Lecturer Madeline Wiseman received an Open Education Resources grant from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Transformative Teaching on Jan. 20.
Wiseman will use the grant to author and adopt open educational resources for students enrolled in Technical Communication II in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Currently, the course requires students to purchase a textbook as the primary educational resource in the class. The cost per student for the textbook is $110.
Wiseman will work with a graduate student and a video production team to develop multimedia course materials that will meet the same learning objectives and provide similar resources for students. The project will be conducted during the spring and summer of 2022 to have the resources available in fall 2022.
These open resources will replace the current textbook and save students $7,872 to $21,120 depending on course enrollment.
Wiseman has undertaken similar projects successfully and developed open educational resources for two additional classes Technical Communication I and Basic Business Communication.
Open Education Resources Grants support UNL instructors who seek to adopt, adapt or create OERs as an alternative to traditional, licensed course materials for use in courses they teach.
The grant committee, which includes partners from Information Technology Services (ITS), University Libraries, and the Center for Transformative Teaching (CTT), facilitates these efforts by selecting instructor-proposed projects and leveraging campus expertise in pedagogy, instructional design, accessibility, copyright, and publishing.
Faculty-led projects are intended to result in use, adaptation and/or creation of OERs, including textbook alternatives, assessment tools and ancillary materials, expanding instructors' options from a pedagogical and course design perspective while decreasing cost for students.