ideas for applying for funding?

[Anne Marie Gruber]

Iowa OER colleagues,

I have the opportunity to apply for my institution's student technology fee funding, and I'm hoping you can help me brainstorm some options that would support OER work. It must be student-facing, ie. primarily benefit students directly. I'm happy to talk numbers individually.

My initial inclination is to apply for funds to purchase unlimited-user ebook licenses for some key course materials to replace the need for students to individually purchase them; however, when trying to list some potential titles in the past, there were usually not unlimited ebooks available from publishers. I do have access to public-facing Bookstore data for current courses, as well as syllabi for all undergraduate courses, so I could check those, but only through fairly manual processes.

I can't propose something like student textbook scholarships since those are already provided elsewhere on campus through Bookstore funding, and we can't propose ongoing costs. The committee will consider proposals for computers, networking, software, electronic resources, and audio-visual hardware. We already have an OER publishing infrastructure and Manifold software through our OEN membership (as do all of your institutions), so we don't need to pay for things like that. Faculty stipends are not possible to fund through this source.

Proposals are evaluated by a library committee, including a student, because the funds being disbursed are from the library's portion of the overall student technology fee money. I am fairly confident in connecting anything I propose to the library's strategic plan.

Thank you for any ideas!

AM

--

Anne Marie H. Gruber (she/her)

Liaison & Textbook Equity Librarian

Professor of Library Services

University of Northern Iowa, Rod Library

319-273-3711  /  anne....@uni.edu

LIB 381  /  Cedar Falls, IA 50614

Students, meet with me:  https://uni.libcal.com/appointments/AMG
Free/affordable textbooks: https://guides.lib.uni.edu/oer

I can help you & your students share your work under flexible usage rights.

[Abbey Elder]

Thanks for asking, Anne Marie!

We've done a similar proposal before at ISU, but we were able to use the funds for grants, so the funding went toward an extra two projects that would not have otherwise been able to be funded by our OER grants that year. 

Since you cannot do that, alternatives might be: 

• Supporting 1 or more student assistants for your OER efforts (either as editors for OER publications, to help identify OER for faculty consults, or set up base books in Manifold for authors).
• As you noted, purchasing unlimited user ebooks is an option, though identifying the courses ahead of time and getting faculty buy-in will be a necessity to verify that they'll use the same book for a few years, and that the book(s) are purchase-able.
• If you don't already have one, a small one-button studio in a pre-existing library space can be a (relatively) affordable use of funding, to provide the means for both faculty and students to develop multimedia projects. It benefits students and helps faculty get access to resources to develop higher quality lecture videos, which could be shared as OER or embedded in an open textbook. 
• Similarly on the software front, a license for captioning software or other accessibility tools that could be integrated into your OER publishing workflows would be good, as a direct benefit to students, your program, and the faculty who would have access to it. 

That's all I have for ideas, but hopefully others will reply soon!

Abbey K. Elder

Open Education Services Librarian

Iowa State University