Smith College Open Education Initiative Grants

Smith Libraries is launching the 2024 Open Education Initiative (OEI) Grant Award. The grants provide funding for instructors to adopt, 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.

To be eligible for either grant, or just to find out more about OERs, please register for our OER Adoption and Review Grant Workshop on January 23th, 1–2:00 p.m..

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 

Expectations: All Alternative Materials Grant recipients must:

• Attend OER a January or May information workshop or consultation (dates TBD).
• 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 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 

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. 

Expectations: All Review Grant recipients must:

• Attend OER information workshop on January 23rd or May (TBD) information workshop or consultation to get the link to review a textbook in the Open Textbook Library.

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. 

Deadline September 30th, 2023: The funding opportunity for the SCOAP³ Books open access (OA) program supporting high energy physics books continues through September 30, 2023. The SCOAP³ Governing Council has voted, and the2023 SCOAP³ for Books collection of 21 front list titles is now finalized. These titles were carefully reviewed by an international panel of physics experts out of a pool of 60. 

Deadline May 19th, 2023: Applications for New Awards; Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education-Open Textbooks Pilot Program

Deadline April 16th, 2023:Teach Access Faculty Grants

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. 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.