April 2021 Newsletter

Greetings! As the Open Educational Resources Liaison, it is my role to share communications from the ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI) with you. Please read on to learn about upcoming events that are open to all and an opportunity for faculty to play a role in increasing OER consideration and adoption by others in their discipline.

If I can assist you in your considering OER - or answer any OER - related questions, please let me know.

ASCCC OERI Request for Proposals •

The ASCCC OERI is pleased to announce that proposals are now being accepted for the next round of OER funding. To ensure that applicants have all the information they need before submitting their proposals, we held informational webinars that have been archived and have scheduled informal office hours (see below). Please note that we do anticipate funding projects subsequent to this round of proposals.

The anticipated timeline for the process, from the publication of the RFP to the announcement of selected projects for funding, is as follows:

Monday, March 22, 2021 – Submission portal opened
Monday, April 19, 2021, 5 pm – Submission portal closed
Week of April 26 – Proposals reviewed
On or before Monday, May 10, awards announced

The OERI will be funding up to twenty-four proposals of up to $30,000 each. Typically, a $30,000 proposal would involve the development of a new OER text or an extensive revision of an existing one. To justify this level of funding for a revision, the applicant should demonstrate that they have conducted a review of available OER and provide a detailed overview of the modifications to be made. In other words, the maximum funding should not be sought unless it is clearly indicated that a comprehensive analysis of the most current revision of the resource has been conducted and this level of funding is required. Proposals for the development of ancillaries must provide specific details regarding the final OER and connect the specific resources developed to estimated time for development. In addition, the proposal should acknowledge any existing resources that will be integrated into the work. Ancillary resources that include components that rely on other websites must also provide alternative options should those websites be inaccessible or no longer available.

ASCCC OERI Request for Proposals III Submission Portal and Information

RFP III Office Hours

Please drop in to one of our RFP III Office Hours with your specific RFP-related questions. These office hours are an opportunity to get your questions answered about the RFP or to get informal feedback on your proposal.

OER and Counseling

The ASCCC OERI is pleased to announce its first OER event designed exclusively for counselors. The Blueprint for Counseling Success Conference will provide an introduction to OER, showcase the Blueprint for Success OER text series and other OER for counseling, and provide an opportunity for counselors to share OER specific to their discipline. The full program will be made available by mid-April on the ASCCC OERI website.

The Blueprint for Counseling Success Conference will be held virtually on Friday, May 14^th from 9:00 am – 3:00 pm. This conference is free, but space is limited. Register for Blueprint for Counseling Success.

OER for Your Consideration

This month, we’d like to highlight two resources that are likely to be of interest to and developed by our library faculty. Are you using an OER that we should feature? Please let us know.

Introduction to College Research (Butler, Sargent, and Smith - 2021) - Pressbooks; Ancillary Resources in Canvas Commons (CC BY) This book acknowledges our changing information landscape, covering key concepts in information literacy, including: algorithms and the attention economy, disinformation, information cynicism and information hygiene, fact-checking, source types, research topics, keyword choices and confirmation bias, search strategies, library databases, the ethical use of information, and citation. The textbook and Canvas modules were created by a team of California Community College librarians (funded by the ASCCC OERI).

Information Literacy - Basic Research Skills (Withers, 2019); Information Literacy - Basic Research Skills (Withers, 2019) - in LibreTexts (CC BY-NC-SA) This book is designed to be used in the teaching of a one-unit information literacy course. The resource was written by faculty from San Diego City College who have described as follows: “There are several good books out there but the least expensive costs a few lunches or a couple months’ trolley budget. The need seemed obvious for an Information Literacy OER for our students, so we wrote one.”

OERI Weekly Webinars – April 2021

OERI Weekly Webinars are usually scheduled for Fridays at 10:30 am. This month, we have dramatically expanded our offerings as we are showcasing OER for a wide array of disciplines – hopefully in time to inform text selections for the summer and fall terms. The ASCCC OERI will provide automated captioning for all webinars. If you would like to request live human closed-captioning for any of our offerings, please contact us by e-mail at least 10 business days in advance.

OERI Webinars are intended for a diverse audience. We hope you will all join us! Please share this information with your colleagues so that they may join us as well.

Discipline Webinars – Each of our Discipline Webinars is intended to provide an overview of the available OER in the discipline, focusing on text-equivalents, when available. Hosted by OERI Discipline Leads, each webinar is also intended to provide a forum for discipline faculty to share their needs.