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Announcing the First AggieOpen Fellows
Faculty and instructors receive funding, support to implement open course materials
What is OER?
Open educational resources (OER) are openly licensed alternatives to commercially available course materials.
By choosing OER, instructors can make course materials more affordable and readily available for students.
OER includes open access or Creative Commons licensed publications, resources in the public domain, and learning objects and texts that instructors create themselves.
Together with our lead partner, LibreTexts, the library is excited to announce the AggieOpen Fellows for academic year 2023-24 — eight UC Davis faculty members and instructors who will integrate open educational resources (OER) into their courses with support from AggieOpen.
Each Fellow will receive funding and consultative support to adopt, adapt, curate or create openly licensed, freely accessible course materials for a course they will teach in Summer 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2024 or Spring 2024.
In addition to the central benefits of OER, which improve the availability and affordability of course materials for students, several of the 2023-34 Fellows highlighted opportunities to build community and deepen students’ engagement with learning objectives.
“My motivation for using open materials stems from the value they offer students,” wrote Heather J. Hether, associate professor of teaching in the Department of Communications, who will adapt OER materials for her course CMN 132: Social Media for Public Relations. “Using open materials underscores some of the key lessons of social media, as related to building community through sharing content.”
YeunShin Lee, a continuing lecturer in Animal Science, noted that she already relies on active learning exercises that support peer-to-peer learning. “By adding [an open access image library], I will be able to encourage deeper learning among my students,” she said.
“We plan to continue putting a lot of emphasis on California Spanish, especially as UC Davis is on a path of becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution,” wrote Claudia Sanchez-Gutierrez and Ana Ruiz Alonso Bartol, both in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, who will work together to develop OER video tutorials for students taking First-Year Spanish.
Over the program period, the AggieOpen team will provide Fellows with professional development opportunities to support their activities in finding, evaluating, and creating OER. Financial awards reflect the associated costs and recognize the time and effort involved.
The AggieOpen Fellows program has three project tiers:
- Tier 1: Adopt – for Fellows who have identified open learning materials appropriate to their curriculum and would like support navigating the licensing and distribution of these materials.
- Tier 2: Adapt – for Fellows who have identified open learning materials but need to make significant revisions, annotations, and/or create instructor resources appropriate to their curriculum.
- Tier 3: Collaborate – for Fellows who plan to work as part of a team to curate and/or create OER instructor resources appropriate to their curriculum.
Introducing the 2023-24 AggieOpen Fellows
Seung Sae Hong
Tier 1 — Adopt: Seung Sae Hong is an assistant professor of Material Science and Engineering at the College of Engineering. He will adopt an Open Textbook for his EMS 170L: Sustainable Energy Technology course.
Andrea Ross
Tier 1 — Adopt: Andrea Ross is a continuing lecturer in the University Writing Program at the College of Letters and Science. She will develop an OAR/OER reader for Business Communication for students enrolled in UWP 104: Business Writing.
YeunShin Lee
Tier 2 — Adapt: YeunShin Lee is a continuing lecturer in the Animal Science Department at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. She will curate an OER image library for students enrolled in her ANS 123: Animal Growth and Development course.
Cecelia Giulivi
Tier 2 — Adapt: Cecelia Giulivi is a professor of Molecular Biosciences at the School of Veterinary Medicine. She will develop an OER/OAR course reader for students in IST 8A: Integrated Studies – Special Topics in Natural Science & Mathematics.
Heather J. Hether
Tier 2 — Adapt: Heather J. Hether is an associate professor of teaching in the Department of Communication at the College of Letters and Science. She will work with students in her CMN 132: Social Media for Public Relations course to create OER materials related to ‘best practices’ when using social media for strategic communications.
Grace Hayes
Tier 2 — Adapt: Grace Hayes is an associate instructor in the Department of English at the College of Letters and Science. She will curate OER materials related to college-level writing for English language Learners enrolled in her UWP 1: Introduction to Academic Literacies course.
Claudia Sanchez-Gutierrez + Ana Ruiz Alonso Bartol
Tier 3 — Collaborate: Claudia Sanchez-Gutierrez (at left) is an associate professor, and Ana Ruiz Alonso Bartol (below) is an instructor, both in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the College of Letters and Science.
Together they will develop OER video tutorials for students in SPA 1, SPA 2, SPA 3: First-Year Spanish and make these resources available to students studying introductory Spanish across higher education.