The OER Grant program provides faculty, adjuncts, and staff an opportunity to revise their WSU courses to utilize OER. The call for applications occurs from October to November each year. Different applications are available based on the scope of your project, information for each is available below. For any questions about the grant or OER contact us at oer@weber.edu.
OER Grants 2025 - Applications Open
- Applications will be due November 22, 2024.
- Recipient projects have a completion deadline of December 5, 2025.
Please note, that beginning 2024 all OER Grants require that:
- Resources adopted, modified, or created must carry an open license. For support to revise courses using non-OER, no-cost options contact us at oer@weber.edu.
- Recipients meet with an instructional designer early in their project in order to ensure the final project meets university accessibility guidelines. Grant staff will help coordinate initial meetings after recipients are selected.
Preparing your application
Different grant applications will require different information, but in general you will need the following prepared:
- Name, contact info, and department for all participants.
- Course name and abbreviation for the modified course(s), along with the average annual enrollment and sections taught or impacted.
- Project summary that includes:
- Motivators behind the project.
- Detailed budget breakdown and funding rationale.
- Outline of an anticipated timeline, including an expected implementation semester and any milestones throughout the project.
- How the new resources will improve your course and support course learning objectives.
- A letter of support for your project, signed by your Dean or Department Head.
Preference will be given to applications that show some or all of the following:
- Potential to reduce student expenses, such as replacing a high cost textbook or the impact on a large number of students in high enrollment courses.
- Feasibility to meet your project deadline. Grant funds are released upon completion of the proposed project. Depending on the scope of the proposed project you may request that funding be released over the course of the project to match completion of milestones noted in the project summary.
- How projects will contribute to the open education community, such as through creation in Pressbooks or by filling a gap in available open course materials for a given subject.
- Project impacts required general education courses and/or to courses selecting OER as their primary text.
- Applicants that have not received an OER Grant in the past.
Applications
Typical Adopt projects may involve: selecting and adopting existing OER content that doesn't need any modification, or very mild modification such as migrating resources into Pressbooks, and modifying your course to utilize the adopted OER.
Maximum Funding – $1,000 per course
Typical Adapt projects may involve: selecting one or multiple existing OER and performing moderate modification, such as updating, adding to, or combining content, and modifying your course to utilize the adapted OER.
Maximum Funding – $2,000 per course
Typical Create projects may involve: extensively modifying one or multiple existing OER to create a new resource or create an OER from scratch, and modifying your course to utilize the created OER.
Maximum Funding – Varies by scope
- $3,000 for extensive modification.
- $5,000 for creating an OER from scratch.
- Up to $20,000 for group projects with high impact on multiple courses/sections or impact on high enrollment general education courses. $5,000 per individual cap in large group projects.
Typical Maintenance projects may involve: significantly modifying or updating an OER resource you have taught with in the past to ensure it remains current or to improve the resource based on experience and feedback. This can be for an OER you previously adopted or adapted (license permitting) or that you created yourself.
Maximum Funding – $1,500 per course
The Research Grant is intended for individual recipients that will be searching for existing open resources in your field. Recipients will be expected to complete the OER Basics course in Bridge, spend time searching and evaluating existing OER, and submit a report based on their findings. There is no commitment to using discovered OER. Priority will be given to applicants that have not received the grant in the past.
Maximum Funding – $350