Project Title:

Running the Open Road II: Second year of the Open Roadrunners program

Applicant(s) Names and Contact Information (please include email, phone, and address of primary, secondary, and tertiary contact for proposal:

1. Emily Ragan, eragan@msudenver, 303-615-0265, MSU Denver, Campus Box 52, P.O. Box 173362, Denver, CO80217

2. Matt Griswold, mgriswo2@msudenver.edu, 608-609-6033, MSU Denver, Campus Box 48, P.O. Box 173362,Denver, CO 80217

3. Karen Meyer, kmeyer29@msudenver.edu, 303-605-5284, MSU Denver, Campus Box 48, P.O. Box 173362,Denver, CO 80217

Application Type (select one): Continuation or Extension of Project a. Awards size vary depending on the need (no more than $100,000).

Institutional Affiliation(s): Metropolitan State University of Denver In an effort to create cross-campus OER networking and support, please indicate if you consent to sharing your contact information with other applicants from your institution, system or in the state. The Colorado OER Council intends to continue to connect potential partners throughout the state to pursue goals related to the charge of this initiative. Pick one:

Yes; I consent to sharing my information with potential collaborators.

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MSU Denver Current OER Grant Program Summary and Assessment of Progress

Our Open Roadrunners Program1 provides faculty incentives and training to increase the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) at Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver). We believe we can re-inspire and elevate the quality of learning experiences by empowering instructors to share and iterate upon one another’s pedagogical progress and innovations, keeping textbook costs down and building on MSU Denver’s founding mission of being an affordable, urban school. Our initiative is enthusiastically supported by our MSU Denver President Davidson, Provost Golich, Director of Center for Teaching, Learning and Design, Dr. Loats, and Student Government Assembly (SGA) President Danielle Holmes (see Appendix A).

Our faculty incentives and training currently fall into three categories: Open Textbook Review workshops, OER Faculty Learning Communities (OER FLCs), and OER Adoption Grants. The Open Roadrunners program is coordinated by MSU Denver OER Coordinator Emily Ragan, Academic Affairs Program Manager Karen Meyer, and the rest of the MSU Denver OER task force including:

• Matt Griswold, Associate Vice Presidentof Online Learning;

• Ellen Metter, Research SupportLibrarian - Collection DevelopmentProgram Lead (Auraria Library);

• Letitia Pleis, College of Business Faculty;

• Darcy Vigneault Beery, College ofProfessional Studies Faculty;

• Andrew Bonham, College of Letters,Arts & Sciences & Council of ChairsRepresentative;

• Danielle Holmes, SGA President.

Open Textbook Review Workshops We run our Open Textbook Review workshops in the style of the Open Textbook Network, providing faculty $200 stipends upon completion of the workshop and the submission of a textbook review to the Open Textbook Network, an organization that MSU Denver joined in Fall 2018. Since receiving the CDHE OER grant, we have held four Open Textbook Review workshops: one in Spring 2019, one in Summer 2019, and two this Fall 2019. With our current funding we plan to offer one more of these workshops in Spring 2020.

We have had 61 faculty attend Open Textbook Review workshops, 41 of whom have written reviews of an OER resource in their field, and remaining faculty reviews are due by November 29, 2019. Follow-up data from our first two review workshops indicates that 11 of the 31 faculty reviewers in those workshops will adopt the OER resource they reviewed in a future course, with 18 more also considering implementation. We are continuing to reach out to past Open Textbook Review workshop participants to support their exploration and adoption of OER, some of whom have gone on to participate in OER FLCs and the OER Adoption Grant program.

OER Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) Fall 2019 is our fourth semester offering an OER FLC facilitated by faculty member Emily Ragan and co-facilitated by Auraria librarian Ellen Metter. The goals of the FLC are to provide and share information and inspiration around OER use, explore how OER can be used to enhance student and instructor experiences in courses, support faculty in meeting their own OER related teaching goals, and build a cohort of OER-interested faculty. The FLCs have involved 34 MSU Denver faculty and have included presentations by facilitators on Creative Commons, OER discovery strategies, and the course design

1 The Roadrunner is the MSU Denver mascot.

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processes. Gabe Christie, MSU Denver Accessibility Manager, trained faculty in best practices around ADA accessibility. In addition, the Fall 2019 OER FLC is giving OER interested faculty a chance to meet with MSU Denver faculty experienced in using OER in courses, most of whom are former OER FLC participants themselves (Todd Laugen, History; Letitia Pleis, Business; Chrislyn Randall, Psychology; Meredith Flynn, Center for Teaching, Learning and Design).

OER Adoption Grants and Estimated Savings from Year One Three faculty members received OER adoption stipends over the Spring and Summer semesters (2019) for the following three courses:

• General Chemistry II: high cost of materials, general studies;• Introduction to Public Speaking: high overall enrollment;• Communication Theory

We expanded the OER Adoption Grant program, solicited faculty proposals for $750 in mid-September 2019, and at the end of September 2019 notified 27 OER Adoption Grant awardees. Assuming suitable progress on their projects, these 27 awardees will be paid at the end of December 2019. Their adoption projects range in size but collectively are expected to impact over 3,800 students and save over $370,000 dollars in the first semester of implementation. These anticipated savings are in addition to the $264,600 dollars of savings anticipated from Fall 2019-Fall 2020 for OER adoptions identified prior to this round of OER Adoption Grants, largely through Open Textbook Review workshops and OER FLC participation, for a cumulative total estimated savings of over $600,000 from our $60,000 year-one OER grant. As our OER adoption efforts are continuing, we hope to report an even higher number in May 2020 at the end of the year-one grant reporting period.

OER efforts build on MSU Denver’s existing mission of providing high quality, accessible, enriching education and our core value of access for all students, many of whom are low-income or first-generation. Our vision is to create a community of OER practitioners and a culture of instructional innovation that directly supports our mission and commitment to access. We have taken into account the MSU Denver 2020 Strategic Plan, which emphasizes our history of building success by wisely employing the historically limited financial, physical capacity and human resources available to us. OER is clearly in line with MSU Denver strategic plan goal #3; to seek, sustain and grow innovative resources for the University. As the University embarks on a new strategic planning process in the next year, the OER Task Force will recommend OER adoption be an explicit component of that plan. Clearly a shift to OER saves our students money, making the grant funds we received an investment in affordability. We are strongly encouraged by the results out of Georgia, presented in Colvard et al.,2 that shifting to more OER will help improve student success across the board, but even more significantly for Pell Grant eligible and minority students, thus helping decrease equity gaps. The research also shows that material costs delay some students from taking as many courses as they want in a semester, so affordable learning materials help decrease the time to credential completion3 which impacts our students’ retention and graduation rates.

2 Colvard, N. B., Watson, C. E., & Park, H. (2018). The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 30(2), 15.

3 Florida Virtual Campus Office of Distance Learning and Student Services. (2016). 2016 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey. Retrieved from https://florida.theorangegrove.org/og/file/3a65c507-2510-42d7-814c-ffdefd394b6c/1/2016%20Student%20Textbook%20Survey.pdf

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Additional Resources OpenStax Partner Program The funding we received from the state in early 2019 from our first Open Roadrunners grant and the additional funding from our Provost were instrumental in our successful application to participate in the 2019-2020 OpenStax Institutional Partner Program, a no-cost, year-long program that only accepted 11 institutions across the country. To our knowledge, we are the first Colorado school to participate in the OpenStax Partner Program, through which we are pursuing eight tactics for increasing faculty adoption of OER. The program also provides an accountability group to help us move forward in this important work.

Open Education Week: Auraria Library We led, in coordination with the Auraria Library, an Open Education Week initiative around the cost of textbooks. Boards with the prompt “Instead of buying textbooks I could have bought...” were set up in the library and the Student Success Building. Students left their replies on post-it notes and responses were collected into a word cloud (see Appendix B). We also supported a tri-institutional open education learning and celebration event at the Auraria library on April 24, 2019 and continue to partner with the Auraria library to support OER efforts at our institution and tri-institutionally. The most recent tri-institutional effort was the October 11th Open Textbook Network-style review workshop led by Ellen Metter and Emily Ragan for faculty at all three Auraria campus institutions. See letter of support by Ms. Cinthya Ippolitti, Director of Auraria Library (Appendix A).

OER Webpage: MSU Denver We created an MSU Denver OER webpage, available at: https://msudenver.edu/academic-affairs/studentinformation/openeducationalresources/. We are working to list no-cost OER courses at this time and are continuing work to integrate an OER designation in our course management software, Banner, in time for Fall 2020.

Faculty Surveys In October 2018 we distributed faculty survey to access a baseline OER level of awareness and received 330 responses out of a total pool of 558 full-time faculty members and 938 affiliate faculty members. We noted the need for increased promotion of OER at MSU Denver, as 68% of faculty surveyed were unaware of OER or somewhat aware, but not sure how OER could be used. In Fall 2019 we gave the same survey and received a similar number of responses (293). We found that the percentage of faculty unaware through somewhat aware of OER decreased to 55%, while the number of faculty reporting as “very aware” increased from 7.9% to 16.7%, indicating success of our outreach efforts over the past year (see Appendix C). Of the faculty not using OER, 25% indicated that lack of OER awareness was the reason why. Through the survey, we invited faculty interested in learning more about OER to share their contact information, which yielded names of 28 faculty from 20 different departments. We will invite these faculty to Open Textbook Review workshops and other sessions about OER and continue to follow up to nurture their interest.

Awards In Spring 2019 we gave out our inaugural OER Awards during an MSU Denver celebratory event called RoadRunners Who SOAR. Open Educational Resources Used in a Course awards were given to Dr. Andrew Bonham (Chemistry) and Dr. Todd Laugen (History). Dr. Bonham was recognized for his adoption of OER in a master course for CHE 2100, Introduction to Organic and Biochemistry, a course taken by about 120 students per year and with a high textbook cost (over $100). Dr. Laugen co-wrote “Colorado History Detectives: Teaching Historical Literacy to School-Aged Readers”, which

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is the first OER textbook placed in the Auraria Library repository.4 The book aims to benefit K-12 students and teachers across the state and was also used in Dr. Laugen’s Spring 2019 section of HIS 3425, “Colorado and the Nation”.

Associate Director of Instructional Design Alex McDaniel received the OER Promotion on Campus award, recognizing his work encouraging faculty to adopt OER through the instructional design process at MSU Denver and laying the groundwork for an OER movement at MSU Denver.

Continuation of Funding Narrative

The main goal identified in our 2018 Open Roadrunners grant proposal was to create a more affordable post-secondary educational experience for MSU Denver students by removing or substantially reducing exorbitant expenses associated with third-party textbooks, software, etc. This reduction makes education, and ultimately employment, more accessible to more students. We have increased the number of students impacted by OER from less than one percent of the duplicated headcount5 to at least two percent (over 3500 student impacts in 2019-2020), with a projection of 6,000 students impacted from existing and planned adoptions for the year 2020-2021.

However, we still have a long way to go before use of OER is normative. Our goal with this continuation grant is to drive those numbers further up and achieve 6% of our duplicated headcount using OER, which is approximately 10,000 impacts in the year 2021-2022 (some students may be impacted in multiple classes and count for multiple impacts). A continuation in funding will support future OER adoptions at MSU Denver through the three tiers of faculty incentives we used in year one: Open Textbook Review workshops, OER FLCs, and OER Adoption Grants. We are also adding a fourth tier, for OER Adaption or Creation, to give faculty more options for courses with sparse or unsatisfactory existing OER options. We are also partnering with the MSU Denver Student Government Association to explore options to increase student awareness.

Our goal for year-two funding is to switch 30 new courses to OER, with at least five of those being high-enrollment, multi-section courses where all sections switch to OER. We also are aiming for expanded OER adoption across more sections in at least ten other courses where OER is currently being piloted. We are actively recruiting interested faculty from our 15 concurrent enrollment courses and expect a minimum of three courses switched to OER in the coming year if funded (AAS 1010, Intro to Africana Studies; SPA 2110 & SPA 2120, Spanish Reading & Communication I & II). We will continue to target high-enrollment general studies courses, with a goal of at least seven more switching to OER by Fall 2021, while also reaching out to faculty across campus who have indicated that they are ready to explore OER options for their courses.

We anticipate an additional 4,000 students impacted and $400,000 saved in the first semester of year-two grant-supported OER implementation, with more substantial savings shown as courses are taught in

4 http://digital.auraria.edu/IR00000092/00001

5 Duplicated headcount is sometimes called “butts in seats.” If a student takes nine courses over the course of a year, they would count as nine in the duplicated head count. In 2018-19 MSU Denver’s yearly duplicated headcount was 163397.

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subsequent semesters. Note that the first semester of implementation will vary by course, ranging from Summer 2020 to Fall 2021 for funding distributed from Spring 2020-Spring 2021.

Our planned OER initiative supports the Colorado Commission on Higher Education Master Plan strategic goals by increasing faculty awareness and use of OER through stipend-supported opportunities, which meets goal #4, investing in affordability and innovation. There is also evidence that OER usage contributes to increasing credential completion (goal #1), decreasing equity gaps (goal #2), and improving student success (goal #3).6

Narrative of significant changes from the original grant proposal

We are continuing the major areas of our original Open Roadrunners grant: faculty stipends for faculty OER review ($200), OER training (FLCs, $500 stipends) and OER adoption ($750). We are adding a new category, to support more extensive OER adaption or creation efforts, of 3 credit hours of release time ($3600).

In our 2018 grant proposal, we targeted high-enrollment courses with an emphasis on Chemistry (CHE 1100, CHE 1800, CHE 1810, CHE 3100, CHE 3110) and Communications courses (CAS 1010, CAS 1710). In addition, OER pilots are being run in several classes, including high enrollment, lower division courses Intro to Cultural Anthropology (ANT 1310), World Regional Geography (GEG 1000), Math for Liberal Arts (MTH 1080), Introduction to Ethics (PHI 1030), and Introductory Psychology (PSY 1001). We exceeded our expected outcomes in terms of number of students impacted and cost savings, while also supporting faculty training around ADA accessibility issues.

If funded for Open Roadrunners II, we are targeting adoption in additional high-enrollment courses, including Introduction to Social Work (SWK 1010), World History (HIS 1030, HIS 1040), American History (HIS 1210, HIS 1220), and for the first time, concurrent enrollment courses with the support of Jessica Buckmaster, Concurrent Enrollment Manager. We also plan outreach to faculty in Math and Biology departments, while also supporting all faculty expressing interest in adopting OER through Open Textbook Review workshops, slots in upcoming OER FLC, and one-on-one meetings with our OER coordinator (Emily Ragan), Auraria Librarian/OER expert (Ellen Metter) and Accessibility Manager (Gabe Christie).

Any resources newly created for courses will be developed using current best practices in ADA accessibility and shared under a Creative Commons license that allows remixing and sharing. We will encourage faculty to deposit resources in the Auraria Library Institutional Repository (AIR), which requires a CC-BY license, using the self-submittal tool7 which allows linking to national OER repositories.

Through our experience with the first year of grant funding, we realized that adoption in courses with fewer or spottier existing resources, or with many sections (ex. Intro to Nutrition, with a total headcount

6 Fischer, L., Hilton, J., Robinson, T. J., & Wiley, D. A. (2015). A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 27(3), 159–172. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-015-9101-x

7 http://digital.auraria.edu/air/submitresearch

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of almost 2,000), requires more support. We are adding three credits of course release for larger OER projects. Courses selected for release time support will impact at least 100 students and have an estimated savings of at least $10,000 in a year. Preference will be given to general studies or concurrent enrollment courses and faculty must demonstrate the need for a level of adaption or creation that merits release time rather than the $750 OER adoption stipend. We profile two exciting plans for the new OER Adaption and Creation category below, which cover four of the eight release time slots included in the budget.

A. Social WorkIntroduction to Social Work (SWK 1010) is a social behavioral science general education course and aprerequisite for the social work major, minor, and Bachelor of Science in Social Work (BSSW) degree.This Fall 2019, 122 students are enrolled in SWK 1010. We project 160 students for Spring 2020 and 50for Summer 2020, indicating that this academic year over 300 students may take SWK 1010. SWK 1010 isa general education, high enrollment course that is offered both face-to-face and online. In addition,this course runs at three community colleges that feed into MSU Denver, so materials developed oradapted at MSU Denver may benefit students at additional institutions.

The current textbook used in SWK 1010 is The Introduction to the Profession of Social Work by Segal, Gerdes, & Steiner, which lists at $199.00/printed copy. In addition to the high cost of the text for SWK 1010, Introduction to Social Work textbooks are generalized and do not meet the unique needs or reflect the powerful voices of students at MSU Denver, including students with extensive work experience, community involvement, marginalized identities, and differing abilities. Current texts and resources available for Introduction to Social Work do not reflect MSU Denver’s and social work’s value of decolonizing our educational systems through providing a more accurate account of social work and social welfare history in the United States including the contributions of historically marginalized and oppressed communities.

If funded, this grant would provide two course releases to Social work faculty at MSU Denver to facilitate the revision and repurposing of existing OER, the potential creation of an accessible OER text for SWK 1010, and the adoption of adapted OER into SWK 1010 in fall 2021. These resources would potentially save students approximately $60,000 per year. In addition to savings for students and a higher quality learning environment, creating anti-oppressive OER materials for SWK 1010 highlights the priorities and mission of MSU Denver by providing resources and knowledge creation opportunities for students that work to deconstruct oppressive educational practices and to work towards decolonizing our content, pedagogy, and course design. As other Social Work programs become aware of this resource, MSU Denver would benefit from national exposure as an innovative student-centered university that is actively working towards decolonization and equity education.

B. Spanish CoursesIn the upcoming year, we intend to build Open Educational Resources for both Spanish Reading andCommunication I (SPA 2110) and Spanish Reading and Communication II (SPA 2120). SPA 2110 and SPA2120 are required for the Spanish major and minor, as well as the major in Chicano Studies. Both classesserve as prerequisites for several programs: Certificate in Spanish Translation, all upper-division coursesin the Spanish major and minor, the Linguistics major, the Linguistics minor, the minor in TranslationStudies, and for upper-division classes within the university Bilingual Education Specialist Certificates(Agency or Non-Profit), which are offered through the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD)Education Endorsement Program, the School of Education, the Department of Modern Languages, andthe Department of Chicano Studies.

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SPA 2110 and SPA 2120 are notably the first and second courses in the sequence of concurrent enrollment Spanish courses offered in conjunction with our Denver-Metro partner high schools. As of Fall 2019, the concurrent enrollment program in Spanish involved students and instructors at five area high schools: Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Kunsmiller Creative Arts, North, and South. Spanish was one of the first MSU-Denver programs to become involved with the statewide concurrent enrollment, and a group of Abraham Lincoln High School students completed the full MSU-Denver Spanish minor through the concurrent enrollment program in the Spring of 2019. This has attracted the attention of other area school districts, as well as individual schools in the Denver Public School district, two of which are new to our program in Fall 2019. We project concurrent enrollment numbers in Spanish will increase for Spring 2020 and Fall 2020, as enrollment has recently doubled from approximately 65 high school students enrolled in Spanish courses in Spring 2019 to 130 students this Fall.

Additionally, SPA 2110 and SPA 2120 make strong candidates for Open Educational Resources because MSU Denver earned a Hispanic Serving Institute (HSI) designation in February of 2019. At that time, there were 5,469 enrolled Hispanic and Latino students—more than any other higher education institute in Colorado. A large percentage of the students enrolled in our Spanish language courses, including our concurrent enrollment students, identify as Hispanic and Latino. Furthermore, they represent a large population of heritage speakers, first-generation college students, and/or first-generation immigrants. Creating OER materials for this particular demographic will help level the playing field and provide access to an increasingly diverse population of learners.

Currently, MSU-Denver students are required to purchase Lecturas literarias: Moving toward Linguistic and Cultural Fluency through Literature for SPA 2110 and SPA 2120. The book is used predominantly for the literary readings in each chapter, with the rest of the information and activities passed over in favor of instructor-provided supplementary materials. The textbook is going out of print, and the university has had to obtain special licensing permission to sell pre-made, photocopied packets to students for the past two semesters. This has meant both MSU-Denver students and the Denver Public Schools administration have had to pay regular textbook prices to provide photocopies to students. Since some heritage speakers of Spanish place directly into SPA 2120, this puts them at a disadvantage: they are paying for the full text when they are only using readings from the second half of the book. Similar textbooks (to replace the one going out of print) cost between $150 and $385, which is more than the current cost to students. Creation of OER texts for SPA 2110 and SPA 2120 would save students a considerable amount of money. Having free materials would have saved the current body of Fall 2019 enrolled students a total of over $10,000, and the potential savings to Denver Public Schools over the course of the next few years is tremendous. For new districts, and particularly rural districts, these cost savings are even more important, and may encourage them to join the program.

If funded, this grant would provide two course releases to a Spanish faculty member who serves as coordinator to the 2000-level Spanish courses and as the lead for the Spanish concurrent enrollment classes. It would facilitate the creation of accessible OER texts for SPA 2110 and SPA 2120, which would become a model for future creation and implementation of OER texts for the remaining Spanish courses in the concurrent enrollment sequence (SPA 3110, SPA 3250, and SPA 3200).

By not depending on pre-made, traditional textbooks, which tend to favor predominantly male, canonical authors, our new resources would have the freedom to incorporate readings that better reflect 21st century trends in Spanish-language literature, as well as our unique population of students. Specifically, our OER texts would intentionally incorporate often overlooked or marginalized authors,

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among them women, first generation immigrants, heritage language users, LGBTQIA individuals, and minority populations of Spanish speakers native to Africa and the Philippines. These resources would similarly permit the implementation of hybrid and online sections of SPA 2110 and SPA 2120, which would benefit the student demographic at MSU-Denver, as well as the implementation of these courses at rural high schools that traditionally struggle with adoption of concurrent enrollment classes. As our own program continues to grow, and as other Spanish programs become aware of our resources, MSU-Denver will benefit from national exposure as an innovative, student-centered university that is actively working towards decolonization and accessible, equity-driven education.

Budget Narrative

The majority of the requested grant funds will go toward supporting faculty in OER review, adoption and adaption/creation. We are offering stipends for OER review (30 reviews at $200/review), OER faculty learning community participation (27 FLC spots at $500/participant), and OER adoption grants (30 at $750/grant) (See Appendix D for budget proposal template). These are the same categories as in our 2018 Open Roadrunners grant, with which we’ve had great success. In this continuation we plan to expand into larger scale adaption or creation with eight sets of 3 credit hour release time (8 sets of $3573/3 credits of release time) for faculty OER adaption or creation projects in high-priority courses. We also request $3573 plus 29.1% for benefits to support three credits of release time for a faculty OER coordinator, who will help organize the grant projects and report on grant progress, and $2400 plus 29.1% benefits for OER FLC facilitation (three separate OER FLCs). All together, these funds to augment roles of faculty to support OER ($76,557) and associated benefits required for faculty stipends (29.1% of $76,557 = $22,278; note cost of benefits will be split equally between MSU Denver and the state) account for $98835 of the total cost of the project and $87,696 of the amount requested from the state.

In addition, we are asking for funds for OER support roles. To expand our capacity to support faculty, we are asking for $9,000 plus 22.1% in benefits for a part-time accessibility position to be filled by a graduate student working at $18/hour for 500 hours. This position would help Accessibility Manager Gabe Christie in supporting faculty around ADA accessibility needs, which must be addressed before OER is used in courses, and to assist in awareness and promotion efforts in this rapidly expanding area of OER. We are also requesting $2040 plus 22.1% in benefits to help support a library graduate student at the Auraria Library who will assist faculty in finding OER and other OER-related support activities at the library, under the supervision of librarian Ellen Metter. These funds for OER support account for $13,479. Since MSU Denver will cover half of the cost of benefits ($1220), $12,259 is requested from the state for these support roles.

MSU Denver is committed to supporting OER and is willing to waive the 5% indirect costs on this grant, which is listed in the grant budget in the MSU Denver line as an in-kind donation of support. In addition, MSU Denver is budgeting funds to pay for professional development ($4000) for one OER leader at MSU Denver to attend OpenEd20 or a similar conference and for faculty or staff OER leaders to travel to the Open Textbook Network Summer Institute. Also included is $1000 toward in-state travel to relevant OER functions, $1500 for OER-related supplies (example: physical copies of OER texts for faculty), $1500 for food at official functions (includes $333 for library mixer, $150 x 4 for snacks at OER review workshops; $300 for OER grant award winners event), and $1500 to renew MSU Denver’s individual membership in the Open Textbook Network. These expenses, all of which will be covered by MSU Denver, total $14,499.82. MSU Denver is also committed to covering half of the fringe on personnel, which accounts for the remaining $12359.46 of the $26,859.28 committed by MSU Denver.

Appendix A – Letters of Support

Attached letters from: • Dr. Janine Davidson, President • Dr. Vicki Golich, Provost • Dr. Jeff Loats, Director of Center for Teaching, Learning and Design • Ms. Danielle Holmes, President of Student Government Assembly • Ms. Cinthya Ippoliti, Auraria Library Director

� METROPOLITAN STATE UNIVERSITY" OF DENVER

Olfice of the President

Melropolilon Slole University of Denver Olfice of the Prcsidenl

Campus Box 1 P.O.Box 173362 Oenvor, CO 80217-3362 303.556.3022 Phone

303.556.3912 Fax msudcnver.cdu

October 14, 2019

CDHE OER Grant Proposal Reviewers:

I strongly support the application from Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver) to receive a continuation grant from the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) in support of developing and using Open Resource Educational Resources (OER) across the University. When I became President of MSU Denver in Fall 2017, I made it clear that my priorities are "students, students, students." We have a responsibility to ensure that our students persist through to graduation in a timely fashion, graduate with minimal debt, and are able to pursue the professional goals of choice effectively. As a public, comprehensive, regional university we must ensure we are educating professionals ready to enter a 21st century workforce.

Thus, I am impressed by the research that demonstrates that students in OER-supported courses enroll in higher number of credits - even in semesters after taking an OER course - which can help them reach their graduation goal sooner. Even more importantly, given that nearly two-thirds ofour students are transfers, and many are both first generation students and low-income, Pell-eligible students, it is equally inspiring to note that OER-supported courses enable all students to have access to the same learning materials on the first day of classes. So many students now opt not to purchase expensive textbooks, or cannot access financial aid resources to do so even if they wanted, this clearly puts them ata disadvantage. Since this is MSU Denver's student body, it becomes my responsibility to ensure that more students can be more successful in their classes and degree programs.

I am completely supportive of the work MSU Denver's OER Task Force has completed to date, is currently working on, and their plans for the future. I am confident we have the right leadership in place to be successful partners and that our faculty will be eager to learn how they can incorporate OER into their teaching materials. Dr. Emily Ragan, a Chemistry professor, led the statewide council on OER in 2017 and continues to serve as a member of the council. She has presented her research - and that of the Council - to the Academic and Student Affairs Senior Leadership Team, the Faculty Senate, the President's Cabinet, through an MSU Denver TEDx Talk, and in our RED: Relevant Essential. Denver. magazine. In doing so, she has created great interest to date among the faculty. MSU Denver is now a member of both the Open Textbook Network (OTN) and OpenStax. I know MSU Denver will continue to be a leader in using and developing Open Educational Resources.

Sincerely,

_J�� Janine Davidson, Ph.D. President, Metropolitan State University of Denver davidson@msudenver,edu

October 14, 2019 Spencer Ellis Director of Educational Innovation Colorado Department of Higher Education To Whom It May Concern: I enthusiastically endorse the proposal submitted by Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver) for the Colorado Open Educational Resources (OER) Grant. MSU Denver serves over 19,000 students in the urban heart of Denver proper. MSU Denver is a commuter school with no residence halls. Over 90% of its students come from the eight counties surrounding the city and 97% come from Colorado; very few students come from out of state or out of the country. Almost one-third of the students are Pell eligible and nearly one-half are first-generation. Well over half are transfer students and the average age is 25. Over 44% of MSU Denver’s student body are underrepresented minorities and over 29% are Hispanic. The campus is also Colorado’s leader in educating students of color in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. MSU Denver’s faculty are extremely passionate about MSU Denver’s statutory mission to educate Colorado residents. Many have already adopted OER to help keep the cost of a university education affordable. Many more are eager to explore the possibilities of using these materials in their courses. In the fall semester of 2019, MSU Denver offered its fourth faculty learning community through its Center for Teaching, Learning and Design co-facilitated by a Dr. Emily Ragan and Auraria librarian Ellen Metter. So far, 34 faculty have participated in these FLCs. This FLC is exploring using open educational resources and practices through a lens of effective pedagogy. MSU Denver has established an OER task force with representation from across campus, including faculty from diverse departments and colleges, a librarian, an instructional designer, administrators, and a student representative. The task force is working to expand awareness of OER across the entire university and recognize OER champions at MSU Denver. Last year, MSU Denver joined the Open Textbook Network. Since then we have offered four Open Textbook Review Workshops to 64 faculty; of these, well over 30 have written reviews of an OER resource in their field. The MSU Denver OER team has awarded stipends to 30 faculty across the university who wish to adopt OER for their classes. These classes have high enrollments and serve as key General Studies or gateway courses to majors. The textbooks and other materials in these

MSU Denver Letter of Support for Colorado OER Grant Page 2 of 2

classes tend to be very expensive. We anticipate that, collectively, this work already completed will save over $634,000 from our $60,000 grant from the state.

MSU Denver is now a proud member of the OpenStax Institutional Partner Program – a no-cost, year-long program that only accepted 11 institutions across the country.

Dr. Ragan is an outstanding ambassador for OER! She and her work in this area were the subject of an MSU Denver TEDx Talk this fall (see https://red.msudenver.edu/2019/the-talk-of-tedx.html) and in MSU Denver’s RED: Relevant. Essential. Denver. (see http://red.msudenver.edu/2019/the-death-of-textbooks.html).

Finally, MSU Denver continues to partner with the Auraria Library to support OER and has created an MSU Denver OER webpage (see https://www.msudenver.edu/academic-affairs/studentinformation/openeducationalresources/).

The addition of faculty incentives for adopting, adapting, and creating OER will continue help MSU Denver make larger gains in the numbers of students taking courses using OER materials. This work will be sustained by continuing support from the Provost’s Office. Goals include weaving awareness of OER and their benefits into MSU Denver online course creation, academic program review, and curriculum development.

Sincerely,

Vicki L. Golich, Ph.D. Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs

Jeff Loats, Ph.D

Director, Center for Teaching, Learning and Design

Metropolitan State University of Denver, P.O. Box 173362, Campus Box 19

Denver, CO 80217-3362 USA Voice (303) 615-0696 Email jloats1@msudenver.edu

https://msudenver.edu/ctld/

Date: October 23rd, 2019 To: State of Colorado OER Grant Reviewers: Both personally, and as the Director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Design at MSU Denver, I fully support our application for the Open Roadrunners Continuation grant. MSU Denver takes pride in being the most affordable university education in Colorado, and our faculty, staff and administrators are dedicated to bringing the benefits of higher education to first generation, low income, and underrepresented groups. Open Education Resources (OER), of all kinds, have such a clear role to play in that mission, and we are already moving to implement OER in a variety of ways, big and small. In the last two years there have been four related learning communities, many workshops, an internal OER grant program with $750 faculty stipends, and significant student dollars saved. These started as strictly internal efforts and have since been supported by our first Open Roadrunners grant from CDHE in 2018 and, in terms of content and strategy, our partnerships with the Open Textbook Network and the OpenStax Institutional Partner program. Receiving further support from the State of Colorado will allow this momentum to grow. Our existing Center for Teaching, Learning and Design CourseAssist and CourseLaunch programs work with faculty on teaching high-priority courses online. We encourage faculty to consider OER through these processes and found that 16 of these faculty became motivated to adopt OER through a $750 adoption grant made available through our Open Roadrunner 2018 grant. Additional funding will allow us to continue to grow faculty interest and enthusiasm for OER. The necessary support, in terms of an investment of dollars, release time, and administrative attention, is being enthusiastically offered at a variety of levels. Accessibility Manager Gabe Christie works directly with faculty around OER and accessibility, while Program Manager Karen Meyer and OER Coordinator Emily Ragan organize programming and track adoptions. I hope you will give this application full consideration, and that you will find that MSU Denver is an ideal match for the goals of the State of Colorado OER grant program. Sincerely,

Jeff Loats, Professor of Physics Director, Center for Teaching, Learning and Design

SGSTUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSEMBLYMETROPOLITAN STATE UNIVERSITY OF DENVER

Open Education Resources

October 2019

To whom it may concem,

Considering the cost of textbooks for a single class can range into the hundreds, students

often have a hard time paying for one of their books, let alone for all of the books required foreach of their classes. Students have come to the Student Government Assembly office stating

that, on occasion, they are forced to decide which textbooks to buy and for which classes. This

should not be the case. The majority of classes require at least one textbook and students should

not be forced to decide to forgo one for another.

Student Government Assembly strongly agrees with and would prefer to use Open

Educational Resources as a textbook option. We believe that most of the students here at

Metropolitan State University would greatly benefit from this proposed resource. If passed,

students would immediately receive a positive impact since they could allocate their resources to

pay for necessities.

Respecttully, C-\-D-=l(Ctnt$Danielle Holmes I President

Student Government Assembly

Metropolitan State University of Denver

Campus Box 00, P.O. Box L73362, Denver, CO 8OZL7-3362

303-615-1004

dholmell@ msudenver.edu

http://www. msudenver.ed u /sga /

METRoPoLITANSTATT UNIVERSITY'-OF DENVER

18

Appendix B – Word Cloud from “Instead of textbooks I could have bought…” outreach event

19

Appendix C – Faculty OER Awareness Survey Results

Figure S1. Comparison of OER Awareness Results from Fall 2018 and Fall 2019

Figure S2. Responses to “Do you use OER in your classes?” from Fall 2018 and Fall 2019

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Not aware

Have heard, don't know much

Somewhat aware

Aware, know some uses

Very aware

% of Respondants

OER Awareness at MSU Denver F18-F19

F19 F18

0 20 40 60 80 100

F18

F19

% of Respondants

Responses to "Do you use OER in your classes?"

Yes No

20

Appendix D – Budget Proposal Template for Open Roadrunner II Program

Category Requested Grant Funding

Matching Funds (Cash or In-Kind)

Project Totals

Personnel & Benefits8

# faculty x cost

OER Review Workshop

30 x $200 = $6,000

$6,000

OER FLC 27 x $500 = $13,500

$13,500

OER FLC facilitation

3 x $800 = $2400 $2,400

OER Adoption Grants

30 x $750 = $22,500

$22,500

OER Adaption/Creation 3 cr. Release time per faculty member x 8 faculty

8 x $3573 = $28,584

$28,584.00

OER Coordinator 3 cr. Release time

1 x $3573 = $3,573

$3,573

[Subtotal, don’t add in totals]

[$76,557.00]

Benefits (29.1% of subtotal, split between Grant and MSU Denver)

0.1455 x $76557 = $11,139.04

0.1455 x $76557 = $11,139.04

$22,278.09

Accessibility Grad Student

$9000 $9000

Library Support $2040 $2040 [Subtotal for 22.1% fringe, don’t add in totals]

[$11,080]

Benefits (22.1% of support subtotal, split between Grant and MSU Denver)

0.1105 x $11,040 = $1219.92

0.1105 x $11,040 = $1219.92

$2,439.84

8 MSU Denver has two fringe benefit rates, 29.1% for full-time faculty and 22.1% for part-time faculty. We have split our personnel lines so the full-time faculty costs are listed first, and benefits calculated, then the lines for part-time positions and their fringe benefits are listed next. MSU Denver will pay half of the cost of the fringe benefits.

21

Professional Development

$4000 $4000

Travel $1000 $1000 Equipment, Materials & Supplies

$1500 $1500

Official Functions $1500 $1500

Other: MSU Denver Open Textbook Network Membership

$1500 $1500

Indirect costs 5% of $99955.96= $4997.80

$4997.80

OVERALL COMBINED TOTAL

$99955.96 $26,859.76 $126,812.73