Open Educational Resources Course Development
and Implementation Grant Program (GEER Funded)

An Open Educational Resource (OER) is a teaching, learning, or research resource that is in the public domain or has been released under an intellectual property license that permits the free use, adaptation, and redistribution of the resource by any person.

The OER Course Development and Implementation Grant Program was a competitive program established to enhance quality in online course offerings and reduce the costs of educational materials for students at Texas public and independent institutions of higher education through matching grants to support the development of new OER for online delivery and/or the redesign of courses using existing OER. Grants will support teams of faculty engaged in this work. Two categories of grants were available under this Request for Applications (RFA):

• Development Grants – matching grants of up to $25,000 to support faculty teams in developing new OER for online course delivery. Cross-institutional collaboration is required for Development Grants.
• Implementation Grants – matching grants of up to $5,000 to support faculty or teams of faculty in the redesign of courses for online delivery using existing OER. Cross-institutional collaboration is encouraged for Implementation Grants.

This RFA was to support eligible public and independent institutions of higher education in Texas that intended to propose faculty-led projects (with matching funds provided by the institution) for improving online learning and reducing costs of instructional materials to students for the following types of courses:

• Texas Core Curriculum courses, with priority for core courses that are among the 50 most frequently transferred courses for the participating institution(s) or the state. Dual credit courses are eligible. See below for a list of priority courses at the state level.
• Co-requisite remediation for Texas Core Curriculum Courses, including non-course based options.
• Courses from the Workforce Education Course Manual (WECM) course inventory, with priority for courses leading to high-value workforce credentials that correspond to high-need occupations.

THECB established partnerships with three higher education institutions: OpenStax at Rice University, Dallas College, and the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin to provide technical assistance to OER Course Development and Implementation applicants and awardees. The technical assistance partner institutions provided help and guidance to applicants and awardees in redesigning Texas Core Curriculum courses, co-requisite remediation for Texas Core Curriculum Courses, and/or courses from the Workforce Education Course Manual (WECM) course inventory.

The application process for this RFA included three rounds of awards, with the third and final application submission deadline of 11:59 pm on January 31, 2021. Eligible applicants were welcome to submit at any time before 11:59 pm on January 31, 2021, and applications were reviewed in three rounds, according to the calendar below. Applications submitted after the specified due date for Round 1 were considered in Round 2, and applications submitted after the specified due date in Round 2 were considered in Round 3. Applications submitted after 11:59 pm on January 31, 2021, were not considered under this RFA.