LibraryBuzz

August 22, 2022September 1, 2022

Call for OER project proposals, AY 22-23

Dear City Tech Faculty,

Exciting news! New York State and CUNY have reinvested funds to support open educational resources (OER) at the University. Our short-term initiative, which many City Tech faculty have participated in from 2017-2022, has been re-upped with tax levy funds for this fiscal year 2022-2023. In short, we will continue to be able to fund and support faculty creation and use of OER. Research conducted at City Tech and other institutions shows a correlation between assigning zero-cost OER and positive student outcomes: higher retention and comparable or better grades.

We invite proposals from new and returning faculty (find more guidance on faculty eligibility below)!

Goals for the OER initiative at City Tech:

Provide students with long-term access to course learning materials (before, during, and after the course runs).
Support active learning and effective online instruction.
Help achieve curricular consistency across multiple course sections.
Help achieve coherence between sequential courses in programs.
Provide instructors with ready to use teaching resources that can assist with flexible teaching/learning modalities.

Considerations for participating in OER funded work this academic year:

Course selection:
- We encourage converting courses that are gateway, high enrollment, part of a course sequence, required courses for a major or minor, pathways, etc., interdisciplinary in nature, course curriculum that is underrepresented, or inadequately represented by existing textbooks on the market.

Priorities for funding OER projects:
- Priority 1: Develop zero-cost OER for a course that previously required a paid textbook (this may include first time experimental pilots to assign OER in place of paid course materials).
- Priority 2: Develop zero-cost OER for supplemental/ancillary teaching and learning materials (e.g., study guides, review modules, lessons, discussion questions, class activities, lecture outlines, writing assignments).
- Priority 3: Make substantive updates to already assigned zero-cost OER (must be openly licensed materials authored by the applicant or another scholar).
- Priority 4: Develop zero-cost OER for a course with a recommended text but that does not require paid materials.

Faculty eligibility:

Full-time faculty that coordinate or regularly teach at least one section of a course, and have consulted with course / discipline coordinator and department chair.
Part-time faculty on 1-3 year re-appointments, with the approval of course / discipline coordinator and department chair.

Note: there is potential for multiple faculty to collaborate on creating a zero-cost O.E.R.

Faculty commitments / compensation:
- Faculty compensation will include project work and faculty development training: faculty stipends typically range from $1,300 – $5,000 (and a minimum of $500) depending on scope of work, and calculated on the average non-teaching adjunct hourly rate.
- Faculty professional development will be conducted online / via Zoom.
- Project work must be completed during the 2022-2023 academic year. For reference, the latest deadline for large-scope projects is June 15, 2023.

Please fill out a project proposal application by Thursday, September 15th, 2022. If you have any questions or things you’d like to discuss, please get in touch with OER Librarian, Cailean Cooney (ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu) or Interim Chief Librarian, Anne Leonard (aleonard@citytech.cuny.edu).

Download a PDF version of this call.

To qualify as zero-cost OER, faculty can select course materials that are:

Open educational resources that are Creative Commons (openly) licensed, including but not limited to open textbooks
Public domain materials
Freely available web resources that do not violate copyright
Library-licensed digital resources, including articles and ebooks

March 18, 2020

Some academic & research publishers remove access restrictions amidst COVID-19

We’re sharing a list of publishers and academic resources that have removed restrictions in order for the greater public to access important resources during the pandemic. Note that many of these are temporary lifts on access restrictions. We’ll keep updating the list as needed.

Update 3.25: Prof. Kim Abrams has created a research guide highlighting resources that have expanded access during the health emergency.

Presses

Cambridge University Press is offering free, online access to higher education textbooks and coronavirus research during the COVID-19 outbreak. Free access is available until the end of May 2020. Students in the United States will also be able to access free e-book versions of Press textbooks through VitalSource
Duke University Press Syllabi offers curated books and journal articles by subject
University of Michigan Press will make all content in the University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection (UMP EBC) free-to-read for the remainder of the academic term

STEM & Coronavirus related / adjacent research

Annual Reviews is making content available through April 30, 2020
MIT Press is offering articles relevant to COVID-19 through April 30, 2020
The Royal Society Publishing has made relevant research and data open which comprises some papers likely to be relevant to the COVID-19 outbreak

Curriculum – free, no account necessary (last time we checked!)

JoVE offers FREE ACCESS to extensive STEM education video library through June 15
Massolit Over 2,800 short curriculum relevant video lectures covering English Literature, History, Classics, Psychology, Philosophy, and Government and Politics. Free access is available until 30 April 2020

August 24, 2018

Apply now! Open Educational Resources (OER) Fellowship: Fall 2018

The Library seeks applicants for the Fall 2018 Open Educational Resources (OER) Fellowship. Full-time and part-time faculty are eligible to apply with their chair’s approval.
Participants will curate a zero-cost OER to replace the existing course material in a course to be taught next Spring. In order to be considered zero-cost OER, the course section you teach must assign freely available web resources and openly licensed materials; inclusion of library licensed digital resources is also recommended.
Program Information:
Faculty accepted to the fellowship will participate in a series of 4 seminars on Fridays this fall (see dates below), complete the OER in January, and pilot the OER as the only required course material in their spring 2019 course.
Seminars will cover:

An introduction to open educational resources
Copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons licensing
Searching and selecting OER and zero-cost course materials
Creating an OpenLab site
Strategies to organize course materials for accessibility

Requirements:

Participation in each of the following two hour professional development programs:
- 10 a.m – 12 p.m. Friday, September 28
- 10 a.m – 12 p.m. Friday, October 5
- 10 a.m – 12 p.m. Friday, October 19
- Additional Friday working session in November, TBA
Curate OER and post on a public OpenLab site – due no later than January 9, 2019
Teach with the OER in at least 1 course section in Spring 2019 semester
Submit a brief written assessment of the experience in May 2019
Submit your course outline and / or syllabus to Academic Works, CUNY’s institutional repository

Payment:
Faculty will be compensated at or above $1,300 for full participation in the OER Fellowship.
Apply:
Review program guidelines and submit your application online at https://LibGuides.citytech.cuny.edu/OER/program – due Tuesday, September 4th.*
*Before submitting an application, please consult with your Department Chair (and a course coordinator, if applicable) for approval to 1) develop an OER for the course you propose; 2) teach with the OER in Spring 2019.

February 6, 2018

Scaling up with OER at City Tech

Let’s take a look at some recent activity surrounding OER (Open Educational Resources) here at City Tech.
CityTech is participating in the $4 million CUNY-wide OER Grant funded by New York State – we received the second highest award across CUNY! This program supports faculty in building their own OER-based curriculum: over this academic year, 24 courses are being converted to OER on a variety of topics – Africana Folklore, General Biology Lecture and Labs, Macro/Microeconomics, and more. Faculty participating in the initiative represent 15 departments across all three schools. We anticipate at least 7,000 students will be impacted by this move to zero-cost course materials. That’s nearly half of the CityTech’s FTE enrollment – now able to continue their studies without worrying about textbook costs for these classes.
The grant has provided us with the resources to continue the Library’s OER Fellowship program – now running in both the Spring and Fall terms – funding faculty to create custom OER courses. We’re also providing funding incentives for part-time and full-time faculty to adopt existing zero-cost course / OER materials vetted and in use across the country. We’ve also amplified our programming around best practices for universal design: check out this quick guide to accessibility on the OpenLab by our instructional design specialist, Bree Zuckerman, and this introductory usability module by Prof. Junior Tidal.
Browse the list of OER courses created through the Fellowship program and view OERs contributed by City Tech faculty in Academic Works, our institutional repository. To learn more about zero-cost course materials available in your discipline, check out the OER Resource Guide. And if you’re interested in creating a new OER, check out the OER Fellowship website.
Want to get involved? Reach out to Prof. Cailean Cooney, OER Librarian at ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu.
–Profs. Bakaitis & Cooney

November 1, 2017

Call for applicants– Spring OER Fellowships

The City Tech Library is pleased to announce its call for applicants to the Spring 2018 Open Educational Resources (OER) Fellowship.

About the OER Fellowship:
Approaching its fourth year, the fellowship funds faculty to curate an OER to replace a textbook as the ONLY required material in a course they teach.
Faculty accepted for the fellowship will participate in a series of 4 seminars this coming spring (February & March), complete the OER in June, and pilot the OER as the only required course material in their fall course.
Fellowship Requirements:
–Active participation in faculty development seminars (Spring 2018)
–Submit the finished OER, housed on an OpenLab site (June 2018)
–Teach with the OER in at least 1 section and coordinate with department to expand adoption (Fall 2018)
–Present in a faculty panel to report on classroom adoption (mid Fall 2018)
–Submit a brief written assessment of the experience (January 2019)
*Before applying, please review your proposal with your Department Chair for approval to 1) develop an OER for the course you propose; 2) teach with the OER next Fall 2018.
Payment:
Faculty will be compensated at or above $1,300 for full participation in the OER Fellowship.
Apply:
Review program guidelines and submit your application online at http://cityte.ch/oerfellowship – due Wednesday, November 15th, 11:59 p.m. EST.
Questions?
Contact Cailean Cooney, Assistant Professor / OER Librarian at ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu
Faculty will be notified of acceptance in early December.

September 6, 2017

Position: Part-time Instructional Design Assistant

The New York City College of Technology Library (https://library.citytech.cuny.edu/) is seeking an individual to work closely with the OER Librarian and a team assembled to support the College’s open education initiatives in coordination with the New York State grant to scale up OER at CUNY during academic year 2017-2018.
Duties include:

Consult with grant participants on developing instructional design strategies and best practices when creating OERs for their courses
Support faculty to evaluate OER course content from a user-centered perspective
Develop online resources and tools to support instructional design with OER
Assist in coordination of professional development opportunities for grant participants through general education programs at City Tech including Reading Across the Disciplines (READ), Quantitative Reasoning Across the Curriculum, and Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)
Research technologies that can be used to develop and support active learning, reading, and various literacies through OERs

Send a CV and cover letter detailing relevant experience to: ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu. Please note if you have any current employment within the CUNY system or for the Research Foundation of CUNY.
This position is funded through June 2018.
Flexible schedule during business hours
14 hrs per week
$34.62 / hour – adjunct CLT series

August 30, 2017

Position: Part-Time OER Program Assistant

The New York City College of Technology Library is seeking an individual to work with the OER Librarian in support of the College’s open education initiatives and the New York State grant CUNY recently received to scale up OER across the university. This is a great opportunity for close engagement with an emerging trend in the profession and throughout higher education.
Duties include:

Assist with administrative program support: create schedules, maintain budget records, work on program logistics
Collect data in support of program assessment and external reporting
Assist with outreach and promotion strategy across the college
Assist with identifying resources to support of OER creation/adoption
Assist with identifying resources to support student engagement with open educational resources
Assist with identifying discipline specific OERs
Follow developments and trends in open education and open educational resources

Qualifications:

Excellent writing/copy editing skills and verbal communication
Excellent organizational, problem solving, and time management skills
Motivated and flexible in self-directed and collaborative environments
Experience with HTML, WordPress, Google Drive
Competency with a variety of multimodal platforms

Additional preferred skills:

An interest in pedagogy and academic/school librarianship
Proficiency with LibGuides and Adobe Creative Suite

Send a CV and cover letter detailing relevant experience to: ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu with the subject line “OER Program Assistant.”
This position is funded through June 2018.
Flexible schedule during business hours
18 hrs per week
$28 per hour

June 26, 2017

ILL service 6/30-7/16

Interlibrary loan service interruption June 30 – July 16
If you request an ILL item between June 30 and July 16 it will wait in the queue until our ILL staff return on July 17th at which point it will be requested from another library. Apologies for the delay during this period.
Note this will NOT affect your ability to retrieve an ILL book that was requested on or before June 29th.
Patrons will still be notified via email when their ILL book has arrived and can pickup and return ILL books at the Circulation Desk per usual during this period.
Thank you.

May 2, 2017

Dibner Library at NYU-Poly restricts access thru May 16

The Dibner Library at NYU-Poly will be closed to patrons other than NYU-Poly students and faculty during the final exam period: Mon. May – Tues. May 16.
City Tech Library’s membership in ALB (Academic Libraries of Brooklyn) permits access to participating member libraries around Brooklyn, and any current City Tech student, faculty or staff member may obtain an ALB card at our library’s circulation desk. Have more questions about ALB? Post a comment here, or ask a reference librarian!

Author: Cailean Cooney