OER Grant Announcement - April 1, 2024 deadline to apply

The Secretary of State/Illinois State Library has announced the availability of OER: Open Educational Resources Grants as detailed below. 

CARLI held informational sessions about the application process. If you were not able to attend or would like to review, a recording of an information session is available.

CARLI offers OER Grants Office Hours to answer questions about the Illinois State Library OER Grant Program. These are every Wednesday from 2:00 - 3:00 p.m., central time. All can be found on the CARLI calendar. No registration is required.

About the Grant

This is an opportunity for your academic library to coordinate the development of open education resources (OER) within your institution. This grant opportunity provides for the development of textbooks and ancillaries as open educational resources to ultimately reduce students’ costs and encourage student success. The open license allows faculty to adapt the materials to meet local needs.

The deadline to submit a grant application package is Monday, April 1, 2024.

Grant applications are being accepted to:

1. Author – Create and adopt a substantially new open textbook or open course where it is possible to demonstrate that quality resources are not currently available to meet learning objectives.
2. Revise/Remix – Update existing OER with major revisions or develop custom course content from multiple open educational resources and original open content to support learning objectives not met by existing open resources.
3. Ancillaries – Adopt existing OER and create ancillaries such as quiz banks, lecture slides, or lab manuals.
4. Update – Update and adopt existing OER that requires minor editing for currency or relevance, without major changes to the content or structure.

Eligibility

• Academic libraries are eligible to apply.
• The applicant agency must be recognized by the Illinois State Library as a full member in good standing of an Illinois regional library system.
• Each applicant must submit certification of adoption of the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights that indicates materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval; or provide a written policy that indicates the library shall prevent censorship of its library materials, ensuring that items are not withdrawn from its library collection merely because individuals or groups object to the material.

Range of Awards and Funding Source

• Requests up to $150,000 will be considered. Projects are funded using general revenue funds allocated to the Secretary of State/Illinois State Library specifically for Open Education Resources.
• Academic agencies proposing multiple OER projects that total $150,000 or less are encouraged to bundle them into one application with complete details provided about each unique OER.
• Academic agencies submitting multiple applications must rank them in priority order.

Program Requirements

Digital resources created under this grant offering must be available with the license of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International / CC-BY 4.0 International and available at no cost to students.

Applicants must clearly identify the focus of the project:

1. Author a new OER textbook,
2. Revise and Remix with major modifications to an existing OER,
3. Ancillaries that align with an existing OER, or
4. Update to make minor changes to an existing OER.

The identified course must be taught using OER created with Secretary of State/Illinois State Library grant funds at least once by Spring 2026 and for three years after the end of the grant.

Each awarded grant must:

• Use a publishing platform (LibreTexts and/or OER Commons will be provided to all grant recipients, but others may be used).
• Share the resources adapted/created to accessible repositories: CARLI’s OER Commons Hub, LibreTexts, and the Open Textbook Library. The OER must be made available for printing through a printing platform such as XanEdu.
• Attach a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license to all created resources.
• Commit to data collection.

Each project must identify and provide:

• Project director
• Instructional designer
• Proofreader
• Copyright specialist
• Accessibility coordinator
• Subject matter specialists/authors
• Peer reviewers

Application Checklist

The following required documentation must be submitted as attachments to islgrants@ilsos.gov and may be submitted in one or more messages. Deadline to apply is Monday, April 1, 2024.

1. OER Grant Application (updated form with text box error corrected)
2. Application Narrative: Describe the project in whole. Do not attach resumes.
3. Attachment 1: Course and OER Information
4. Attachment 2: Signed Agreement to Adopt OER
5. Certification of Eligibility for Grants

Questions?

For more information about this OER grant opportunity, please contact Library Development Group at the Illinois State Library: islgrants@ilsos.gov or 217-524-8836. The Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) will provide support through training and scheduled office hours. Contact CARLI at support@carli.illinois.edu.