Open Educational Resources: Faculty OER Incentive Program

Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program

The high-cost of textbooks is one of the factors that affects student learning outcomes and student success.  Students avoid certain classes, drop a class, or do poorly when they cannot afford the text for a course.  Students at UIC expressed their concern over the costs of textbooks and asked the Faculty Senate to consider a USG (Undergraduate Student Government) resolution to encourage faculty to choose alternative options for course materials.  The UIC Faculty Senate endorsed the use of open education materials, when possible.

The Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program supports undergraduate students by creating incentives for teaching faculty to use alternative lower-cost educational materials rather than high-cost textbooks.  This may include the adoption or adaption of existing OER materials.  If needed, it will support the creation of new Open Educational Resources (OER) to fill in gaps of your adopted / adapted OER materials.

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use.  Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource—anytime, anywhere.” (https://sparcopen.org/open-education)

Sponsored by the Provost and the University Library, a fund of $20,000 will be available annually, to faculty teaching undergraduates.  

Interested faculty will be required to submit a proposal.

• OER/ Textbook Alternatives eligible for funding
• Components of Proposal
• Deliverables and Timelines

1. Proposals will be submitted in one of two tiers:
   • Tier 1 (Adopt)
     • Individual faculty members incorporate an existing open textbook into their course ($500.00 award)
     • Multi-section course teams who adopt an existing open textbook(s) for use in multi-section courses (must be three or more sections) ($1,000 award)

• Tier 2 (Modify)
  • Individual faculty members incorporate portions of multiple existing open textbooks, along with: other freely available educational resources, modifications of existing open education materials/ textbook, or development of new open education materials.  Materials available through the library’s collections* may also be included but material used should be minimal.  ($2,000 award)
  • Multi-section course teams of at least two instructors who adopt and modify an open educational resources/ textbook for use in all sections of the course.  ($2,000 award)
• Tier 3 (Create)
  • Individual faculty members write new openly licensed textbooks. (Up to $6,000)
  • Multi-section course teams of at least two instructors write new openly licensed textbooks. (Up to $6,000)

OER Awards will be transferred from the Library to a department CFOP.

An optional workshop on OER Basics will be available for faculty who want to learn more about OER.   

*Note about use of the Library's Collections: The library will not purchase new resources for this incentive program.   If you intend to use existing library collections, please check with your liaison librarian to make sure the number of users licensed for the library resource is adequately licensed for the class. The library occasionally purchases one copy of an e-book, but does not typically license multiple copies.  Library materials use must also fall within Fair Use.  

Open Textbook Review Incentive

Reviews help faculty to decide if adopting open educational resources is right for their course. Up to $2000 will be available for faculty to review Open Textbooks from the Open Textbook Library. $200 will be offered for each review. The allocated money is available on a first come first serve basis. Faculty will provide a concise review of the textbook based on the following criteria: comprehensiveness, content accuracy, relevance, clarity, consistency, modularity, organization, interface, grammatical errors, and cultural relevance. The review will be posted on the Open Textbook Library under an open license. An optional workshop on OER Basics will be available for faculty who want to learn more about OER before writing a review.

OER Awards will be transferred from the Library to a department CFOP.

Funds for reviewing open textbooks are available throughout 2021 on a first come first serve basis. If you are interested in reviewing an open textbook, please fill out this form.