Program Management
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Jeff Gallant
Why Grants?
Grant programs are a common and effective practice within OER initiatives; these programs are so widespread and trusted that statewide OER legislation often includes the establishment or continuation of a grant program (see Recommended Resources: State Legislation Examples). A grant program encourages action without mandating action, supporting the time and resources that are necessary for faculty to implement OER. Open education programs can support and grow the adoption, adaptation, and creation of OER while still giving instructors and departments the agency to choose which resources are best for their courses and students. Grants are therefore a core method of “opt-in” support, inviting faculty members to explore, collaborate, and build new OER within their areas of subject expertise.
Step 1: Determine Your Strategic Priorities
Before you begin building a grant program, ensure that you have the vision, mission, and strategic goals of the program finalized. While grant programs typically address common goals of student savings and student success, it’s important to link what you will prioritize in the grant application and review process to what your overall program prioritizes. Be sure to address these questions before creating your grant program:
Is your open education program focused on textbook cost savings?
Early open education programs often focused on the zero-cost aspect of OER and its potential to enhance student success through equitable access to materials (see Recommended Resources: Early Open Education Programs). Grant programs focused on textbook cost savings often prioritize the adoption of OER with regard to how many students are affected by a project and how much the new OER will save each student (see Chapter 21, Data Collection and Strategies for OER Programs, for more on savings data).
Not every open education program has a primary focus on affordability: the MIT OpenCourseWare program has a strategic priority of making MIT teaching and learning resources available over the Web to a global audience (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d.). Grant programs focused on the global impact of sharing OER may prioritize the creation of original open materials.
Who makes the decisions on textbook selection?
In higher education institutions, individual faculty often select the materials they will use for their courses (Seaman and Seaman 2020). This could vary by the course or the institution, though: departments will sometimes choose a uniform set of course materials for their courses, or a major introductory course may uniquely have a uniform set of materials to accommodate part-time and adjunct instructors. Grant programs supporting individual faculty may focus on course release time and stipends, while grant programs supporting entire departments may include a partnership with embedded professional staff support (instructional designers, librarians) and include a department-wide a