OAT Awards, 2018–2019

Caitlin Howe, Instructor, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology

M1 Structure & Function and MSBS Gross Anatomy

The goals of this project are to create a lab manual tailored to our courses and dissection "preview" and "review" videos associated with each of the 23 dissection labs. Inquiry-based learning has shown to increase engagement to learn. It also allows for students to learn to acquire more in-depth knowledge at their own pace and deepen their understanding of the various topics and concepts presented.

Taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2019

270 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $16,200.00

Georgia Arbuckle-Keil, Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Chemistry

Art and Chemistry: Beautiful Together

The goals of the course are to engage students in understanding basic physical science concepts in an interesting context: art and chemistry. This course will be offered as an option under Physical & Life Sciences (PLS) General Education. Selection of a no cost ebook for the course lowers one of the barriers students often encounter, i.e. the inability to afford science textbooks.

Taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2019

96 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $7,680.00

Babu Dasari, Teaching Instructor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics

Microeconomic Principles

The main goal of this project is to transition from a traditional online interactive textbook to a free online textbook. Other goals include adopting a free online textbook, using supplemental learning resources, integrating the free textbook and other materials into Sakai, minimizing the use of paper, and sustaining and expanding the implementation of open and affordable textbooks.

Taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2019

90 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $24,678.00

Sean Duffy, Associate Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology

Method and Theory in Psychology

This project aims to develop an open educational resources textbook for an introductory level writing intensive course in research methods in psychology. While many textbooks exist for this purpose, none are ideally suited for the particular course. While most of the material will be original, already available open resources to supplement it will be incorporated.

Taught: Spring 2019, Summer 2019, Fall 2019

150 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $19,500.00

Nathan Fried, Assistant Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Biology

Neurobiology I

This project supports the intention to go textbook-free for the undergraduate Neurobiology I course. This course traditionally uses Principles of Neural Science by Kandel & Schwartz. However, extensive online materials have been developed over the past five years that provide the opportunity to move away from these traditional textbooks to a zero-cost educational platform.

Taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2019

80 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $8,000.00

Ellen Ledoux, Associate Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English

Transatlantic Literature

This course satisfies the Heritages and Civilizations General Education requirement and, as such, the material must primarily consist of texts published pre-1800. This historical requirement provides an ideal opportunity to choose primary texts no longer under copyright and thus freely available online. The challenge will be to find sources that are throughly annotated and edited by trusted sources.

Taught: Spring 2019

30 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $2,670.00

Emily Marker, Assistant Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

Western Civilization II

The goal of the project is to make this course free on the front end, with the sole cost being printing select documents that will be used for group work in class session over the course of the term. By using much narrower, targeted encyclopedia entries, students will be able to make a tighter set of connections between the documents, lecture, and the broader context. It will provide students with an easy entry into a higher level of scholarly writing, as these encyclopedias are compendia of the top people in the field of modern European history.

Taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2019

120 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $5,280.00

Lorrin Thomas, Associate Professor and Department Chair, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

Special Topics: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration in the Americas

The goal of this new course is to examine race and ethnicity issues in connection with migration and immigration around the Americas, focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries. The course will use scanned materials from books, articles, and digital primary sources. During the final month of the course students will work in groups to contribute to a “resource book” which will tie together the themes of their studies.

Taught: Fall 2019

30 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $6,900.00

Nicky Agate, Part-Time Lecturer, School of Arts and Sciences–Newark, Spanish and Portuguese Studies

Elementary French

This project will replace current for-fee course materials with a Pressbooks project that combines content from an existing open textbook, MERLOT, openly licensed online exercises, as well as apps, podcasts, and video clips that help students pronounce and understand French.

Taught: Summer 2019, Fall 2019

90 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $13,500.00

Karen Chaffee, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences–Newark, Department of Chemistry

Xinbo Lau, Lecturer Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences–Newark, Chemistry, Chemistry 116

This project will create free online quizzes for General Chemistry II (Chemistry 116) that can be used by any professor, any semester, in place of more expensive quizzes requiring an expensive access code. These tests will be used in conjunction with the free OpenStax chemistry textbook.

Taught: Spring 2019

200 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $18,000.00

Rachel Emas, Assistant Teaching Professor, Newark College of Arts and Sciences, School of Public Affairs and Administration

Applied Research Design

This project will allow for the replacement of all for-fee course materials (e.g., textbooks, data sets, analysis software, etc.) in this graduate level course with OER textbook chapters, public data sets, free analysis software, and journal articles available through the Rutgers University Libraries.

Taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2019

30 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $3,000.00

Samantha Heintzelman, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences–Newark, Department of Psychology

Social Psychology

The primary goal of this project is to create a customized social psychology text using the repository of openly-available chapters provided by Noba Project.

Taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2019

155 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $23,250.00

Chon Lintakoon, Assistant Professor of Professional Practices, Rutgers Business School–Newark, Management Science & Information Systems

Management Information Systems

This project will replace a traditional textbook with articles, book excerpts, audio, and/or video that are licensed through Rutgers University Libraries, open access materials, and/or content that is freely available online. In addition the professor will create his own computer lab exercises.

Taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2019

320 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $56,000.00

Marlene Gaynair, Instructor, School of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

Popular Music in American History

This project will replace the current traditional textbook for the Popular Music in American History course and create redesigned and open source course content. This includes creating accessible lectures that can be downloaded for future use and using only low-cost or free articles, chapters, audio and video accessed through Rutgers Libraries and the internet. The main goal is to provide an educational experience that uses the resources we already have through the university, and to integrate them with lectures and PowerPoint presentations.

Taught: Summer 2019

40 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $5,618.00

Ines Rauschenbach, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology

Introduction to Microbiology Laboratory

The plan for this course is to replace the "cookie-cutter" lab experiments that are provided with a traditional, publisher-purchased lab manual with inquiry-based lessons that will allow students to learn about various, common microbiological techniques and also apply them to small research based projects. Inquiry-based learning has shown to increase student interest and engagement in science courses.

Taught: Spring 2019, Fall 2019

160 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $16,000.00