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

Read more about Prof. Cobb's experiences creating OER as a part of our Why We Choose Open: OER Stories blog series:

• Why Cobb chooses open: affordability, relevance, and equity

View the OER: 

• Biological Basis of Behavior

  Designed for graduate students of PSYC:629, this text gives an overview of the study of human behavior through a biological lens, this text focuses on the role of the central nervous system and its role in the regulation and control of human behavior. This text also includes supplemental resources to integrate the social context related to these topics and address the impact of historic harms to minoritized populations from a behavioral neuroscience lens.

License: Biological Basis of Behavior by Caroline Cobb (Amey) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Current VCU Impact Level: 50 Students (reached Spring 2024) and $10,000 in student savings (reached Spring 2024). In use 2 semesters.

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

View the OER:

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: 

Current VCU Impact Level: 100 Students (reached Spring 2024). In use for 2 semesters.

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: 750 Students (reached Spring 2024) and $50,000 in student savings (reached Spring 2024). In use for 4 semesters.

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 $1,000,000 in student savings (reached Spring 2024). 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: 1000 Students (reached Spring 2024) and $100,000 in student savings (reached Spring 2024). In use for 5+ semesters.

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 3 semesters.