Congratulations to the Summer 2014 Alternative Textbook Grant Award Winners!!

For our first year of our Alternative Textbook Initiative, the OU Libraries made grantes of up to $2,500 available to ull time faculty to support the adoption of an alternative textbook. These grants are designed to help support the faculty in transitioning to open course materials.  Support for finding open content and structuring a complete solution for faculty is available from University Libraries.

• Dr. Diana Bairaktarova, Assistant Professor of Engineering Physics, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engeineering.  Dr. Baiaraktarova is adopting an open textbook for the course AME 2213 Thermodynamics.  She is creating a custom solution for her students that will save them the 85 students enrolled in this course $217 each.
• Dr. Susan Burke, Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Studies is adopting an open textbook for her course, LIS 5733 Evaluation Methods.  This online class of 35 generally spends $62 each on textbooks.
• Dr. Kurt Gramoll, Robert Hughes Centennial Professor of Engineering, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, has written his own textbooks for the courses that he teaches, developing these texts over the past 10 years.  He has made these materials available for other faculty to use at ecourses.ou.edu. For the grant award, Dr. Gramoll is working on adapting his content to be used on tablets for texting during courses.
• Dr. Kun Lu, Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information studies is adopting an open textbook for the LIS 4063/5063 Information and Comunication Techology.  This required course has a general textbook cost of $230 per student, with an enrollment of up to 35 students.
• Dr. Paul Sims, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has worked with graduate student Alyssa HIll to develope an iBook lab manual.  For this grant project, the iBook will be adopted for additional platforms, as well as adding functionality.  The previous pruchased manual for 98 students cost approximately $100.

All totaled, the potential savings in one semester is over $62,000

We will be posting specific adoption details in the coming days.

Again, congratulations to all of the 2014 Alternative Textbook grantees.  Look for more grants in the coming year!