Scholarly Communications Librarian
Call for proposals
The Arthur Lakes Library is soliciting proposals for grants designed to expand OER and Zero Textbook Courses (ZTC) on campus. OER are freely-accessible materials, such as open textbooks, modules, or homework materials. They are licensed to be shared, used, and modified, as long as proper credit is given.
OER is directly in line with the goals and plan of Mines @ 150, which includes expanding offerings, diversifying delivery, and providing curricula that are financially accessible. OER makes higher education more accessible and equitable.
Do not hesitate to reach out to Seth Vuletich (sethvuletich@mines.edu) with any questions about this grant program or OER in general.
Purpose and process
The Colorado Department of Higher Education has awarded the Colorado School of Mines with funding to develop a local institutional OER incentive program, called Open Mines. There are both pragmatic and principled benefits of OER, including lowering the costs of higher education for our students, increasing the accessibility to higher education, increasing the visibility of work, and allowing coursework to be tailored to the Mines curriculum. The Open Mines program has funded 62 OER projects on campus across 17 departments, saving students approximately $672,000 annually in required and supplemental textbook and course material costs.
The Mines OER Steering Committee will assist awardees by providing the following support:
- Identifying and recommending high-quality OER based on individual course needs
- Consulting on copyright and licensing issues related to OER
- Providing baseline technical support for adapting and creating OER
- Connecting grant recipients to external expertise in this area
- Facilitating dissemination of OER adapted and/or created at Mines
- Assessing the effectiveness and impact of OER implementation
The OER Steering Committee looks forward to reducing the costs of higher education for Mines students and contributing to open pedagogy.
Award Levels
Spearheaded by the Library, Mines was awarded an institutional-level grant to develop a mini-grant program, Open Mines, that incentivizes faculty on campus to adopt materials which result in Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC), as well as support workshops and other outreach efforts. This program will award faculty at two levels:
- $1,000 for faculty utilizing OER as the primary resources in courses result in no direct course material costs to the students
- $750 for faculty using library subscription resources (or some combination of library subscription resources and OER) as the primary resources in courses which result in no direct course material costs to the students