UTA Faculty Lead $500,000+ Department of Education Transportation Planning OER Project

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by Library News
January 26 2021

The University of Texas at Arlington, in consortium with partnering institutions, has been awarded more than $500,000 from the US Department of Education Open Textbooks Pilot Program to develop open educational resources (OER) for transportation planning graduate students.

The funds will allow Dr. Ivonne Audirac and PhD candidate Amber Raley of the College of Architecture, Planning & Public Affairs, as well as the Director of Open Educational Resources, Michelle Reed, to collaborate with peers at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) and the University of South Florida (USF) to create six open textbooks over the next 36 months.

“UTA Libraries is proud to have the opportunity to partner with our faculty and support their OER projects,” said Rebecca Bichel, dean of UTA Libraries. “We anticipate high demand for these textbooks once they are in circulation and hope this successful grant application inspires other faculty to explore our OER services and collaborate on grant funding opportunities.”

This is the first year that UTA applied for the program, which is in its third round of awards.

Reed is excited to embark on the ambitious project and see its benefits on campus.

“We are grateful for the support of the Open Textbooks Pilot Program and can’t wait to get started on our important work,” Reed said. “This project should lead to a total average textbook cost savings of about $650 per student, which will have profound ripple effects on our students and their academic experience.”

Additional goals include:

  1. The total textbook cost for students enrolled in the core courses implementing the project’s OER textbooks, will be at least 77% less than for students in the same certificate program enrolled in non-OER courses using commercial textbooks
  2. The average total tuition savings for students who complete the Transportation Planning and Policy Certificate program (v. a full master’s degree) will be $18,646 for residents / $42,427 for non-residents
  3. At least 80% of students and instructors using the OER Transportation Planning textbooks developed under this grant will rate these OER materials as “very good,” “good,” or “better” in terms of cost, accessibility, and instructional quality compared to previously used textbooks
  4. A discoverable collection of OER transportation planning textbooks, including those developed under the grant, will be curated and housed in the three participant’s OER libraries and shared with major OER repositories
  5. The project’s OERTransport textbooks will be downloaded at least 300 times by end of 2023 and at least 1,000 every year thereafter
  6. An inventory of the state of OER textbook adoption/diffusion in U.S. Transportation Planning programs and their willingness to adopt the project’s OERTtransport textbooks and OERTransport development and implementation model

Audirac praised the support of Reed and her staff and expressed excitement for the project’s potential impact.

“We are thrilled to work with UTA Libraries on the OERTransport project,” Audirac said. “We set the bar high, and we know, with Michelle and her team’s support, we will meet and eventually exceed it.”

For Raley, a first-generation college student, this project is personal.

“I know firsthand how challenging it can be to afford educational materials on top of tuition and living expenses,” Raley said. “As an educator, I believe that lowering the barriers to education will make a graduate certificate in Urban Planning more accessible to a diverse array of individuals.

“In turn, these graduates will become the skilled professionals that play an important role in our local, regional, and national governments and ensure that we are more inclusive and sustainable in our planning practices.”

Partners at Cal Poly and USF, who are also members of the Center for Transportation Equity, Decisions, and Dollars led by UTA, will collaborate with their respective metropolitan stakeholders, transportation agencies, and employers as well as with their open resource libraries and centers for teaching and learning to eliminate textbook costs for select transportation planning courses and expand OER education beyond the partnering institutions.

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