International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 208

International Journal of Open Educational Resources
As previously mentioned, prior
to the development of the FLC,
OER-related library support was largely
limited to general OER instruction
and referral to the library’s LibGuide.
By contrast, the main takeaway of the
Fall 2018 FLC was to facilitate discovery
of OERs that would meet the specific
learning objectives of participating
faculty members’ courses and the ALG
grant requirements. As part of their
training through ALG, Champions are
instructed on the rubric ALG uses to
review all grant proposals. Proposals
must include an outline for delivery,
accessibility, and assessment of course
learning objectives and students’ reactions
to the course materials. With this
training, Champions are prepared to
help faculty develop proposals that are
well paced and achievable within ALG’s
required timeline for implementation.
At the completion of the FLC,
two teams of Chemistry faculty felt confident
enough to submit proposals for
one of ALG’s textbook transformation
grants. The proposal was due December
2018, and neither group was awarded
funding. However, reviewer feedback
made clear that both proposals required
only minor revisions to be successful.
With encouragement from the Champion
and CTE personnel, both teams
resubmitted in Spring 2019 and received
full funding. ALG provides a full
year for faculty to implement their plan
and begin utilizing the OER materials
within the designated course.
From Grant to Implementation:
Evolving Library Support
Beginning in Summer 2019, the
Champion has continued work
with one of these teams as the
faculty have transitioned from the grant
application process to OER development
and implementation. The team
is developing an online textbook for a
specialized Chemistry course required
of all first-year Engineering majors. A
significant issue with the current proprietary
textbook is that none of the
included examples or problem sets is
engineering-related, and so it fails to
engage the students. To address this, the
team has elected to adapt the OpenStax
Chemistry 2e textbook for the course.
The OpenStax text is similar in content
and organization to the current textbook
and has received positive reviews
from other faculty in the USG system,
and the team feels that they can successfully
adapt it to an engineering audience
without disrupting their teaching style.
While the faculty will need to update
examples and problem sets over time,
adapting this text means that the team
does not need to start from scratch.
While electing to adapt the
OpenStax text has reduced the need
to originate new content, this plan has
raised platform hosting and delivery
challenges not fully anticipated during
the FLC or grant funding process.
Namely, the faculty require the ability
to migrate, host, and revise this text,
and they need a platform that will allow
them and future instructors to update
the text without specialized plat-
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