Two Open Educational Resources (OER) Grants Awarded for Spring 2023

Professors Chris Ruebeck and Sun You have received grants under the Libraries’ OER & Textbook Affordability Initiative. These grants will incentivize Professors Ruebeck and You to keep student costs for course materials at zero.

Professor Ruebeck received an implementation grant for ECON 101. Prof. Ruebeck will be replacing the textbook he previously used for this intro-level course with CORE (Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics) Econ. CORE Econ is based on a free textbook and includes a suite of supplementary resources such as problem sets, visualizations, and a glossary of terms. The text attempts to highlight “the most important problems faced by our societies including climate change, injustice, innovation and the future of work.”

Professor You received grants for ART 114 – Beginning Painting and ART 218 – Intermediate Painting. Instead of the two textbooks previously assigned in each course, Professor You will be redesigning the courses around a combination of journal articles and chapters from books owned by the Libraries and freely available online videos.

Students in these courses will benefit not only from the cost savings realized, but in having greater flexibility and accessibility to their course materials. Any instructor interested in designing their course using Open Educational Resources, or learning more about the grant initiative, should contact Ben Jahre <jahreb@lafayette.edu>.