OhioLINK has awarded grants to 29 faculty from 19 Ohio colleges in its third round of Affordable Learning Open Course Redesign Grants since March 2022. The program is intended to accelerate faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and remove barriers to use in order to save students’ money. Providing support and assistance for faculty to transition away from commercial textbooks has proved a crucial incentive; 58 faculty have already completed the program.
“Reducing the burden of textbook costs for Ohio students is one of the goals of OhioLINK’s Affordable Learning Ohio,” said OhioLINK Executive Director Amy Pawlowski. “We have focused efforts on identifying how faculty can replace higher-cost commercial textbooks with no-cost resources and have discovered that this kind of targeted support is an important factor.”
The award compensates faculty for participation in a four-week online training course about OER and provides a one-to-one consultation with an OER-specialist librarian to identify OER and/or library resources that could replace commercial texts in their course syllabus. After completing the program, instructors would be able to use at least one open- or library-licensed resource in their courses as early as fall semester 2023.
Congratulations to the following faculty who will receive funding to explore using open and adaptable teaching materials across a wide range of curriculum:
- Andrea Graves, Baldwin Wallace University
- Marathana Prothro, Bluffton University
- Pamela Ecker, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College
- Stani Kantcheva, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College
- Michelle Reyna Nario-Redmond, Hiram College
- Karen Mascolo, Kent State University
- Rekha Sharma, Kent State University
- Mary Step, Kent State University
- Daniel S. Dankovich, Kent State University - East Liverpool
- Patrick Dillon, Kent State University - Stark
- Ana Wetzl, Kent State University - Trumbull
- Denise Lash, Lakeland Community College
- Chris Davidson, Mount Saint Joseph University
- Rebecca Allen, Mount Saint Joseph University
- Megan Schneider Dinnesen, Mount Saint Joseph University
- Travis Green, North Central State College
- Heather Pohlabel, North Central State College
- Christopher Martin, Ohio Dominican University
- Anup Lamichhane, Ohio Northern University
- Kay Halasek, The Ohio State University
- Michelle Arbogast, Owens Community College
- Joseph Abbott, Rhodes State College
- Holly Evinger, Rhodes State College
- Cheryl Kuck, Rhodes State College
- Cristin Ramsey, Rhodes State College
- Monica Slattman, Rhodes State College
- Theresa Benning, Stark State College
- Stephanie Little, Wittenberg University
- Lee Hannah, Wright State University
Response from earlier grantees has been overwhelmingly positive and led many instructors to advocate for teaching with OER with their departments and other faculty on their campuses.
Learn more by visiting OhioLINK’s Affordable Learning Ohio Initiative.
About OhioLINK:
Established in 1992, the Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) is Ohio’s statewide academic library consortium, serving 88 institutions plus the State Library of Ohio. Delivering both IT infrastructure and content negotiation, OhioLINK provides students, researchers, faculty, and staff with access to valuable digital research collections at a fraction of the cost if those collections were purchased by individual institutions. OhioLINK also connects library services, print and digital collections among its member institutions and manages collaborative services aimed at reducing students’ cost of higher education in Ohio, including eTutoring and Affordable Learning. A member of the Ohio Technology Consortium of the Ohio Department of Higher Education, OhioLINK creates a competitive advantage for its member institutions and supports student and researcher success across Ohio. Learn more at ohiolink.edu.
