VIVA: Spring 2024 Open Course Grant Recipients
Developing OER Assessments for BIO 101
Total Award: $10,765
Project Lead: Charuta Mirajkar
Course: BIO 101: General Biology 1
Institutions: Brightpoint Community College, Germanna Community College
Project: The team will create a series of question banks that will be compatible with the content flow of the OpenStax Biology 2-e textbook.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $187,500
Students Affected Per Year: 4,900
Development of Ancillary Homework/Tutorials, Labs, and In-class Questions for an Introductory Astronomy Course
Total Award: $22,188
Project Lead: Matthew Pryal
Course: ASTR 1210: Introduction to the Sky and Solar System
Institutions: University of Virginia
Project: The team will develop a series of online homework assignments and tutorials, laboratory modules, and in-class questions for use in ASTR 1210: Introduction to the Sky and Solar System courses.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $169,380
Students Affected Per Year: 2,250
Open Textbook for International Business + Ancillaries
Total Award: $26,288
Project Lead: Laura Raschke
Course: MGT 2314: Introduction to International Business
Institutions: Virginia Tech
Project: The team will develop an original, multi-format, openly licensed, and freely available open textbook and related instructional ancillaries (test bank, slides, class activities) relevant to an undergraduate (sophomore to senior-level) required core course in international business.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $186,240
Students Affected Per Year: 4,130
Expanding Access for First-Year English Composition Students
Total Award: $39,677.50
Project Lead: Susannah Givens, Professor
Course: ENG 111: College Composition I
Institutions: Northern Virginia Community College
Project: The team will develop an OER textbook for first-semester English composition courses
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $372,000
Students Affected Per Year: 6,000
OER Transition for Laurel Ridge Math Department
Total Award: $20,000
Project Lead: Cody Fouts
Course: Math 161 (Precalculus), 162 (Precalculus2), and 167 (Precalculus with Trigonometry)
Institutions: Laurel Ridge Community College
Project: The Laurel Ridge Community College Math Department will facilitate the large-scale adoption of OER into Precalculus courses Math 161, 162, and 167, including textbooks and complementary homework platforms.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $97,487
Students Affected Per Year: 1,300
OER-Enabled Experiential Learning in Online Course Design and Development
Total Award: $10,000
Project Lead: Xinyue Ren
Course: IDT 7/875: Designing Online Instruction
Institutions: Old Dominion University
Project: This open pedagogy project will redesign and redevelop a graduate-level online course to increase students' active role in open knowledge creation. The team will adopt two open textbooks and integrate the idea of OER-enabled experiential learning to redesign the IDT 7/875 course to ensure alignment among learning objectives, instructional materials, and assessments.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $739,020
Students Affected Per Year: 3,720
Foundations of Engineering OER Creation and Curation
Total Award: $5,000
Project Lead: Lisa Denise Murphy
Course: EGR 121: Foundations of Engineering
Institutions: New River Community College
Project: Dr. Murphy will create an OER course meeting all learning objectives of EGR 121 (Foundations of Engineering) in the VCCS. Each module will contain several brief, focused, self-contained mini-modules, with every mini-module having a reading and a video.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $33,000
Students Affected Per Year: 300
Introduction to Early Childhood Development OER Project
Total Award: $13,000
Project Lead: Jeanne Tardiff
Course: CHD 120: Introduction to Early Childhood Education
Institutions: Tidewater Community College
Project: The Introduction to Early Childhood Education (CHD 120) OER Project will replace the program’s most expensive textbook, which is also required for students enrolled in the early childhood development program at TCC.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $451,710
Students Affected Per Year:1,800
Historical Geology Phase 2: Case studies and lab exercises
Total Award: $32,823
Project Lead: Karen M. Layou
Course: GOL 106: Historical Geology
Institutions: J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, Piedmont Virginia Community College, Laurel Ridge Community College
Project: The team will write a minimum of eight new case studies, develop up to ten OER historical geology (Geology 106) lab exercises, and continue the maintenance of Historical Geology (https://opengeology.org/historicalgeology/), an OER developed with prior VIVA Course Redesign funding.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $739,020
Students Affected Per Year: 3,720
Creating Open Course Materials for World Regional Geography
Total Award: $6,000
Project Lead: Caitlin Finlayson
Course: GEOG 101: World Regional Geography
Institutions: University of Mary Washington
Project: Dr. Finlayson will develop supplemental materials for the open textbook, World Regional Geography, including PowerPoint lectures, detailed instructor notes, and engaging classroom activities, designed to facilitate effective teaching and to ease the friction in switching to an OER text.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $0 (Open Ancillary Grants improve the adoptability of texts already in use in other classrooms across Virginia.)
Students Affected Per Year: 650
Empowering Online Biology Education: Developing an Open Lab Manual for Principles of Biology Lab I
Total Award: $17,746
Project Lead: Amanda Rumore
Course: BIOL 1185L: Principles of Biology I
Institutions: Randolph College
Project: The project aims to address the critical need for comprehensive and accessible lab materials for online introductory biology courses by creating an open lab manual tailored specifically for online instruction, filling a gap in available resources.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $16,000
Students Affected Per Year: 160
A Perfectly Imperfect Mind: Using Cognitive Psychology to Explain Human Experience OER
Total Award: $48,977
Project Lead: Kimberly Newberry
Course:PSY 316: Cognitive Psychology
Institutions: Shenandoah University, Eastern Mennonite University, James Madison University, Randolph-Macon College, University of Utah, York College of Pennsylvania, Columbus State University, University of Illinois
Project: The team will create a new, representative and accessible OER textbook for Cognitive Psychology, integrating newly created material, in addition to adapted material.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $321,646
Students Affected Per Year: 3,725
Dear Computer: An Interactive Programming Languages Textbook
Total Award: $6,750
Project Lead: Chris Johnson
Course: CS 430: Programming Languages
Institutions: James Madison University
Project: Dr. Johnson will create a digital textbook, Dear Computer, for an upper-division programming languages course in a computer science curriculum.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $67,500
Students Affected Per Year: 900
Developing an Open Textbook for Introduction to Computer Science Courses
Total Award: $6,000
Project Lead: Ian Finlayson
Course: CPSC 110: Introduction to Computer Science
Institutions: University of Mary Washington
Project: Dr. Finlayson will develop an open textbook for an introductory computer science course using the Python programming language.
5 Year Student Cost Avoidance: $0
Students Affected Per Year: 150
