomes, content, teaching methodologies, etc., to the new resource. Adoptions may require small changes to the textbook such as modifications due to accessibility requirements (e.g. making content compatible with screen readers, ensuring that it follows Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) guidelines), minor text changes, or appending content. Half of the stipend will be paid upon approval of the proposal and half will be paid upon submission of the report. This report will explain how aligned your course learning outcomes, content, teaching methodologies, etc., to the new resource. Additionally, you will be given a link to a student survey to include in your Blackboard site to obtain student perspectives on the use of the OER.
• Retroactive Adoption Stipend ($500 each) - If you have already adopted an existing open textbook or other Open Educational Resource, apply for this to receive a $500 stipend. The deliverable would involve reporting on how you aligned your course learning outcomes, content, teaching methodologies, etc., to the new resource. The modality of the report can be in written, audio, or video format. 

For more information about Open Educational Resources, see the OER Toolkit from The Learning Portal.