Grant Opportunity for Open Educational Resources

Graduate Center students who teach courses at other CUNY campuses, along with the faculty based at those campuses, may be interested in this $2000 grant opportunity, open to the CUNY community only, to open up a course — transforming it from a course that relies on traditional (paid) course materials to a course that uses only open educational resources (OERs).

Gates Open Educational Resources (OER) Grant Opportunity

This project intends to use OER and personalized learning in the Lumen Waymaker platform in the fall 2017 spring 2018 semesters. If you missed the demonstration, you can request one and/or a recording of the session. Scroll down the Waymaker page for a list of subjects currently available. The grant is structured to compensate faculty leads $2000 to convert their course and help train section faculty to use the platform. Faculty leads must commit to a 1 day training institute over the summer and provide orientation and training information to section instructors as needed. Section instructors will be compensated at their NTA rate for approximately 3 hours of light training and prep work prior to the course running.

This project is part of a larger 3 year research study that will evaluate impact on student success, persistence and retention. Faculty teaching with Waymaker will be expected to provide data for inclusion in the research. The proposed courses should anticipate running 3-5 sections in the fall and spring for a target enrollment of 90-150 students each semester. The grant will cover the student enrollment fee for the duration.

The participation proposal narrative and budget need be no more than 1-2 pages in length, and must include the following sections:

1) DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM PLAN: Describe in detail the course(s) you plan to convert to OER and offer. Courses need to be from one listed on the Waymaker web site. Include information about how you plan to market the program and recruit faculty/adjuncts to participate. Provide details about the course including title, discipline, the number of sections you expect to run in the fall 2017 and spring 2018, any special features, intended outcomes and instructional strategies. Include plans to scale up for the spring 2018 semester.

2) TARGET POPULATION(S): Describe the target population the course is intended to serve — majors, GenEd, STEM, etc. Include plans for recruitment and promoting the OER nature of the course section.

3) ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES: Indicate enrollment targets and strategies to support successful student outcomes.

4) BUDGET REQUEST: Provide a brief itemized budget listing the funds required to offer the course and expand to other sections. [One Faculty Leader and the faculty development costs to pay ___ adjuncts/faculty to attend the training/orienting session, and the anticipated student enrollment for the sections.]

Proposal Deadline and Submission Procedures

Please submit your request no later than April 19th. Proposals should be submitted via email to CUNY’s Open Education Librarian Ann Fiddler (ann.fiddler@cuny.edu).

Final Report

A brief final report summarizing the results of your project, including enrollment totals and student outcomes, will be due no later than 2 weeks after the end of each semester.

We greatly look forward to receiving your proposal to participate.  Feel free to contact Ann Fiddler (ann.fiddler@cuny.edu) with any questions or concerns.

open educational resources image

Image by Leicester City Council, distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

About the Author

Jill Cirasella is the Scholarly Communication Librarian and University Liaison at the CUNY Graduate Center.