Open Education Week

Open Education Week is a time to raise awareness of open educational resources (OER) and celebrate UTSA's work to support faculty adoption of free textbooks!

What are OER Design Grants?

OER Design grants are an opportunity for UTSA faculty to create original OER or to tailor existing OER for a course, creating a more engaging learning experience for UTSA students.  Learn more about each 2023 OER Design project below!

2023 Design Grants

Akanksha Matta, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Instruction

Elementary Organic and Biochemistry Laboratory

Chemistry

Dr. Matta is working to curate a UTSA-tailored OER of experiments for CHE 1014 using content from a variety of LibreTexts Chemistry OER, including: Synthesis of Aspirin, Quantitative Analysis of Vitamin C, A Study of Carbohydrates, and so much more! The adoption of an OER in this course will impact 102 students and save them a total of $10,378 each semester.

More from. Dr. Matta:

“When I started teaching this course in Fall 2021, I taught the laboratory component with

a $100 print textbook. In Spring 2022, the textbook became available as a $70 e-book, which was just a scanned version of the original textbook that was available to buy and read online. However, the e-book was still expensive for some students, and there were other challenges including printing experiment pages and more. Currently, both the print and e-book of this text are available at the UTSA Bookstore for $100 and $ 70, respectively. With the OER Design grant, the material will be freely available to all students, and they can use their laptops, tablets, or smartphones to update their LabArchives notebook during and outside of class.”

Carlo Bottone, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Instruction

Introductory Latin I

Philosophy and Classics

Dr. Bottone is working to curate lecture materials and notes for LAT 1014 Introductory Latin into a UTSA-created OER that is in alignment with his course’s student learning outcomes. The adoption of an OER for this course will save his student $1,246 per semester. 

More from Dr. Bottone: 

“I have taught both modern and classical languages for many years, and I have always noticed how commercial textbooks can cause unnecessary stress to our students. Their teaching methods are often obsolete and even when they contain references to, or comparisons with, today’s art/language to bridge with young students, such comparisons and references sound already old and have an opposite effect on students.

Commercial books also do not consider the unique aspects of a class. They are designed for an average student, who is majoring in Classics. But in our intro courses at UTSA, we have an exceptionally higher number of students with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, needs and interests.”

Stephanie González, Ph.D., Sylvia Fernández, Ph.D., Glenn Martínez, Ph.D., Ada Zamarripa, M.A., Sara Huerta Quinoñes, M.Ed., M.A.

Elementary Spanish I

Modern Languages and Literatures

The SPN 1014 team is working to create an OER built and tailored for Heritage Speakers across the US Southwest, with special attention paid to the cultural and linguistic experiences of heritage learners in San Antonio and South Texas. SPN 1014 Spanish for Heritage Speakers enrolls 605 students each semester, saving a total of $84,246/semester with the adoption of a free OER textbook. 

 They are working to create an OER for Spanish for Heritage Speakers that: 

  • develops critical language and cultural awareness among Heritage Language Learner student populations (Beaudrie & Wilson, 2022: 67)

  • centers local and Latinx-Hispanic languages, cultures and histories taking into consideration a contextualization of the San Antonio region (de la Teja, 2017).

  • makes use and learns from local and regional archives, resources and independent projects and knowledge production in the analog and digital record 

  • incorporates theory and praxis of Digital Humanities multilingual, decolonial, postcolonial through critical analysis and ethical production and representation of subjects, cultures, languages and stories that have been other-ed, marginalized, excluded or misrepresented (Risam, 2019: 141).

  • engages community knowledge and initiatives around the city as a path for students to give back to their community and apply professional skills in personal contexts

Lacy Barton, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Developmental Biology

Neuroscience, Development and Regenerative Biology

Dr. Barton is working to curate existing OER into a UTSA-created OER for Neuro, Developmental and Regenerative Biology course, a new course at UTSA. The use of an OER for this course will save enrolled students $3,672 per semester.

More from Dr. Barton: 

“I am committed to reducing the burden of costly textbooks. This is especially true for first generation college students, community college transfer students, and students who are working while trying to further their education. We are designing new Developmental Biology courses to be inclusive and accessible, which includes ensuring students can enroll independent of financial situations. Using Open Educational Resources will help us reach this goal.”

Carolyn Luna, Sage Bentley, Ph.D., Stephen Pena, An do, Phillip Saldivar

Precalculus

Mathematics

The MAT 1093 team has used OpenStax Precalculus as the basis for their UTSA-aligned and UTSA-tailored OER Topics in Precalculus. Carolyn, Sage, Stephen, An and Phillip have created  an OER that is aligned not only with the course’s student learning outcomes but is also in alignment with their open access homework assignment platform WeBWork. The picture of awesome teamwork in action, the MAT 1093 team applied for and received an Adopt a Free Textbook Grant in Spring 2023 and, over the course of Summer and Fall 2023, imported, tailored, and LaTeX coded OpenStax Precalculus to prepare for launching Topics in Precalculus in all sections of MAT 1093 in Spring 2024.TCCN. The new OER will Impact 549 students and save them $126,264 each semester.

More from the MAT 1093 team:

“Precalculus is an introductory course that is part of our STEM series and approximately 1400 students are enrolled in precalculus each academic year. This means that the success of students in MAT 1093 is vital to the flow of students throughout our science career pipelines at UTSA.”