Monday, March 4, 2024
As part of the Library’s mission to make learning materials freely accessible and available, the Staebler Insurance OER Fellows Grant supports the creation of open education resources (OER) at Waterloo. The Library, with the generous support of Staebler Insurance, provides Waterloo instructors with competitive grants of up to $5,000 each to help create or adapt OER for use in a Waterloo course.
As we prepare to announce a new round of grant recipients during Open Education Week, we’re reflecting on the progress the 2023-24 fellows have made on their projects.
Dan Wolczuk, lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, created Calculus 1 for the Sciences course notes.
A longtime supporter of OER, Wolczuk is a proponent of lowering costs for students while ensuring quality resources for the best possible educational outcomes. After noticing a lack of calculus OER at the introductory level, and reviewing new research in education and neuroscience, he became interested in creating an OER that matched the needs of his students. However, this would be a huge undertaking. With the support of the Staebler Insurance OER Fellows Grant, it was possible for him to move this project forward and seek out the help needed to develop course notes supporting a new approach. Over a thousand hours have been invested and early feedback is promising. Wolczuk says, “The data is demonstrating that the new method is working very well, so having these course notes as OER means that this method can potentially benefit students at other institutions as well.”
Sarah Ruffell, lecturer in the Department of Biology, developed scientific diagrams that cross language barriers to empower English Language Learners (ELL) students.
When teaching scientific concepts, terminology can be a barrier to many. Visual aids can help communicate these complex ideas, but many scientific diagrams still rely on labelling and English proficiency for comprehension. This barrier was becoming increasingly apparent to Ruffell, whose classes include a large proportion of students who are English Language Learners (ELLs). After a search of existing OER didn’t come up with anything useful, the idea for this project came to Ruffell: “By providing visuals that are clear and intuitive, students can better understand complex scientific concepts. Greater comprehension of course content can also increase student interest and engagement in the classroom.” The Staebler Insurance OER Fellows Grant enabled Ruffell to take this project from idea to reality. With the support of a professional designer, a collection of clear, language-free images depicting scientific concepts was created. Now, not only can these images foster a more inclusive and supportive learning environment for Ruffell’s students, but students around the world.
Dr. Vivian Dayeh, lecturer in the Department of Biology, developed an accurate and learner-centered library of human physiology images.
The cost of instructional materials for her undergraduate students is something Dr. Dayeh keeps a close eye on and has long had an interest in OER as a means to reduce those costs. However, in her field of study, medical science, high quality OER are still hard to find, particularly when it comes to human physiology images. “The use of precise and consistent graphics is essential to understanding and teaching physiology, and this presents challenges for the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the Human Physiology course offered both on campus and online,” says Dayeh. With support from the Staebler Insurance OER Fellows Grant, Dayeh was able to hire artists to create a library of image assets that can be used in human physiology instruction. With this bank of images now openly accessible, she’s encouraged that one large hurdle to creating physiology OER textbooks and online learning activities has been overcome and that more will soon be available, ultimately decreasing costs for students without compromising education quality.
For more information on the Library’s Staebler Insurance OER Fellows Grant, visit Open Scholarship at Waterloo.
