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Open Educational Resources and Zero Textbook Cost

How to find and use Open Educational Resources

Call for Participants: OER Winter Intensive 2025

Paid Professional Development Opportunity: Open Educational Resources Winter Intensive 

Apply today to develop an openly licensed syllabus for a zero-textbook-cost through a funded, week-long intensive introduction to Open Educational Resources. Participants receive $2,000 compensation. Applications due December 19. 

Apply today 

Nearly forty percent of CUNY students come from households with annual incomes of less than $20,000. For many of our students, the cost of textbooks can be a steep barrier to academic success. Students often choose not to register for courses that require expensive textbooks, or fail courses simply because they cannot afford the materials. These patterns can lead to increased enrollment time and reduced rates of degree completion. 

You can help! Queens College faculty have saved our students over $2 million in textbook fees since 2018 by using Open Educational Resources, or OER. Learn more about OER. 

This winter intersession, the Queens College Library is pleased to offer an accelerated OER Fellowship Program. Through this program, held over four 90-minute remote seminar sessions January 14-17, OER Fellows learn the fundamental principles of OER and open pedagogy, develop technical skills to create and curate accessible course content, organize cohesive and coherent materials tied to overarching learning objectives, and apply rigorous assessment standards to identify existing resources for classroom use. 

Faculty Fellows receive $2,000 in compensation. 

Faculty Fellows commit to: 

  • Participate in four 90-minute remote workshops January 14-17 
  • Provide the pre-conversion syllabus to OER Coordinator Leila Walker as part of the application process 
  • Teach at least one section of the OER or ZTC course in Spring 2025 or Fall 2025 
  • Label the converted course’s syllabus as a Zero Textbook Course, ZTC course, or OER course as appropriate 
  • Mark the course as ZTC in CUNYFirst 
  • Ensure that all original materials, including the syllabus, are openly licensed with creative commons licenses 
  • Upload all original materials to Academic Works if a static document (.docx, .pdf, .pptx, etc) or to opened.cuny.edu if a website by June 15 
  • Ensure that all materials are accessible to all students according to CUNY accessibility standards 

Through the Fellowship program, faculty learn to: 

  • Define and distinguish between open educational resources and zero textbook cost materials 
  • Find and evaluate existing open educational resources 
  • Assemble organized and easily modified syllabi 
  • Navigate intellectual property, fair use, copyright, and Creative Commons licenses 
  • Create accessible resources 
  • Explore the principles and practice of open pedagogy 
  • Enact social justice by reducing economic barriers to student success 

Faculty Fellows make the resources they create openly available for other faculty to adopt, and we are happy to be able to offer modest funding to each faculty member the first time they teach a ZTC section of a course using a Fellow's materials. 

While Fellows responsible for developing course content and selecting OER to adopt and/or adapt, the library faculty can assist with finding OER, answering copyright and licensing questions, and other forms of support, both during and after the summer training sessions. Please direct any questions to Leila Walker at lwalker@qc.cuny.edu. 

Apply today 

Creation of New Materials

In some cases, converting a course to OER is stymied by the lack of available resources. We are pleased to offer incentives and support to faculty to create new openly licensed textbooks in cases where openly licensed resources do not yet exist or are inadequate to the needs of the course.

Selected projects are expected to:

  • Develop an entirely new resource or significantly revise an existing resource
  • Meet with Leila Walker at least twice a semester until the project is completed to provide updates
  • Use an open Creative Commons and meet accessibility standards
  • Make the resource available to colleagues
  • Deposit the completed project to one of CUNY's institutional repositories (Academic Works or OpenED CUNY, depending on the type of resource)

Compensation:

  • Full length textbooks that require the creation of original content for the majority of the text will be awarded between $7500 and $10,000, depending on the scope of the project.
  • Full length textbooks that require the creation of original content for less than half of the text will be awarded between $2500 and $7500, depending on the scope of the project.
  • Projects that are not full length textbooks will be awarded no less than $2500 and no more than $7500 depending on the scope of the project.

Support:

  • New participants are encouraged to participate in four 90-minute, seminar-style workshops
  • Previous Fellows are encouraged to attend one 90-minute refresher

Additional support will be provided as needed.

Collaborative projects are encouraged.