OER at City Tech

Author: Cailean Cooney (Page 1 of 4)

Call for Applicants to the OER Fellowship, AY 23-24

Dear City Tech Faculty,

The Library seeks applicants for the Open Educational Resources (OER) Fellowship. Begun in 2015, this funded program runs in conjunction with the CUNY-wide initiative funded by New York state to “engage faculty in the redesign of courses through the replacement of proprietary textbooks with open educational resources to reduce costs for students, accelerate their progress, and better connect curriculum and pedagogy to student learning outcomes.” 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 faculty new and returning to the OER Fellowship. Projects may be proposed at various stages of progress, such as substantive expansions and/or revisions of existing OER.

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 applying to the OER Fellowship

Projects that incorporate active learning methods, take a student-centered approach, and address underrepresented and multidisciplinary subject areas are encouraged. 

Course selection:

We encourage prioritizing OER for 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.

Types of OER projects that may be funded:

  • 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).
  • Zero-cost OER for a course with a recommended text that does not require paid materials.
  • 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).
  • Substantive updates to already assigned zero-cost OER (must be openly licensed materials authored by the applicant or another scholar).

Faculty Eligibility and OER Fellowship Requirements

Eligibility

  1. 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.
  2. Part-time faculty on 1-3 year re-appointments, with the approval of course / discipline coordinator and department chair.

Requirements

  • Active participation in an intentional community of practice among college peers. Fellows will participate in seven mandatory synchronous zoom meetings held on Fridays throughout the year (3 in fall; 4 in spring).
  • Learning materials created/compiled through this project must be Creative Commons licensed (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA), public domain, library digital resources, or freely available to link to without violating copyright
  • Finished projects must be shared publicly via an OpenLab site or other CUNY supported public platform (Pressbooks, Manifold)
  • Project work must be completed during the 2023-2024 academic year. All participants must complete their projects by June 15, 2024. 

Funding Information

Faculty compensation will include project work and faculty development training. Faculty will be paid for participating in 14 hours of professional development meetings (at adjunct hourly NTA rate). In addition to this, faculty stipends for OER projects typically range from $1,300 – $5,000, depending on scope of work, and are also calculated at the average non-teaching adjunct hourly rate.

Apply online by Tuesday, September 12th, 2023. 

Faculty interested in proposing projects that may be outside the scope of this opportunity are encouraged to get in contact with Cailean Cooney promptly to explore whether the OER initiative can support your work this academic year. 

Other 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). 

Check out our website at Open Educational Resources at City Tech.

View and download a PDF version of this call.

Open Educational Resources Faculty Reading List

This is a special themed spinoff to our monthly New and Noteworthy posts.

This month we are sharing a curated list of OER related resources, commentary, and scholarship that may be of interest and even essential to faculty working with OER. Selections include some grounding texts, discussions of pedagogy and OER, access and equity, OER and policy, critiques of OER, and resources to connect faculty with research related to OER. All are openly licensed.

  • The OER Starter Kit Workbook, by Abby Elder and Stacy Katz, Manifold Press. (2020). License: CC BY
    Authors created this workbook to complement the OER Starter Kit. This is an organized and easy to follow text; useful for beginners and a good reference tool. It also includes a compilation of useful worksheets one can adopt.
  • A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students, edited by Elizabeth Mays, Rebus Community, 2017. License: CC BY
    “A handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other Open Educational Resources.”
  • Accessibility Toolkit (2nd edition), by Amanda Coolidge, Sue Doner, Tara Robertson, and Josie Gray, BCCampus. (2018). License: CC BY
    A step-by-step toolkit for faculty, instructional designers, educational technologists, librarians, administrators, to create open textbooks that are accessible for all users.
  • Open Education and policy via the SPARC website (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). Site license: CC BY
    “SPARC is a non-profit advocacy organization that supports systems for research and education that are open by default and equitable by design.” Part of this organization’s agenda touches on open education and political advocacy on a national and global level. Their website is a useful resource to explore some of the projects they advance: including Automatic Textbook Billing Contract Library, SPARC’s resource to help institutions examine the fine print behind “inclusive access” programs and the OER State Policy Resources, an OER State Policy Tracker.
  • Open education: walking a critical path by Catherin Cronin. (2020). License: CC BY. Chapter in Open(ing) Education: Theory and Practice, published by Brill.
    “This chapter explores justifications for and movements toward critical approaches to open education.”
  • Open Research with the OER Hub Researcher Pack by Bea de los Arcos, Rob Farrow, Beck Pitt and Martin Weller, from the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University (OU) in the United Kingdom. (2016). License: CC BY-SA
    Resources for conducting research into the impact of open educational resources (OER) or open education.

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:
  1. 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.
  2. 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:

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