SPARC Projects

Connect OER

Open Education

University of California - Los Angeles

Los Angeles, CA, United States
Official Website • @UCLA

Type: Public 4-Year, Research University
Annual Enrollment: 41,845

  SPARC Member  

OER Webpage

Overview

The University of California, Los Angeles, the second-oldest campus of the University of California system, as one of the world's great public research universities, has served as the home of 13 Nobel laureates and 12 MacArthur Fellows. UCLA offers more than 3800 courses in 109 academic departments.
Adoption of OERs represents one part of the Library's overall approach to making course materials more accessible to students. While there are courses that employ traditional textbooks, many others do not assign traditional textbooks or standard OERs as required course reading material. This has resulted in Library collaborations with the campus bookstore to reduce or eliminate licensing fees in course readers for already-licensed resources. Additionally, the Library works with student government and other student organizations to help raise awareness about the challenges presented by expensive textbooks and garners support for adopting alternative resources. The Library also administers the Affordable Course Materials Initiative (ACMI) that pairs instructors with library specialists to identify suitable resources in lieu of expensive textbooks.
The UCLA Library Affordable Course Materials Initiative encourages instructors to use low-cost or free alternatives to expensive course materials. It more closely aligns Library collections with instructional needs and has helped thousands of UCLA students save on the cost of course materials by pairing instructors with a team of Library specialists who help instructors identify, access, adapt, and adopt alternatives including open-access scholarly resources, Library-licensed and owned resources in print or digital form, reformatted special collections items, and learning objects and texts that faculty create themselves.

Campus Details

Campus Entities Most Active in Efforts Advancing OER:

Library Departments Active in Efforts Advancing OER:

Academic Subjects With Greatest OER Traction:

Mechanisms to Support OER Included in the Following:

OER Staff Location:


OER Programs

Affordable Course Materials Initiative (Pilot)

The UCLA Library Affordable Course Materials Initiative encourages instructors to use low-cost or free alternatives to expensive course materials. It more closely aligns Library collections with instructional needs and has helped thousands of UCLA students save on the cost of course materials by pairing instructors with a team of Library specialists who help instructors identify, access, adapt, and adopt alternatives including open-access scholarly resources, Library-licensed and owned resources in print or digital form, reformatted special collections items, and learning objects and texts that faculty create themselves.

Awards are available of $1,000 each for instructors teaching courses with enrollments of fewer than two hundred students and of $2,500 each for instructors teaching courses with enrollments of more than two hundred students. Collection development awards may also be designated to build or enhance library collections in support of specific courses. The financial sums are meant to offer an incentive for the time it will take instructors to identify new resources, adjust syllabi, and modify assignments and can also be used to cover any actual expenses incurred by the instructor.

The initiative has been endorsed by the Office of the UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost and the UCLA Academic Senate.

Program Type:

Duration: 03/2013 - 01/2015

Program Webpage: http://www.library.ucla.edu/about/about-collections/open-scholarship-collections-policy/affordable-course-materials-initiative

Scope: Affordable course content, including cost-free course content and OER

Primary OER Strategy: OER Adaptation

Secondary OER Strategies: OER Adoption, OER Awareness, OER Curation, OER Pedagogy, OER Publication, OER Review/Assessment, OER Research

Unit Housing the Program:

Program Partners:

Source of Program Funding:

Total Program Funding to Date: $ 30,000

Total Student Savings to Date: $ 161,289

Incentives Offered by the Program:

Conditions: Recipients are encouraged to openly license and freely share resources created or adapted

Total amount of incentive grants awarded to date: $ 27,500

Total number of incentive grants awarded to date: 24

Typical amount of each grant: $ 1,000

ACMI Reserves

Piloted as an additional service of the UCLA Library Affordable Course Materials Initiative in Fall Quarter, 2017, ACMI Reserves leverages existing Library services to provide expanded access to materials supporting course instruction. ACMI Reserves became a recurring service offering of UCLA Library in Fall Quarter 2018.

Duration: 09/2018 - Present

Program Webpage: https://www.library.ucla.edu/about/about-collections/open-scholarship-collections-policy/affordable-course-materials-initiative

Scope: Affordable course content, including cost-free course content and OER

Primary OER Strategy: OER Curation

Secondary OER Strategies: OER Adoption, OER Awareness, OER Pedagogy

Unit Housing the Program:

Program Partners:

Source of Program Funding:

Funding from Library Departments:

Total Program Funding to Date: $ 23,707

Total Student Savings to Date: $ 827,467

Incentives Offered by the Program:

Links:
Other Resource

OER Resources

Affordable Course Materials Initiative

LibGuide of the UCLA Library Affordable Course Materials Initiative. Information about program history, application process, and additional resources supporting affordability and OER.

Resource Permissions:
CC BY NC


Point of Contact

Jennifer Chan
Scholarly Communication Librarian, Scholarly Communication & Licensing Unit, UCLA Library
@ScholCommUCLA