SPARC Projects

Connect OER

Open Education

Florida State University

Tallahassee, FL, United States
Official Website • @floridastate

Type: Public 4-Year, Research University
Annual Enrollment: 41,226

  SPARC Member  

OER Webpage
OER LibGuide

Overview

Florida State University (FSU) is an American public space-grant and sea-grant research university with approximately 42,000 students and 5,500 academic staff. FSU's OER program launched in November 2016, when a team from FSU Libraries began planning and promotion for two OER advocacy initiatives: a #textbookbroke tabling campaign for students and an OER grant program for instructors. Whereas our #textbookbroke events are intended to encourage students to share how textbook costs have affected them and provide feedback on these costs to their instructors, our Alternative Textbook Grants program is intended to incentivize instructors to adopt open or affordable educational resources in place of commercial textbooks and course materials. More information about these programs will be made available on FSU's Campus Activities pages.

Looking ahead, we plan to expand both of the above-mentioned initiatives, in addition to establishing a stronger relationship with our Campus Store and senior administrators. We also hope to join the Open Textbook Network and/or the OpenStax partnership program to better connect with and contribute to the broader community of institutions working to advance OER.

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

Alternative Textbook Grants

The cost of college textbooks has risen at 300% the rate of inflation since 1978, with a 90% cost increase over the last decade alone. Students increasingly report not purchasing textbooks due to high costs, a trend which is widely recognized to negatively impact student learning outcomes. To address these concerns, Florida State University (FSU) Libraries are offering Alternative Textbook grants to support faculty and instructors in their efforts to replace commercial textbooks with open alternatives that are available at no cost to students.

Starting in January 2017, five grants of $1000 each are available for FSU faculty or instructors who are interested in adopting or remixing open textbooks and educational resources to replace commercial course materials. Proposals to replace commercial materials with Library-licensed electronic books or journal articles will also be considered. More information is available at https://www.lib.fsu.edu/alttextbooks.

Program Type:

Duration: 01/2017 - Present

Program Webpage: https://www.lib.fsu.edu/alttextbooks

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

Primary OER Strategy: OER Adoption

Secondary OER Strategies: OER Adaptation, OER Awareness, OER Curation, OER Pedagogy, OER Research

Unit Housing the Program:

Source of Program Funding:

Funding from Library Departments:

Total Program Funding to Date: $ 6,000

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: $ 6,000

Typical amount of each grant: $ 1,000

Links:
MOU for Participants
Assessment Instrument

OER Events

Open Education Symposium

Florida State University hosted a one-day Open Education Symposium on March 8th, 2018. The purpose of the symposium was to raise awareness about Open Educational Resources (OER) and their potential to support student success by reducing textbook costs and creating opportunities for open, learner-centered pedagogy. David Wiley, Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning, delivered the opening keynote presentation, which was followed by invited presentations from faculty and students in addition to collaborative breakout sessions. Recordings of all of the presentations are available here: http://fla.st/2tOJs6g

To document the symposium and facilitate the planning and promotion of similar events at other institutions, the symposium organizers have made all outputs and planning materials publicly available in an OSF project: https://osf.io/pcwfz/. To encourage broad reuse, most of the files shared in this OSF project are made available under a CC BY 4.0 license or a CC0 1.0 public domain dedication. Please check the license information for the relevant project component to determine which license applies to specific files you wish to reuse.

Date: April 8, 2018 - April 8, 2018

Event Type:

Event themes:

Scope: OER (open course content)

Approximate Attendees: 70

Links:
Event Summary
Promotional Material
Recording
Slides
Photos
News Coverage

Capital City Virtual Summer Series

University Libraries, in collaboration with the Office of Distance Learning and Center for the Advancement of Teaching is hosting the Capital City Virtual Series on Open Educational Resources, a monthly “brown bag” series.This was a free, virtual professional development opportunity for faculty, students and administrators in the Tallahassee community, including Tallahassee Community College and Florida A&M University. There were 73 total participants in the live virtual sessions. 42 participants continued the conversation in an open Canvas course which offered teaching materials, information, and opportunities for asynchronous discussion.

Date: May 15, 2020 - July 17, 2020

Event Type:

Event themes:

Scope: OER (open course content)

Approximate Attendees: 73

Links:
Event Summary
Recording


Point of Contact

Camille Thomas
Scholarly Communications Librarian
@afrofuturistlib