Eight projects will share nearly $40,000 in the seventh year of Miller* mini-grants for faculty efforts to develop open educational resources (OER). In addition to giving faculty some freedom to customize their course content, these freely licensed course materials save students money.
The program is co-sponsored by the University Library, Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and the office of the senior vice president and provost. The mini-grants, up to $5,000, give instructors time and resources to redesign their courses around the use of OER. The call for proposals for 2025-26 awards will be posted early in spring semester 2025.
Below are project summaries for the eight recipients of 2024 Miller Open Education Mini-grants. The first two are funded from an additional $10,000 track this year that's focused on the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The ISU Digital Press, a unit of University Library, became a signatory to the SDG Publishers Compact last year to try to bring more attention to the goals, so this is a focus area for new publications by the press.
"We're trying to identify all the ways, big or small, we can support those sustainable development goals," said Abbey Elder, open access and scholarly communication librarian, University Library. "We decided to develop a track in the Miller OER program to specifically fund new projects in this area and give people a jumping-off point for future work."
Project: Can we save ourselves? Building collaborative narratives as a learning tool for humanity's future
Principal Investigator: Kurt Rosentrater, agricultural and biosystems engineering
Courses: HONS 3210 (non-first year seminar); HONS 4900 (Independent study)
This project will involve Rosentrater's students in developing case studies that focus on the United Nations' SDGs. Multiple dimensions of all 17 SDGs will be explored, cataloged and synthesized, including: social humanitarian aspects, environmental impacts, economic costs, government policy choices and individual leadership components. These case studies will be compiled in an open educational resource that will serve as the learning material for subsequent classes.
Project: Empathy-driven design: Tools for inclusive innovation
PIs: Bruno Oro, Matt Obbink and Subinay Malhotra, industrial design
Courses: INDD 3020 and INDD 4010 (studio courses), INDD 4990 (senior project course)
This project will create a responsive and inclusive learning environment that empowers future designers to create impactful solutions for all users, regardless of ability, using method cards, a design tool intended to inspire creativity and discussion. In developing the method cards, students, designers and academics will consider how they can make their work more inclusive. Students will use the method cards to engage in hands-on experiences, fostering a deeper understanding of the diverse needs of users, including those with disabilities.
Project: Video lecture series for parametric modeling and building performance simulations
PI: Chengde Wu, architecture
Courses: ARCH 5430, ARCH 5440, ARCH 6410, ARCH 6420
Teaching graduate-level architecture courses has inherent challenges, including the inconsistent educational background of the students, outdated or inefficient course materials and the high cost of textbooks and online resources. Wu will develop 52 video lectures, 5-20 minutes each depending on the topic, to teach parametric modeling and build performance simulation tools. These video lectures are expected to significantly reduce the gaps among the students' background knowledge by providing high-quality, free course materials to encourage review and lifelong learning.
Project: Creating woodshop safety videos and resources for the College of Design
PI: Peter Scheidt, art and visual culture
Courses: ARTIS 2020, ARTIS 3200, ARTIS 4200, ARTIS 5200 and the college's Model Shop
This project will create a safety handbook for basic woodworking machinery, designed for use in academic instructional woodshops. The open handbook, consisting of standard operating procedures presented in both video and text/graphical formats, will be used in art and visual culture departmental woodworking courses taught by Scheidt or in the Model Shop and be available for any interested external parties.
Project: Developing a comprehensive, open-access handbook for graphic design history
PI: Tina Rice, graphic design
Courses: ARTGR 3870; ARTGR 5870 (Graphic Design History/Theory/Criticism)
Because of the gaps present in many graphic design history textbooks, Rice has adopted additional resources to supplement her courses. However, requiring students to purchase multiple course materials places an unreasonable financial burden on them. This is particularly true for students outside the discipline who don't have an ongoing interest in graphic design. This project will develop a unified open handbook for the two graphic design history courses to provide students with a more cohesive learning experience and ultimately support a student-centered, inclusive and well-designed course.
Project: Creating an open education laboratory manual for BIOL 2120 lab
PIs: Carly Manz, genetics, development and cell biology; and Chanda Skelton, ecology, evolution and organismal biology
Course: BIOL 2120L, Principles of Biology Laboratory II
This lab course's textbook provider is moving away from print options for their books. Because of this change, the project PIs decided to develop a lab manual for their course with the ISU Digital Press that will be available online and in print. The teaching staff already has produced much of the content; this grant will allow them to hire a graphic artist to supplement their work with illustrations. A digital version of the OER manual will be provided to students for free. Students will be required to purchase (for less than $10) an excerpt of printed material for reference while completing their lab during class each week.
Project: Improving the learning experience while reducing students' cost
in Intermediate Managerial Accounting
PI: Christine Denison, accounting
Course: ACCT 3830, Intermediate Managerial Accounting
This course currently makes use of a blend of materials, including original materials presented in Canvas and Immediate Access materials. However, using an Immediate Access textbook requires moving from readings in the textbook to lectures in Canvas, then back to the textbook for practice problems, and back to Canvas for supplemental resources, leading to a disjointed learning experience. The goal of this project is to develop an all-inclusive open educational resource that integrates the material accessed through outside sources with the lectures and supplemental resources accessed through the course's Canvas site to provide students with a seamless learning experience that costs them nothing.
Project: Expanding and enhancing an existing OER textbook
PI: Lily Compton, Agata Guskaroska and Elena Cotos, Graduate College
Courses: Graduate studies 5400 series (5400A,B,C and D, English for Teaching Purposes)
This grant project will expand and enhance the open textbook, "Oral Communication for Non-Native Speakers of English," an online resource used by GRST 5400 instructors and certified English Speaking Consultants in the college's Center for Communication Excellence who work with international teaching assistants and graduate students to improve their oral communication skills. The current edition covers only one of the skills targeted in the course, pronunciation, so the team will expand and improve the current text into a second edition that adds content on listening and speaking strategies.
Elder said grant recipients have some choice in where to publish and share their completed resources. Depending on the resource, many are shared through the library's digital press or its digital repository.
*The Miller mini-grants are named for F. Wendell Miller, a Rockwell City attorney whose estate created the Miller Endowment Trust, with trust income divided evenly between Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. Miller trust income supported the initial projects in this OER program, and annual earnings support faculty development proposals, graduate scholarships and other academic initiatives.
