Five faculty projects have been selected for VCU’s second year of Affordable Course Content Awards. This funding stream allows recipients to adopt, adapt, and author open educational resources to replace more costly texts in their classes and tailor resources to course goals, both lowering student textbook costs and increasing student success.

The Affordable Course Content Awards program is a partnership of the Office of the Provost, VCU Libraries, the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, and the ALT Lab and Online @ VCU. Academic Technologies, Student Accessibility and Educational Opportunity, and Barnes and Noble @ VCU have also committed to serve as resources for award recipients.

Award recipients:

• A group of foreign language faculty in the School of World Studies will adopt open educational resources to replace textbooks for Intermediate II Foreign Language courses, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish. The faculty group members are Kathryn Murphy-Judy, Ph.D., associate professor, Salwa Sheibany, term instructor, Yan Gao, Ph.D., adjunct instructor, Lionel Mathieu, Ph.D., term instructor, Patricia Cummins, Ph.D., professor, Vera Abbate, Ph.D., term instructor, Natalia Boykova, Ph.D., term instructor and Maria de Panbehchi, Ph.D., term instructor.
• Ching-Yu Huang, Ph.D., instructor, Dianne Jennings, Ph.D., associate professor, and Jonathan Moore, Ph.D., instructor from the Department of Biology will adopt an open textbook and create supplementary materials to replace the textbook for Introduction to Biological Sciences I (BIOL 151).
• Garreth Blackwell, Ph.D., instructor, Matt Woolman, director, and Jeffrey Foster, associate director of the VCUarts Center for Creative Economy (CCE) will author a new open textbook on business practice for creative professionals to be used in Piloting the Enterprise (ARTS 351) and all other courses offered by the CCE.
• John Bigbee, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Alice Pakurar, Ph.D., associate professor (retired) in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, and Kenneth Foster, Ed.D., assistant professor and instructional technologist for medical education in the Department of Medicine will create Digital Histology 2.0 (DH2), an open educational resource for VCU health science students in Medicine 150, Medicine 250, Microscopic Anatomy (ANAT 502), and Histology (ANAT 611).
• A group of faculty in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies will adopt, adapt, and author open educational resources to replace the textbook for Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GWSS 201). The faculty group members are Liz Canfield, Ph.D., assistant professor, Christine Cynn, Ph.D., assistant professor, Myrl Beam, Ph.D., assistant professor, Sandra Burke, Ph.D., assistant professor, bee coston, Ph.D., assistant professor, Matilde Moros, Ph.D., assistant professor, and Archana Pathak, Ph.D., assistant professor

The faculty recipients will be working on their projects throughout the 2018-19 academic year, with implementation required by fall 2019.