Library News
Open Educational Resources (OER) Funding Opportunity for Faculty
Posted on February 8th, 2024
Booth Library and the FDIC are partnering to extend an opportunity for funding for EIU faculty interested in creating and adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) materials: textbooks and textbook alternatives, and other materials like simulations, case studies, videos, assignments, quiz banks, lecture slides, lab manuals, etc. The use of OER is a proven means for reducing the cost of education and enhancing student success, and an extensive corpus of high-quality materials exists and is readily available – to learn more visit: OER LibGuide at Booth Library.
The Illinois State Library has announced a grant program to support the creation of OER content at institutions of higher learning, and academic libraries can apply for project funding.
To qualify you must begin to use the new OER content in the 2025 academic year. EIU faculty with successful proposals under this State Library program will receive a one-time payment of $4,000, during the Summer 2024 semester, to support OER development and adoption.
Following the OER implementation, the faculty member will assess the OER content. Refinements and adjustments will be made in Summer 2025. Once that review process is complete and the OER materials finalized, participating faculty will receive another $1,000 at the project’s completion.
An array of supports will be provided to participating faculty by the FDIC and Booth: instructional design, integration of content into D2L, proofreading, and copyright and accessibility consultations; along with help in discovering existing content.
The OER projects eligible for the Illinois State Library funding must fit into at least one of the following categories:
- Author – Create and adopt a substantially new open textbook or open course where it is possible to demonstrate that quality resources are not currently available to meet learning objectives.
- Revise/Remix – Update existing OER with major revisions or develop custom course content from multiple open educational resources and original open content to support learning objectives not met by existing open resources.
- Ancillaries – Adopt existing OER and create ancillaries such as quiz banks, lecture slides, or lab manuals.
- Update – Update and adopt existing OER that requires minor editing for currency or relevance, without major changes to the content or structure.
The proposed OER projects have to be specific to a course the faculty member teaches, and funding requires a commitment to use the created OER, at least once by Spring 2026 and for three years following. In addition, the State Library requires an evaluation component focused on the implementation of the OER material, which includes some data collection for enrollment and student outcomes. Participating faculty may have a role in compiling this data for reporting.
In addition, the digital resources created under this grant must be made open themselves – meeting the following criteria:
- available at no cost to students
- shared via an online repository, like LibreTexts, OER Commons, or the Open Textbook Library
- made available for printing through a printing platform such as XanEdu
- available with the license of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Note regarding open content and academic integrity: LibreTexts allows faculty to determine access to materials. In other words, they can be marked Instructor Only and then only someone with a verified instructor account would have access.
Interested in Participating?
To express interest in participating in OER@EIU, please complete this Expression of Interest questionnaire by no later than February 25, 2024. If you have multiple courses for which you are interested in creating OER for this grant, please make separate submissions if you have multiple courses. The grant proposal from EIU to the Illinois State Library must be submitted by the end of March, so expressions of interest after February 25, might not be considered.
Questions, Concerns or Comments? Want to learn more?
Virtual information sessions will be held on via Zoom:
In addition, feel free to email Brian Keith, Dean of Library Services, at bwkeith@eiu.edu and Michael Gillespie, Director of the FDIC, at mgillespie@eiu.edu.
Thank you for considering participation in this important new opportunity and for helping spread the word to other faculty colleagues. Open Educational Resources play a crucial role in fostering a more inclusive, accessible, and collaborative education system, aligning with the principles of openness and equity in learning. OER also advances EIU’s various educational, economic, and social goals.
