Marshall Libraries

Pressbooks OER Development Grant Opportunity

Section 1: Overview

Submit Grant Application here

Purpose, Pressbooks OER Development Grant

The purpose of this grant is to provide financial and non-financial incentives to accelerate the use of OER, via the Pressbooks.pub content creation platform, at Marshall University.

Definition of Open Educational Resources (OER)

OER are textbooks, classroom materials, and other resources that reside in the public domain and/or have been released under an open access license that presents “low or no cost” access. OER may be used, adopted, and redistributed by others with limited or no restrictions (WVHEPC). Creative Commons licensing does not affect copyright but is an efficient way for authors to “pre-permission” their work for use by others.

Overview, Grant Opportunity and Pressbooks

Grant Opportunity

This competitive grant, awarded to individual faculty and faculty teams, will support the development, adoption, and use of open educational resources. Full-time faculty (tenured, tenure-track, and term) are invited to apply for support for OER projects in the form of a $2500 stipend. Adjunct faculty are welcome to apply as long as they obtain support from their Dean.

Pressbooks

Pressbooks is a cloud-based digital content creation platform that both integrates with Blackboard and creates texts publishable to OER repositories including Open Textbook Library (https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks) and OpenStax (https://openstax.org/). The platform is based on WordPress, and is recognized for its user-friendly, accessible, interactive, and web-first books. See below for useful links.

Note that many other tutorials are available on the web. Marshall University will provide grant recipients access to all necessary web creation tools via Pressbooks.pub.

Additional Details, OER Project Grant

  • An OER support liaison will be assigned to each grant recipient.
  • Awardees will be expected to submit progress reports via their OER support liaison throughout the grant period. Specific report dates will be announced along with the grant award.
  • Completed projects must use Marshall University’s Pressbooks subscription to produce the final OER publication.
  • Grant recipients will permit MU to submit their completed ebook/textbook project to the Open Textbook Library for peer- review and possible inclusion in the Open Textbook Library (https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks) with licensing appropriate for sharing within the university community.
  • The grant will be paid out after the open textbook has been published in Pressbooks and submitted to the Open Textbook Library

Project Types

Reuse/Remix a complete OER textbook.

  • Textbook to be completed and ready for submission to Open Textbook Library (https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks) no later than one (1) calendar year after date of grant award.
  • Must include original content. Minimum original content: 40% (which should be 75 or more pages).
  • Ensure that all sources/third-party materials are properly cited and credited.

Author an OER textbook.

  • Textbook to be completed and ready for submission to Open Textbook Library (https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks) no later than one (1) calendar year after date of grant award.
  • Ensure that all sources/third-party materials are properly cited and credited.

Project Benefits

Application Details

  • Applications to be submitted by 11:59 p.m. on September 5, 2023.
  • Completed applications should consist of submission of a CV and Project Narrative (500-750 words).
  • See Section 2 (below) for specifics regarding the Project Narrative.
  • Applications are reviewed by OER Steering Committee.
  • Applicant must use Pressbooks.pub to develop OER materials.
  • Application must be complete, received no later than stated deadline, and include all information requested.
  • Applications must be submitted in the manner requested. Late applications will not be considered, nor will incorrectly submitted applications.

Section 2: Directions, “Project Narrative”

Please submit a PDF document of between 500 and 750 words. Applications should address each of the following four (4) sections:

1. Background

  • Applicant(s)’ job title, department, and appointment type.
  • Applicant(s)’ email and phone contact.

2. OER content, course use, and cost savings

  • Name of course for which OER will be created.
  • Catalog course description.
  • Your personalized course description.
  • Is the course: required for graduation? General education requirement? An elective/other? (Please be specific).
  • Approximately how many students have enrolled in the past two offerings of the course for which OER will be used?
  • What textbook/materials are currently used in the course?
  • What is the approximate cost of the current textbook(s)/course materials?

3. Already existing OER and your proposed text

  • How will your proposed text add to/fill in gaps regarding what already exists in your field?
  • What specific new contributions will your proposed text make?

4. Your interest and expertise

  • Why are you interested in implementing OER?
  • What experience do you have with OER, if at all?
  • What types of OER have you previously used, if any?
  • Please note that OER development/use will require content creation via the Pressbooks online development platform. With that in mind, please explain your familiarity with online content development tools (basic website development, for example, or video creation and any other digital teaching technologies).

Section 3: Decision Criteria

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

Potential impact of proposed open educational resources

  • Project description clearly and convincingly describes the need and how the resource will address that need.
  • The committee will look favorably on proposed open educational resources with large potential impact and/or those for which little or no current competition exists.

Sustainability

  • Strong consideration will be given to projects that demonstrate usefulness of the OER resource beyond its initial implementation.

Student Savings

  • The committee values clear and concrete information of the potential savings to MU students.

Completeness and clarity

  • Please make sure to address all prompts, keeping responses specific, clear, and free of jargon. Additionally, please make sure that Project Narrative stays within specified word count.