The Scholarly Communication Department is proud to announce the inaugural cohort of the 2021 Course Material Transformation Fellowship Program. The IUB Libraries and IUPUI Libraries launched the Course Material Transformation Fellowship Program in Fall 2020 for instructors interested in adopting or creating affordable course material, with generous support from the Women’s Philanthropy Leadership Council.
Chosen from a competitive list of applicants, our Fellows comprise 13 faculty members and one graduate student who are dedicated to creating and cultivating an environment that allows students to have access to quality course materials without the burden of cost. Many of the fellowships will increase access to educational materials for underrepresented populations. The instructors come from Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and teach courses ranging across the disciplines. In addition to learning methods for improving access to educational resources, Fellows will learn about available platforms such as Pressbooks, and new approaches such as Open Pedagogy in the classroom. They will be implementing the new materials in their courses during the 2021-2022 academic year. These may include Open Educational Resources (OER), library eBooks and databases, and instructor-created materials.
Please join us in welcoming our Fellows. Their comments below provide a glimpse of their excitement about this new opportunity.
“The Course Material Transformation Fellowship would yield a higher-quality OER text for my course and students, and provide me with a tremendous opportunity for continued learning and support.”- Miranda Rodak, Department of English, IU Bloomington
“I would like to make [materials] interactive to ensure students are reading and getting immediate feedback on their understanding.” – Kim Donahue, Kelley School of Business, IUPUI
“Creating a collection of no-cost materials specifically for IUB multilingual students means that I would be able to customize the content using existing Open Educational Resources.” – Megan Hansen Connolly, Second Language Studies, IU Bloomington
“I am excited about this program because of the opportunity to work with experts and others in diverse fields.” – Kathy Berlin, Department of Health Sciences, IUPUI
“The transformation of the course curriculum to better meet the learning objectives in the field and align with the General Education community contributions is my priority under my capacity of instructor and expert in the Culture and Health domain. The current Fellowship program offers a valuable opportunity to improve the learning experience in the field.” – Valia Kalaitzi, Department of Global Health, IUPUI
“I want to ensure students are able to access and utilize course materials easily. Due to the course having a large quantity of students each semester, if the course materials were available completely online many students would be able to save money on course materials.” – Amy Powell and Julia Sanders, ePortfolio, IUPUI
“By using a multitude of resources, I can provide students with the most up-to-date, broad base of knowledge required to enhance the lives of people with disability across society. I am excited to learn more about all the resources available to me to make this transition, especially the OER and ways to create my own, diverse set of instructor-created materials to support student learning.” – Heaven Hollender, Department of Health Sciences, IUPUI
“My vision is to create cohesive course materials that align with the story I want to tell with each unit. I would like this to be through lecture videos (some redone to be in the form of whiteboard animations), supplemented with open-source text chapters when appropriate, or source animations or simulations that are already available.” – Sapna Mehta, Department of Biology, IU Bloomington
“It is paramount that we give [students] a thorough background for the content that we are teaching. We teach them professional communication and procedures while simultaneously teaching them the requisite medical terminology to get started.” – Todd Peabody, School of Optometry, IU Bloomington
“I would like to move a multitude of resources such as assessment materials into one resource that students have the ability to apply the content more easily.” – Roxie Barnes, School of Nursing, IU Bloomington
Every semester I have a handful of students who struggle to buy the book, for whom I usually put copies of the book on reserve at Wells. During the COVID pandemic, with library reserves shut down, this situation has become untenable… I have been looking for the time and intellectual space to identify and develop all-digital materials, and this fellowship would provide it.” – Kathryn Graber, Department of Anthropology, IU Bloomington
“I appreciate the opportunity to learn from experts and colleagues about OER materials.” – Shana Stump, Department of Political Science, IUPUI
“I’m interested in finding free materials to serve as a reference in the classroom for students.” – Rick Hullinger, Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, IU Bloomington
The Course Material Transformation Fellowship Program aims to:
- Lower the cost of college for students in order to contribute to their retention, progression, and graduation
- Encourage the development of alternatives to high-cost textbooks by supporting the adoption, adaptation, and creation of Open Educational Resources (OER)
- Make course material access on the first day of class a reality for all students, regardless of socioeconomic status
- Support instructors in navigating the variety of affordable course material solutions available and aggregate material instructor support across campus into one space
Even outside of the Fellowship Program, our Department provides support to faculty members who wish to introduce open educational resources and open pedagogy to the classroom. Consult our OER Libguide or contact us for more information.
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