Announcing the Spring 2021 Open Educational Resources Mini Awards Recipients

Posted: Wed, Jan 27th 2021

We are pleased to announce the first round recipients of the Tisch Library Open Educational Resources Mini Awards program!

The awards provide financial support from Tisch to faculty & instructors who are adopting or creating Open Educational Resources (OER) for their Spring 2021 courses. Recipients of the award will be incorporating OER in order to reduce costs for their students, to respond to the need for online learning objects due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and to create educational materials needed for their courses that don't exist elsewhere. At the end of the semester, they'll share their material with us so that it can be made available openly for others to use.

If you're teaching a Spring 2021 AS&E course and are creating or adopting open materials for it, award funds still remain! Find out more and apply. We'll be reviewing applications on a rolling basis.

Congratulations to our award recipients!

Michael Beckley, Political Science

Course: PS 188-02 Chinese Foreign Policy

Project: A full course of recorded lectures covering an array of issues related to China's foreign policy, military, economy, and relationship with other major nations including the United States. This content replaces some core texts that students would otherwise have to purchase.

Kevin Cody, Environmental Studies

Course: ENV 190/ANTH 159 Practicing in Food Systems

Project: Integrate an open access book Agroecology Now! Transformations Towards More Just and Sustainable Food Systems into the course syllabus and student learning objectives to replace a required purchased text.

Jennifer Minnen, English

Course: English 1 Expository Writing

Project: An online module that challenges students to enter the conversation taking place right now at Tufts on the role of public art in creating an anti-racist campus, including a unit overview; a skills map with outcomes; lesson plans (on such topics as identifying meaningful questions, interviewing stakeholders, and analyzing multi-media sources); a curated collection of primary documents and secondary sources; and a trove of student writing, photographs, and video.

Kate Mirkin, Biology

Course: BIO41 General Genetics

Project: Videos that demonstrate two important biological processes that cannot be shown in two dimensions (on slides or in a textbook): molecular mechanism of homologous recombination in meiosis and formation of catenane during replication of circular bacterial chromosome. The videos, which aren't available openly elsewhere, will replace in-class demonstrations using play-doh and paper & scissors.

Diren Pamuk Turner, Chemistry

Course: Chem 12 General Chemistry/Chem 54 Organic Chemistry

Project: Replace standard in-class examinations with take-home assessments by implementing research article-based examinations. Assessments include questions that require integration of the lecture material with the research applications and require extensive analysis and scientific deduction, with a deep attention to the topic.

Nicola Solly, English

Course: English 2 Freshman Writing Seminar: Differences

Project: A syllabus which is fully integrated with Canvas, including assignments, quizzes, readings and other activities. The integrated syllabus will be available to adopt as a complete course for anyone teaching the English 2 Differences class. Many elements will be writing and grammar exercises and quizzes not specific to the Differences theme and therefore will be transferable to other English 1 or 2 courses or any other writing/composition course.

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UNESCO Open Educational Resources logo. White hands coming out of a book on a blue background