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Open Educational Resources

A resource guide on Open Educational Resources

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Professor Kevin Shea who completed his adaption of Organic Chemistry II, at Smith College with the assistance of a Smith College Library OER Incentive Grant summer of 2023. Recognizing and celebrating our community's early embracers of OER is important. Smith Libraries is pleased to have had the opportunity to acknowledge the labor and provide fair-compensation for this important faculty contribution to Smith’s values and goals, as well as to the global scholarly community. You can see the textbook in ScholarWorks OER textbook collection.

Thank you to Professor Chris Aitkin for reviewing Anatomy and Pysiology 2e in the Open Textbook Library and congratulations on your OER review grant award.

Congratulations to Professor Alexandra Strom for completing her adaption for Advanced General Chemistry summer of 2024! Adapted to meet the pedagogical needs and goals of CHM 118 at Smith College. Smith Libraries is thrilled to have been able to make this OER adaption possible through our grant initiative program. 

OER Grant Opportunities

Smith College Open Education Initiative Grants

Smith Libraries 2024/25 Open Education Initiative (OEI) Grant Award is accepting applications and inquiries. The grants provide funding for instructors to adopt, adapt, or review Open Educational Resources. OER are teaching materials released with an open license, which allows for their free revision and redistribution with attribution to the creator of the original work.

 

Alternative Materials Grant

The Alternative Materials grants provide funding for instructors to adopt Open Educational Resources for their required course materials. ​​The goal of the Alternative Materials Grant is to encourage instructional innovation and enhance the scholarship of teaching and learning at Smith College by providing instructors with the time and resources they need to redesign their courses around the use of OER while lowering the cost of college for students. This is a competitive grant in the amount of $1000 per course.

Eligibility: Any primary instructor of record for Smith College credit-bearing undergraduate or graduate courses is eligible for these awards to be used in Fall 2024 or Spring 2025 semesters.

Alternative Materials Grant Application Criteria Rubric [Google doc]

Expectations: All Alternative Materials Grant recipients must:

  • Attend OER an information workshop or schedule a consultation.
  • Complete projects and use resources in a credit-bearing course Fall or Spring semester of the 2024/25 academic year.
  • In-class brief focus group facilitated by the OER Team to quantitatively assess student perspective of OER use in the course.
  • Submit a brief report [Google doc] reflecting on the experience of using open/alternative textbook and the outcomes after the first semester of implementation.
  • Provide a copy of the revised syllabus or course outline used for the class for possible inclusion in Smith ScholarWorks.

Application for Alternative Materials Grant [Google form]

Adapt OER

If you are interested in adapting an OER please reach out to Scholarly Communications Librarian, Jessica Ryan for information.

Application for Adaptions of OER [Google form]

Open Educational Resources Review Grant

The OER Review grant incentive provides funding to instructors to review an OER for inclusion in the Open Textbook Library. The goal of the OER Review grant is to encourage use, awareness, and to participate in the public good of improving assessment and quality of OERs. Upon completion, the first ten faculty members will receive $250 for their review. 

Email Scholarly Communications Librarian, Jessica Ryan for info.


Outside Open Education Initiative Grants

This space is for grant opportunities either local or otherwise. If you know of one and would like to have it added, please contact  us at ScholarWorks

With support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) is excited to announce the Catalytic Awards Program. This initiative offers awards up to $15,000 for projects promoting a culture of open scholarship at U.S.-based non-R1 and/or traditionally under-resourced institutions.

Awarded projects may include open science, open research, open data, and other open-sharing practices that promote transparency, reproducibility, community engagement, and collaboration in science, as well as practices that foster an inclusive, innovative, transparent, and trustworthy research environment.

Key Details:

  • Application Deadline: April 15, 2025

  • Award Amount: Up to $15,000

  • Eligible Applicants: Scholars and staff members affiliated with non-R1 or traditionally under-resourced institutions in the U.S.

Encourage your network to apply! Feel free to reach out to eunice@orcaopen.org for further information.

 

The SCOAP3 initiative to centrally fund open access (OA) to research articles in particle physics at no cost to authors worldwide has been extended for an additional three years, commencing in 2025.