The OER Webinar Series Continues and the COT Small Grant Program

If you’re interested in creating, sharing, finding or funding high quality open educational resources, you won’t want to miss the last two webinars of the OER Series.

The third webinar, Creating OER: The WHO and the HOW, will be held tomorrow (sign up now – before it’s too late!) and the forth and final webinar, Funding OER: Sustainability, is on the calendar for October.

OER Session 3—Creating OER: The WHO and the HOW

Who is developing OERs? Who should be? How are they doing it? How can standards allow OER content interoperability? How can standards assure quality? How can I get started? How can I find the tools for creating OER content?

These questions, and more, will be answered by Rob Abel from IMS Global and others. In addition we will discuss different models for developing OER materials and demonstrate various authoring tools for creating OER content. Models for OER development will include work by the math department at the College of the Redwoods. You will also see how Jacqui Cain from Tacoma Community College, as part of a Bill and Melinda Gates foundation grant, re-purposed Sherlock Holmes stories to create a full online course in Remedial English.

Wednesday, September 21 3:00pm ET Register Now

OER Session 4—Funding OER: Sustainability

How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?

These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director Communication, Stakeholder & Academic Relations; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.

Monday, October 31 3:00pm ET Register Now

No need to worry if you missed one of the first two sessions, you can easily get up to speed by checking out the archives:

Small Grant Program

Last but not least, College Open Textbooks, one of the OER webinar series sponsors, wants to reward the successes of open textbooks adopter communities with monetary grants for research and related activities associated with the process of adopting open textbooks.

Applicants may request funds for such activities as customizing an open textbook, creating new materials or ancillaries, enhancing accessibility features, or generally improving an open textbook through collaborative efforts. We especially encourage collaboration between faculty members at different colleges and sharing of in-kind services.

For full details on the program: who can apply, what the funds may be used for, and how to submit, please download the Request for Proposal. In addition, we ask that you use the Grant Proposal Template to fill out your grant application and submit over email.

Note: At least two members of your adopter community must be faculty at accredited colleges or universities in the United States. Request for funds up to $2500 has been extended till September 26, 2011. If you have questions, please contact Una Daly at una.daly@opendoorsgroup.org.

The OER series is sponsored by College Open Textbooks, Connexions, IMS Global, MERLOT and SoftChalk. Follow the conversation on Twitter by using the hashtag #OERseries.

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