Wednesday, May 31, 2023
During Open Education Week earlier this year, the Library announced support from Staebler Insurance to continue our OER Fellows Grant program for the next five years. As part of the Library’s mission to make learning materials freely accessible and available, this program was launched last year to support the creation of open education resources at Waterloo.
The Library, with the generous support of Staebler Insurance, is providing Waterloo instructors with competitive grants of up to $5,000 each to help create or adapt an open educational resource (OER) for a UWaterloo course.
We’re pleased to announce that four dynamic projects have been selected for support over the next year:
- Building an accurate and learner-centered library of scientific artwork in the area of human physiology (submitted by Dr. Vivian Dayeh, Continuing Lecturer, Department of Biology). A pivotal component of learning and teaching in the medical sciences is the use of accurate and consistent images to support instruction. This project will create a complete library of image assets to be used in the instruction of human physiology that will be openly available to all learners.
- Calculus 1 for the sciences (Math 127/128) (submitted by Dan Wolczuk, Continuing Lecturer, Department of Mathematics). After substantial updates to the approach to teaching introductory calculus to science students, there is an identified need for resources that match this new direction. This project will create accessible course notes that can benefit science students across Canada and beyond.
- Empowering English as an Additional Language (EAL) students: designing scientific diagrams that cross language barriers (submitted by Dr. Sarah Ruffell, Lecturer, Department of Biology). This project will create and design scientific images that don't require English labelling or detailed explanations to support the learning of students with English as an Additional Language.
- An introduction to transportation engineering principles and application (submitted by Dr. Pezhouhan Tavassoti-Kheiry, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering). This project will create sustainable and accessible course notes to support the learning of students and can be easily updated and tailored to the Canadian context of transportation engineering.
Stay tuned for updates on these projects next March during Open Education Week (March 4 – 8, 2024).
