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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 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.
CARLI FACULTY WORKSHOP
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 at 11am
REGISTER AT:
https://illinois.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMod-GqrzojHdKKSpuPA36qkZqtgvwGJBG1
Proposal : The deadline for submission of proposals is January 29, 2021. Proposals will be reviewed by a committee of faculty, librarians and administrators. Selected projects will receive half of the awarded money at the point their project is approved. Textbook adoption/ modification must be in place for the Fall 2021 semester. Email proposals to: OER_inc.fztlcxyxlj8q8b49@u.box.com
Final Report :
The remainder of the awarded money will be provided upon submission of a final report summarizing and evaluating the OER substitution. The final report should include:
Questions
If you have questions, please contact Janet Swatscheno (jswatsc2@uic.edu, 312-355-0824) or use the Ask a Librarian Service
Further Information