Libraries at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and the University of Northern Iowa announce a joint funding opportunity for the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER). This program is open to small teams of faculty, graduate students, and staff at any of the three Board of Regents State of Iowa public universities.
The Regents OER Grant Program was recently created via support from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER Fund), which was established in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed by Congress in 2020. The new Regents OER Grant Program will facilitate the development of OER across the three Iowa Regent universities. The grant program supports the growing use of sustainable, affordable course content at the Regent institutions through the development of OER. OER provide teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers and licensed for open use (SPARC, n.d.).
Two types of awards are available through this program. Textbook development grants, in the amount of up to $7,500 per team member, are intended to fund the development of new open textbooks to fill gaps in existing OER coverage within a discipline. Grants for ancillary materials projects will be funded at up to $1,500 per team member for the development of slide presentations, test banks, and/or other support materials to accompany an existing open textbook.
In addition to financial stipends, successful applicants will receive intensive training on OER creation and development. This training will include an OER development “sprint” that will take place in September 2021, at which grantees will have the opportunity to work intensively on their projects over the course of a two-day workshop. In addition, grant recipients will receive support for finding source material, using OER authoring tools, developing content, understanding open licensing, and OER project management before and after the workshop.
More details about the Regents OER Grant Program will be distributed with the call for proposals on June 22, 2021.
Questions about the grant program should be sent to the grant coordinator for each institution, Abbey Elder (Iowa State University), Mahrya Burnett (University of Iowa), and Anne Marie Gruber (University of Northern Iowa).