Faculty Mini-Grants

CSU Pueblo aims to provide its students with free and low-cost textbooks and other educational resources while advancing student learning and supporting faculty academic freedom. The university’s OER program seeks proposals from CSU Pueblo instructors for projects in support of open education and reducing the cost to students of educational resources. These mini-grants are funded out of a $45,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Higher Education; individual mini-grant amounts will be determined by the CSU Pueblo OER committee.

• Adopt - Redesign your course to incorporate an existing open textbook, software platform, or open course content
• Adapt – Revise or expand open textbooks or create supplemental course content like quiz question banks, customized interactive teaching tools, or manuals to bridge gaps in existing resources
• Create – Create a new open textbook or open course if existing open resources are not available
• Other – Propose an open educational resource project or timeline not covered by the categories above

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis – please get your proposal to the OER committee as soon as you are able.

For adoption and adaptation projects, the support is typically in the range $500-1,000.  Amounts for creation and other projects are often more, but vary widely depending upon the proposed activities.

Applications are welcome from all CSU Pueblo instructors. Applications are particularly (but not exclusively) sought for general education courses and high enrollment courses.

1. Identify the open educational resources that you will use as your starting point in the project, or explain how existing resources are not suitable for your learning objectives. The Library OER Guide lists several places to find open textbooks and courseware.
2. Identify what types of support you will need for your project (librarians, accessibility services, technical support, bookstore, copy editors, peer reviewers, illustrators).
3. Identify potential collaborators or future adopters in your department or elsewhere.
4. Complete the attached application form including a budget justification.

1. Work with the OER grant committee to develop a timeline of deliverables, payment schedule, accessibility review, and assessment plan of student satisfaction and performance.
2. Assign an appropriate open license to your work and place it in the CSU Pueblo Digital Repository so others can easily adapt and reuse. Usually, CC-BY licenses (unless a more restrictive CC license such as CC-BY-NC is required by a work upon which you are building) are recommended for textual resources, while software can be licensed under a variety of open licenses such as GPLv3, Apache, etc.
3. Produce a final report of your experiences that reflects on student feedback, challenges faced, lessons learned, and future plans.

1. Student savings compared to dollars spent on traditional textbook
2. Quality considerations such as accessibility of proposed content, support for user experience and curriculum, appeal for future adoption in other settings, and demonstrated need to create new rather than reuse (if applicable)
3. Feasibility of project as proposed

• Rhonda Gonzales
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