The Arkansas Tech University Zero Textbook Cost/Open Educational Resources (ZTC/OER) Program
OER Grant Opportunities for 2024/2025 Academic Year.
There will be new opportunities this academic year as outlined below.
For more information please contact Sherry Tinerella stinerella@atu.edu or Dr. Theresa Cullen tcullen@atu.edu
Arkansas Tech University’s “Zero Textbook Cost/Open Educational Resources” (ZTC/OER) Program offers faculty extra compensation stipends to encourage moving from high-cost commercially published textbooks to alternative/open educational resources (OER) materials. OER are freely and publicly available teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their
free use and re-purposing by others. ZTC is the designation used to indicate that a course does not require students enrolled in the class to purchase a textbook or required readings. Instead, students may be assigned open educational resources (OER) or other materials that are of no cost to the student such as resources licensed for library use.
- ZTC course sections are those that do not require students to purchase a textbook.
- ZTC designated course sections may include recommended books, library materials, or materials provided at no cost by the instructor.
- Students may be asked to print out materials, if the materials are provided free of charge.
- ZTC designated courses need only be free of cost for textbooks.
- ZTC designated courses may include costs for supplies.
- Any course section meeting this criterion and listed in the schedule of classes is eligible. This includes:
-
- Fully Online – TC sections
- Hybrid – MO sections
- HyFlex – FO sections
- Face-to-Face – Numbered sections
- Course sections (classes) are assigned the ZTC attribute independently.
- Courses may have ZTC designated sections as well as non-ZTC-designated sections, depending on the materials chosen by each section’s instructor.
- Courses that consist of linked sections (e.g., lecture + labs) may have the ZTC designation applied to whichever sections do not require purchase of a book.
- A course may have a ZTC designated lab section, but require a textbook for the lecture section
Stipends
Faculty may apply for the following stipends:
| Involvement Level |
Definition |
Stipend |
| Review |
Writing a review of an OER book according to given guidelines. (Limit 5 reviews per person) |
$200 |
| Adoption |
Using alternative/OER materials “as is” in a course. |
$1000 |
| Adoption Plus |
Using OER materials by remixing, revising, and redistributing supplementing with original content to meet learning objectives. |
$2000 |
| Adaptation |
Using alternative/OER materials and customizing it for your own teaching, resulting in a newly licensed open version of the text. |
$2500 |
Compensation will be given in the following manner:
Review: $200 stipend will be dispersed when the OER book review is submitted and approved.
Adoption: $500 of the stipend will be dispersed when the Course Objective Alignment is completed, submitted, and approved. The other $500 will be dispersed when a summary evaluation reflecting on the alternative/OER use is submitted after teaching with the material for at least one semester.
Adoption Plus: $1,250 of the stipend will be dispersed when the Course Objective Alignment is completed, submitted, and approved. The other $1,250 will be dispersed when a summary evaluation reflecting the alternative/OER use is submitted after teaching with the material for at least one semester.
Adaption: $1000 of the stipend will be dispersed when the Course Objective Alignment is completed, submitted, and approved. The other $1000 will be dispersed when a summary evaluation reflecting on the alternative/OER use is submitted after teaching with the material for at least one semester.
Creation: There will be no offering for an award to create OER in the 2024/2025 academic year.
Selection Criteria
Preference is given to proposal applications that:
- Describe a new implementation of alternative/OER materials in a course
- Serve more students
- Focus on a university, college, or departmental core course
- Will be used in multiple sections of classes
- Replace expensive course materials
Note: Update, Adoption, adaptation, and creation should result in a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) course.
