Kirwan Center to Submit Proposal for Federal OER Grant

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 09:52:06 -0400
cfp, most, oer, opensource, usm

The USM Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation is planning to submit a proposal to the Department of Education’s Applications for New Awards; Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education – Open Textbooks Pilot Program as part of the Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) initiative http://www.usmd.edu/cai/MOST.

As the Request for Proposals states, the Open Textbooks Pilot program “supports projects at institutions of higher education (IHEs) that create new open textbooks or expand their use of open textbooks while maintaining or improving instruction and student learning outcomes.” The RFP outlines three absolute priorities:

Improving collaboration and dissemination through consortia arrangements;

Addressing gaps in the open textbook marketplace and bringing solutions to scale; and

Promoting degree completion by creating OERs across multiple courses in a program sequence.

A competitive preference priority involves using technology-based strategies for personalized learning and continuous improvement, which the Kirwan Center plans to address as well.

The Kirwan Center's initial aim through this proposal will be to identify and organize partners—two-year and four-year institutions of higher education as well as relevant industry and non-profit partners—to contribute to the curation, creation, and vetting of openly licensed, fully accessible instructional materials for healthcare programs (such as pharmacy, nursing, and the like) where little OER exists currently and, by so doing, also stand up a more systematic and sustainable development process for other high-demand, low-OER fields.

Watch a recording of the High-impact OER Mini-Grant informational webinar to learn more about the program.

The Kirwan Center is excited to pursue this opportunity. If there are individuals or groups that might be interested in the proposed project, or if you have any concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Dr. MJ Bishop, Director of the Kirwan Center, at mjbishop@usmd.edu.

NOTE: Per the federal registry for this grant, the deadline for proposals is August 29, 2019.