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Published January 27, 2025
University of Wyoming Libraries recently awarded eight faculty members alternative textbook grants to implement open educational resources (OER) in their classes this spring and upcoming fall semester.
The open course materials and textbooks resulting from the grants are projected to save more than 225 UW students more than $49,000 per semester. Grants are awarded to instructors who adopt, adapt or create new open textbooks or other course learning materials.
“We are excited to create an interdisciplinary textbook for our ‘Secondary Methods’ students to use in the UW School of Teacher Education,” says Ann Perry, an assistant professor in the School of Teacher Education. “Not only will this ease the financial burden for our preservice teachers, but it also will enable us to address aspects of secondary mathematics and social studies teaching that are often left out of traditional methods texts. We look forward to working with community partners, such as the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and Wyoming tribal nation elders, to create a text focused on equity-centered pedagogy. This text will provide our students with guidelines and examples for incorporating the Indian Education for All state standards and Indigenous Funds of Knowledge into their everyday practice.”
The grant recipients are:
College of Arts and Sciences
-- Matt Gray, a professor in the Department of Psychology. Gray teaches “Death and Dying,” will design and adapt a textbook from open-access articles and books, and will develop some custom content to create an interdisciplinary psychology and sociology-based textbook. The book will be published on the UW Libraries’ open educational resources publishing platform, Pressbooks.
-- Tiger Robinson, an associate professor in the Department of Music. Robinson teaches “Aural Theory IV” and will create an improvisational textbook. The book will be published via UW Libraries Pressbooks and feature multimodal content, including videos.
-- Rebecca Steele, an associate professor, and Stephanie Schottel, an adjunct instructor, both in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages. Steele and Schottel received funding to create Austrian versions of previously funded alternative textbook grant projects for “First Year German I & II.” Another grant was awarded to create new content for “Second Year German II.” All content will be published on the Pressbooks platform, and the entire German language sequence will be taught from open educational resources after implementation of these grant projects.
College of Education
-- Miriam Sanders, an assistant professor, and Perry, both in the School of Teacher Education. Sanders and Perry teach “Secondary Mathematics Education” and “Secondary Social Studies Education,” and will create a new textbook titled “Secondary Mathematics and Social Studies Methods: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy” and publish the book on the UW Libraries Pressbooks platform. The text will integrate content to support HB76 and Indian Education for All, including feedback from tribal members, interviews with tribal elders and commentary from teacher educators.
College of Health Sciences
-- Elanor Gulick, an assistant professor in the Division of Communication Disorders. Gulick teaches “Dysphagia” and will create a set of training modules for graduate students. This will replace a paid training module with a free, open-source version.
-- Ashley Lair, an assistant lecturer in the School of Nursing. Lair teaches “Professional Nursing Care of Acute and Chronic Illness” and “Professional Nursing Care of Complex Illness” and will adopt “Medical-Surgical Nursing,” an OpenStax book.
UW Libraries will award another round of grants this spring for implementation in the summer and fall semesters. Grant awards will range from $2,500 to $5,000. Interested applicants are required to attend the “OER 101” workshop Wednesday, March 5, before submitting grant applications. Proposals will be evaluated on a number of categories outlined in the scoring rubric developed by members of UW Libraries’ OER Committee. Proposals are due Friday, March 28.
For more information, email Shannon Smith at shannon.smith@uwyo.edu or visit www.uwyo.edu/oer.
Contact Us
Institutional Communications
Bureau of Mines Building, Room 137
Laramie, WY 82071
Phone: (307) 766-2929
Email: cbaldwin@uwyo.edu