Affordable Course Content Awards

Project: Create an open textbook

Class: U.S. Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (POLI313)

Project Team: John Aughenbaugh, with Nia Rodgers

Key Features

• Organized by topic, each with a podcast-like audio introduction
• Written overviews providing political, historical, economic, and sociological context
• Condensed Supreme Court decisions, to allow students to focus on the relevant portions of lengthy opinions

Project Updates

• Newly awarded project

Project: Customize/remix an OER

Class: Biological Basis of Behavior (PSYC629)

Project Team: Caroline O. Cobb, with David Chester, Natalie Dautovich, Jared Keeley, and Fantasy Lozada

Key Features

• Creating a comprehensive psychology graduate resource by compiling existing OER
• Project team members represent different psychology program to ensure the resource is applicable to all doctoral students

Project Updates

• Evaluating an open textbook for use 
• Supplementing with articles
• Tested in Fall 2022

Current VCU Impact Level: In use for 1 semester.

Project: Customize/remix an OER

Class: Inquiry and the Craft of Argument (UNIV200)

Project Team: Vicki Pallo and Julianne Guillard, with other Focused Inquiry faculty

Key Features

• Repository to support to support a redesigned UNIV200 course
• Pulling together OER of various formats (E.g. text, multimedia) and original works from faculty
• Aims to be representative of VCU’s diverse student population and faculty expertise
• Hopes to be comprehensive yet leave room for customization of assigned course materials by individual instructors

Project Updates

• Convened UNIV200 textbook update committee
• Working on identifying resources to include
• Investigating platform for use

Current VCU Impact Level: 20,000 Students (reached Spring 2023) and $1.5 million in student savings (reached Spring 2023). In use for 10 semesters.

Project: Create an Open Video Resource

Class: Survey of Art (ARTH104)

Project Team: Rebecca Shields

Key Features

• Video which will highlight African American art history, a topic absent from most art history textbooks
• Partnering with local historical sites to highlight their local findings and expertise
• Exploring the process for partnering with local sites and creating a resource to potentially lay the groundwork for the creation of additional modules.

Project Updates

• Completed filming at Wilton House, focusing on the architectural design (staircase) by enslaved workers
• Working with VCU resources on finalizing the video
• Awarded a 2022 Affordable Course Content Awards spread grant to expand the project by filming similar videos on unrecognized minority creators at additional regional locations

View the OER: Coming soon!

Current VCU Impact Level: 50 Students (reached Spring 2023). In use for 1 semester.

Project: Update of customized open textbook

Class: Foundations of Business (BUSN201)

Project Team: Holly Jackson

Key Features

• Building on a project previous created from four open textbooks specifically for VCU’s Foundations of Business course
• Update of data, links, and images, especially for older content; some original resources are 10+ years old
• Expand chapters to better reflect course structure
• Review content for diversity and accessibility and revise original content, as appropriate

Project Updates

• Using textbook in BUSN201
• Evaluating text for updates
• Working with library staff to add/update glossary terms and replace images

Current VCU Impact Level: 500 Students (reached Spring 2023) and $25,000 in student savings (reached Fall 2022). In use for 2 semester.

Project: Author an Open Textbook

Class: Piloting the Enterprise (ARTS351/CREA350) and other courses offered in the VCUArts Center for Creative Economy

Project Team: Garreth Blackwell, Matt Woolman, and Jeffrey Foster

Key Features

• Fills a gap of a single text covering entrepreneurship for the arts (how to envision, establish and develop a business practice as an artist)
• Used across many classes in the Center for Creative Economy
• Part of efforts to increase enrollment within these classes

Project Updates

• Text has been used in class since FY2019
• OER has played a key role in increasing enrollment and impact of the CREA350
• Awarded a 2021 Affordable Course Content Awards spread grant to move the resource to a publicly accessible platform, create introductory videos for each chapter, create an audiobook version, and develop a companion workbook

Current VCU Impact Level: 1,000 Students (reached Spring 2023) and $75,000 in student savings (reached Fall 2022). In use 10+ semesters.

Project: Customize open textbook and courseware

Class: Introduction to Contemporary Mathematics (MATH131)

Project Team: Heather Nunnally with Hilary Cassil

Key Features

• Using select chapters from Math in Society by David Lippman
• Customizing book's associated course in MyOpenMath to the course structure
• Will use MyOpenMath as courseware to manage homework questions
• Embedding book,  courseware, and other free materials into Canvas for a robust course

Project Updates

• Selected open textbook and corresponding MyOpenMath course
• Customized MyOpenMath course for use in VCU
• Used in all sections in Fall 2022
• Working on gathering feedback from pilot

Current VCU Impact Level: 750 Students (reached Spring 2023) and $75,000 in student savings (reached Spring 2023). In use for 3 semester.

Project: Author an OER

Class: Movement (Musculoskeletal) and potential others in the medical school curriculum

Project Team: Beth Rubinstein, Fnu Nutan, Julia Nunley, and medical students Mavra Masood, Sindhuja Koppu, Sarah Shapiro, and Julianna Kang

Key Features

• Dynamic modules will focus on the identification, diagnosis and workup of different dermatologic manifestations of rheumatic diseases
• Will present examples in skin of color (SOC), filling a gap in both commercial and OER medical school resources
• Medical students will play a key role in project management, content creation, and maintaining and updating the project.

Project Updates

• Two modules completed and working on drafting subsequent modules
• Tested first module in class in Spring 2022
• Working on collection method for physicians to submit images for inclusion in the resource
• Awarded a 2021 Affordable Course Content Awards sustain grant to support the student creation of additional modules

Current VCU Impact Level: 250 Students (reached Spring 2023) and $25,000 in student savings (reached Spring 2023). In use for 2 semester.