Early Bird

Open Educational Resources opportunities for faculty

Learn about support for educators looking to explore and adopt OER for their courses.

By Emily Ragan, Ph.D.

September 2, 2020

In this difficult time of COVID-19, faculty members are looking for novel ways to support their students and enhance student learning through online education. One of the only ways faculty members directly affect the cost of education for their students is through the required learning materials they select for their courses.

For the past two years, the Metropolitan State University of Denver Open Educational Resources Task Force has been working to raise awareness of free and openly licensed textbooks and other learning materials, collectively known as Open Educational Resources. Through state grant funding, the University can offer support to faculty members looking to explore and adopt OER for their courses in two upcoming ways.

One easy source to learn about and use OER is the Open Textbook Library. Interested faculty members are invited to join the MSU Denver Open Textbook Review workshop Sept. 18 from 2-3:30 p.m. via Teams. Register by the end of the day Sept. 16. Faculty members who are selected to attend the workshop and write a review of an open textbook will receive a $200 stipend (first-time attendees only, please).

Faculty members who are committed to adopting OER for the first time in the spring semester are encouraged to apply for a fall 2020 OER-adoption stipend. Faculty members adopting in high-enrollment, high-cost general-studies or guaranteed-transfer courses are especially encouraged to apply.

Contact Emily Ragan, Ph.D., associate professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, at eragan@msudenver.edu to learn more.