Research Guides: Open Educational Resources: Funding and Support at VCU and Beyond

VCU Affordable Course Content Awards

VCU Libraries, the Office of the Provost, the ALT Lab and Online@VCU, and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, Academic Technologies, and Barnes and Noble @ VCU partner for awards which support faculty adoption of zero-cost resources and creation of openly-licensed alternatives to expensive textbooks.

Awards are granted in three categories:

Adopt: Redesign your course to incorporate open or free educational resources with little to no editorial changes made to the resource.
Adapt: Modify an open resource, combine and/or modify multiple open resources, or create ancillaries for an existing resource.
Create: Create a substantially new openly licensed resource, where it is possible to demonstrate that quality resources are not currently available to meet learning objectives.

Additional information is available at:

VCU Affordable Course Content Awards

Non-Financial Support at VCU

As a part of the VCU Affordable Course Content Awards, faculty are supported by program partners in the adoption, adaption, and creation of free and open materials. All VCU can also take advantage of these avenues of support by contacting the relevant department. Potential support includes:

VCU Libraries: assistance in locating existing open materials for adoption/adaptation; assistance identifying additional project support freelancers; hosting and long-term preservation of final products in Scholars Compass; DOI assignment; consultations on publishing workflows and best practices, copyright and open licensing, metadata creation, upkeep and maintenance of materials, and how to share resources to wider community.
ALT Lab: helping establish the state of interactive media in your discipline, assistance in determining authoring patterns and tools, creating and supporting customized authoring patterns, hosting necessary tools and platforms (WordPress, Pressbooks, etc)
Barnes & Noble at VCU: provide print copies of open textbooks and other resources for purchase in the bookstore, including custom materials through XanEdu

VIVA Open Grants

VIVA (the Virtual Library of Virginia, Virginia's academic library consortium) offers the VIVA Open Grants to help support faculty looking to adopt, adapt, and create free course content.

VIVA Open Adopt Grants
This program provides $2,000 to individual faculty looking to adopt existing OER in their classrooms.
The grant cycle usually opens late summer, with applications due in October. **Applications for the current cycle are due October 19th**
VIVA Open Course Grants
Formerly the VIVA Course Redesign Grants. This program will award grants from $2,000 to $30,000 to assist individuals and teams in transitioning to course materials available at no cost to students, such as open educational textbooks and/or library resources. Applications that include multi-institutional partnerships are encouraged.
The grant cycle usually opens in December, with applications due in February/March.

VCU Libraries is eager to work with faculty in applying for grant funds, identifying multi-institutional partners, and serving as project partners. Interested faculty should contact Jessica Kirschner, Open Educational Resources Librarian, at kirschnerj2@vcu.edu.

Learn more about the VIVA Open Grants program:

VIVA Open Grants