OAT Awards, Spring 2020

Craig Agule, Assistant Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Philosophy and Religion 

Dr. Agule will refine existing open-access materials to craft a text more appropriate for general-education Rutgers–Camden students. These changes include ensuring the material is suitable for a one-semester course, enriching the explanations of key concepts within the text, adding exercises to each chapter, and confirming his slides and lecture notes track the revised text. This will allow students to work back and forth between the slides and the revised text. 

Taught: Spring 2021 

32 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $5,822

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Georgia Arbuckle-Keil, Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Chemistry 

Dr. Arbuckle-Keil’s “Polymer Chemistry” course is offered in alternate years and brings together the concepts chemistry students have explored over the first three years of their undergraduate study. The need to build on prior knowledge and connect with more advanced applications makes this an interesting, but challenging course. The intention of the current course redesign is to utilize the wide-ranging resources available electronically, but to still provide clear foundational resources for students.  

E-books and other database resources will be consulted and implemented into the syllabus.  

Taught: Fall 2020 

12 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $1,644 

Kristin August (Bauer), Associate Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Health Science Center 

Dr. Bauer will use materials from multiple sources in the social sciences, public health, and medicine for her multi-disciplinary course which will allow it to evolve over time. She will utilize online resources (library databases, health-related government websites, the Open Educational Resources (OER) websites recommended by the library, and a general online search) to locate the most appropriate materials. She plans to work closely with Robeson librarians to help locate relevant materials and ensure adherence to all copyright laws. The materials will be accessible to her students via their course site (either Sakai or Canvas). 

Taught: Fall 2020 

45 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $4,776 

Gail Caputo, Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Sociology 

Dr. Caputo will replace the traditional text with open and configurable materials which include existing library materials, articles, audio and video tutorials and resources licensed through the libraries. This has pedagogical benefits because resources can be selected and configured by the instructor to address custom topics. They are fully available online where the instructor and students can interact using annotation and other course tools. Moving to fully electronic resources supports her overall goal to migrate all of her courses to no cost materials. It also seamlessly fits with her use of Canvas where all course materials, instructional tools, assignments, and other resources will be housed. The use of open and affordable materials would impose little additional disruption to students should it be necessary to move to fully online instruction. 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Summer 2021 

80 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $6,400 

Nancy Cresse, Clinical Assistant Professor, Camden School of Nursing, Nursing 

Curriculum goals and course objectives will remain the same, but the foundational materials will shift from text to recent scholarly articles, along with statistical data on aging, comorbidities, death rates, longevity information, and other relevant data. This information will be gathered from various websites including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Center for Disease Control, and the United States Department of Health and Human Services, among others. Professor Cresse will collaborate with reference librarians to identify the best examples of topics and the manuscripts best suited for the class objectives. 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

360 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $43,560 

Jamie Dunaev, Assistant Teaching Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Psychology and Health Sciences? 

Recognizing that current math texts can be daunting for students, Dr. Duneav has been pulling together online resources from well-respected scholars in the field which are written in a more accessible manner and include practical examples. He also shares videos and links to sections of an open textbook online, where appropriate. He plans to expand upon this approach by eliminating materials that are not helpful and replacing them with materials better suited for his class. The intent is to continue to make math courses more welcoming and less expensive for students.  

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

150 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $22,500 

Andrey Grigoriev, Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Biology 

Instead of using a textbook which can cost $500, Dr. Grigoriev’s students will work directly with research papers published in 2020. They will focus on reviewing the current literature, taking individual papers from the preprint archive site run by Cornell University. All preprints (which will become journal papers after peer review) will discuss novel findings related to one or another concept of the coronavirus genetics, genomics, and proteomics. Students will review and compare preprints and final, peer reviewed versions. All the preprint/paper material will be available online. Final papers will be available through the subscriptions held by the libraries. 

Taught: Fall 2020 

25 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $6,250 

Bonnie Jerome-D'Emilia, Associate Professor, Camden School of Nursing, Nursing 

Dr. Jerome-D’Emilia has modified her course materials for several years in an effort to reduce costs to students. Rather than a textbook she plans to use Open and Educational Resources (OER) available through the Open Textbook Library for background and introductory information on health and healthcare. The course is offered in a hybrid format. For in-class meetings she uses power point presentations, freely available videos, content from sources such as the Kaiser Family Foundation , CNN, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and PBS, as well as health care and health policy articles made available in the course’s Canvas site. 

Taught: Fall 2020 

30 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $3,659 

Margo Kaplan, Professor, Camden School of Law, Law 

Professor Kaplan plans to remove the casebook requirement for her “Criminal Law” course. She will rely solely on cases, statutes, and scholarly articles (which law students can access for free), news articles, court documents, excerpts from readings, and possibly a much less expensive supplemental text. All materials (except the textbook) will be available on the course website or through provided links to students. The law library will be helpful in identifying additional open-source materials on criminal law and ensuring all copyright requirements are met. 

Taught: Spring 2021 

80 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $17,600 

Shoko Kato, Assistant Professor, Camden School of Business, Business 

Dr. Kato will restructure her course incorporating flipped/inverted classroom concepts. To make reading more interesting and approachable she will use excerpts from open textbooks, articles from the Harvard Business Review (or similar journals), and newspaper/magazine articles as required reading. Based on prior writing assignments by students she will engage students in in-class exercises, simulation, or case discussion. She will work with the Rutgers business librarian to select the most relevant and engaging reading material, as well as soliciting advice about formatting and editing such materials. 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

140 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $7,000 

Jennifer Oberle, Assistant Teaching Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Biology 

Dr. Oberle will adapt the OpenStax Microbiology textbook in combination with external materials and media. This will update her course from a textbook-driven lecture to a textbook-assisted, partially flipped classroom. While the textbook will still be used for course readings and guiding lectures, she also will incorporate videos, podcasts, discussions and web-readings. This will eliminate the need for an expensive publisher-produced textbook. 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

325 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $80,161 

Jacob Russell, Associate Professor, Camden School of Law, Law 

Professor Russell’s course primarily uses free materials with one exception: students need to buy a 2,400-page book containing all of the statutes and regulations they study. They need the full set, ideally in a hard copy or single PDF they can annotate, before each class session. This makes accessing them from the web one at a time impractical, even though everything is available from public domain sources. A student in his class will use her programming experience to write a script which scrapes the public domain statutes and formats them into an organized PDF. It could be re-purposed as needed, an important feature since statutes change each year. The award will be used to compensate her for this work. 

Taught: Spring 2021 

25 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $2,125 

Shauna Shames, Associate Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Political Science 

Dr. Shames’ experiences have shown her it is challenging to successfully engaged students in classwork using a mass-produced textbook. She plans to re-envision her “Introduction to Politics” course using open and affordable materials such as articles, online sources, and PDFs delivered through Sakai to illustrate key political science concepts. She will also use free video and audio content, podcasts, and videos she creates as the lectures. Web links, journal articles, and PDFs of key book chapters will be used for reading assignments. As a result, students will not need to purchase any materials for the course. 

Taught: Summer 2020, Winter 2021, Summer 2021 

60 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $4,500 

Maria de la Encarnacion Solesio Torregrosa, Assistant Professor, Camden College of Arts and Sciences, Biology 

Dr. Solesio Torregrosa’s students will continue to have free access to all the papers needed for the class through PubMed. She is updating the class with more relevant articles. She plans to write and publish a collaborative review with the students who will have free access to the citation's management software though Rutgers IT. (Directors Award) 

Taught: Spring 2021 

24 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $0

DuWayne Battle, Associate Teaching Professor, School of Social Work, Social Work 

In the field of Social Work, there are some specific actions taken that promoted racist policies and upheld white supremacy culture. A new course, planned to be rolled out in Spring 2021 with the full support of Dr. Battle (Director of the Baccalaureate Social Work program), looks to take a deep dive into the professions' complicity in racist policies and procedures in the United States and beyond. The course will help students follow the events in history in which the social work profession exhibited its own racist actions, from conception to today. Freely available content will be gathered from book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, news articles, blogs, social media postings, and podcasts. Also, a student or two would be hired to assist with the literature review and syllabus creation. The course will be offered as a complement to the vision in which a more anti-racist perspective is presented through the curriculum. 

Taught: Spring 2021 

100 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $15,000 

Sara Plummer, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Social Work, Social Work 

Dr. Plummer’s course is being revamped, renamed, and revised to integrate new content that changes its focus. The BASW program course has begun to use a new foundation that emphasizes an anti-racist approach to social work and her course reflects that. While the class currently uses open and affordable resources, this revision will necessitate a large adjustment to the course content. It will include a combination of book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, and social commentary, among others. The award will allow the hiring of a student to assist with the exploration of materials and resources. Dr. Plummer will continue to engage with librarians for suggestions and assistance. 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

225 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $0 

Gina Sharpe, Instructor, School of Social Work, Social Work 

Ms. Sharpe’s “Professional Development Seminar” (PDS) offers students an opportunity to begin learning and practicing their social work skills. The current text ($80) does not sufficiently engage students in the topic of racism and white supremacy culture, an emerging focus on the School of Social Work. Her course will provide students with book chapters, articles, podcasts, blogs, and other materials to illuminate the current and historical context of social work. One or two students will be hired using the award money to help build upon the current syllabus and replace the old readings. They will work collaboratively with the Libraries to build a diverse set of readings that captures social work skills education while being inclusive and expansive in its sources.  

Taught: Spring 2021 

200 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $16,000

Sepehr Assadi, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Computer Science 

Dr. Assadi provides detailed notes to students after each lecture. For the next iteration of his course he will further update and expand these notes and structure them in such a way to turn them into an entirely self-contained resource for students. The notes will include new examples/figures/problem sets and their solutions, along with additional background materials to fill the gap between prerequisite courses and syllabus of this course. He will still use an online textbook as a suggested reading reference. The course notes will also be usable for recitation instructors so that covering background material will not require using an entire lecture. This will help maintain consistency between them and the course objectives.  

Taught: Spring 2021 

180 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $14,400 

Ahmed Aziz Ezzat, Assistant Professor, School of Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering? 

This project proposes a major transformation Industrial Information Systems course. It was revived in Spring 2020 for the first time in seven years and used some open and affordable materials. Moving forward, it will expand upon that by utilizing a free online textbook, open-source statistical programming software R (along with a set of course notes and source codes), free database management software, and data collected and analyzed by the instructor’s research group at the Richard Weeks Hall of Engineering. Additionally, an online version of the class is being planned which will broaden the reach and impact of the course content and materials.  

Taught: Spring 2021 

20 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $3,300 

Christy Beal, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Division of Life Sciences 

Dr. Beal’s goal, along with co-recipients Anne Keating, Daniel Stern Cardinale, and Gregg Transue, is to replace current textbooks with a single open source textbook from OpenStax. To implement open and affordable resources into courses, all lectures and learning outcomes to match the content structure and figures of the new text will be updated. The textbook is referenced throughout the lectures to provide background information and reinforce learning objectives. This is part of the larger plan by the Division of Life Sciences to switch the entire general biology lab and lecture to open source textbooks.  

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Summer 2021 

2,328 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $509,832 

Brian Becker, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, English (Writing Program) 

The Writing Program already successfully utilizes Open Educational Resources (OER), including a Basic Composition textbook. This supports the goal to encourage students to become more engaged and critical citizens. Instructors compliment the text with a wealth of freely available online material from a number of reputable sources (The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc.). Since fall 2018, Professor Becker has added 40 new readings and continued to cycle readings in and out of his course. He will work with the Libraries to improve the current textbook and explore other potential course resources. He would also like to make the Basic Composition textbook available to Writing Programs outside of Rutgers. 

Taught: Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Summer 2021 

2,232 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $0 

Sarah Carton, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Psychology 

Dr. Carton will incorporate free and low cost materials to her “Introductory Psychology” course by centralizing all materials and required access in Canvas. This includes a free, online PDF copy of the textbook, videos available to students through the free textbook companion website, and films available via streaming. She will also provide copies of the textbook for short-term loans through course reserves. (Directors Award) 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

1,600 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $320,000 

Karen Cerulo, Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Sociology 

Dr. Cerulo will be replacing textbook with online readings posted in Canvas. These readings will unfold the theories and concepts included in the course. She will also use specially selected online audio and visual resources to show how these ideas apply to real world situations which will be freely available to her students. (Directors Award) 

Taught: Fall 2020 

80 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $4,400 

Christopher Drue, Associate Director, Center Teaching Advancement and Assessment Research, Sociology 

Dr. Drue will assign various background readings from an OpenStax textbook and continue using additional supplemental readings available online. This will make all course materials entirely free for students. He plans to conduct a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) study based on class materials and different teaching exercises, beginning in Fall 2020. The SoTL project won't explicitly compare student learning to previous textbooks, but will allow him to develop a baseline moving forward to help determine if different Open Educational Resources (OER) should be selected. 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

66 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $4,290 

Brittany Friedman, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Sociology 

Dr. Friedman already uses open and affordable materials for her “Prisons and Prisoners” course. She will continue to assess, determine, and modify which materials are the most impactful to students. These are generally in article form or E-books, either freely available through the libraries and/or other sources. (Directors Award) 

Taught: Spring 2021 

55 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $0 

Jie Gao, Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Computer Science 

Dr. Gao teaches a required course for Ph.D students (and elective for MS students and some top undergraduate students). Commonly used texts are expensive. She will replace them with a free online textbook. She has used chapters from this textbook in the past and finds the materials are among the best currently available. She plans to recommend this text to other course instructors and encourage them to migrate to Open Educational Resources (OER), along with sharing her syllabus, notes, and other materials. 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

70 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $9,660 

Nicole Houser, Associate Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, English (Writing Program) 

The proposed curricular redesign for the English for Academic Discourse course sequence (EAD I and EAD II) is part of a larger initiative of the Rutgers English Language Institute (RELI) to create comprehensive and culturally responsive writing instruction for students who speak English as an additional language. The course redesign will incorporate cross-culturally themed and historical sources in order to more effectively scaffold students’ understanding and critical examination of culture. These changes not only reflect best practices in the field of composition and teaching multilingual writers, but they also correspond to student feedback and focus groups conducted over the past two years as they requested culturally relatable content. Adopting open and affordable resources as part of this redesign directly aligns with Dr. Houser’s and RELI’s curricular goals. 

Taught: Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Summer 2021 

1,056 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $237,600 

Anne Keating, Assistant Instructor, School of Arts and Sciences, Division of Life Sciences 

Dr. Keating’s goal, along with co-recipients Christy Beal, Daniel Stern Cardinale, and Gregg Transue, is to replace current textbooks with a single open source textbook from OpenStax. To implement open and affordable resources into courses, all lectures and learning outcomes to match the content structure and figures of the new text will be updated. The textbook is referenced throughout the lectures to provide background information and reinforce learning objectives. This is part of the larger plan by the Division of Life Sciences to switch the entire general biology lab and lecture to open source textbooks. 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

576 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $126,144 

Vadim Levin, Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Earth and Planetary Sciences 

Currently Dr. Levin’s the course uses a mix of online information resources together with one required textbook. Readings from the textbook underpin 40% of the course, but the cost for it continues to rise. He plans is to replace that text with online materials and those in the public domain. This is motivated by his desire to make the course more affordable, and fully integrate it into the ever-growing dynamic online knowledge base in the field of earthquakes. 

Taught: Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Summer 2021 

260 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $20,800 

Rong Li, Instructor, School of Arts and Sciences, History 

Ms. Li use a free textbook and will continue to assign scholarly articles and book chapters as required weekly readings. Additionally, she selects short and engaging historical texts and visuals (available from library databases and open-access resources) as part of the discussion materials. By allowing her students to access materials on their laptop and tablets in the classroom, she minimizes potential print costs. (Directors Award) 

Taught: Summer 2020 

80 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $0 

Peng Liu, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Asian Languages and Cultures 

Dr. Liu’s course engages undergraduate students in close readings of Chinese fictional texts in English translation. Students were required to purchase books published in multiple volumes. Open and affordable resources will allow students to freely download material through the Libraries website. E-resources can change the way students engage with the material. They can use data analysis to examine a story, searching for keywords in a text and collecting statistics to make a compelling argument. He plans to make full use of available e-resources and reimagine his course based on what can be accessed.  

Taught: Fall 2020 

20 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $2,200 

Paul O’Keefe, Instructor, School of Arts and Sciences, Geography 

Dr. O’Keefe will replace the physical textbook used for his “Global Awareness” course with one digitally available through the Libraries. Since his students will be able to access the text for free, they will no longer need to purchase a physical copy. (Directors Award) 

Taught: Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

370 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $9,250 

Rebecca Reynolds, Associate Professor, School of Communication and Information, Library and Information Science? 

Dr. Reynolds’ course analyzes gender in relation to race, class, nationality, culture, religion, sexuality, and identity in the context of technological innovation. The course uses 75% scholarly articles found in the Libraries databases, 15% online free long-form press articles, and about 10% photocopied book chapters. She also uses a range of activity work prompts, assignments, and videos available through the Libraries. Course materials are reviewed and updated every semester to ensure the most relevant information is used and the cost to the student remains low. 

Taught: Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Spring 2021 

260 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $26,000 

Daniel Stern Cardinale, Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Division of Life Sciences 

Dr. Stern Cardinale’s goal, along with co-recipients Christy Beal, Anne Keating, and Gregg Transue, is to replace current textbooks with a single open source textbook from OpenStax. To implement open and affordable resources into courses, all lectures and learning outcomes to match the content structure and figures of the new text will be updated. The textbook is referenced throughout the lectures to provide background information and reinforce learning objectives. This is part of the larger plan by the Division of Life Sciences to switch the entire general biology lab and lecture to open source textbooks. 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

1,500 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $328,500 

Gregg Transue, Director, School of Arts and Sciences, Division of Life Sciences 

Dr. Transue’s goal, along with co-recipients Christy Beal, Anne Keating, and Daniel Stern Cardinale, is to replace current textbooks with a single open source textbook from OpenStax. To implement open and affordable resources into courses, all lectures and learning outcomes to match the content structure and figures of the new text will be updated. The textbook is referenced throughout the lectures to provide background information and reinforce learning objectives. This is part of the larger plan by the Division of Life Sciences to switch the entire general biology lab and lecture to open source textbooks. 

Taught: Fall 2020 

720 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $134,640

Patricia Akhimie, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, English 

The textbooks used in this Dr. Akhimie’s “Comics and Graphic Novels” course have always been expensive. Students are asked to read several separate works and an anthology that is updated to a new edition each year. It is not uncommon that a significant percentage of students do not purchase the assigned textbook. A good deal of class time is spent negotiating the pedagogical challenge of teaching students who come to class without a physical copy of the reading material and/or without having read the material at all. Her goal is to remake students’ experience by offering them a freely available edition of the works covered in the course. (Directors Award) 

Taught: Summer 2020, Winter 2020 

110 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $6,600 

Ashley Appleby, Teaching Assistant, School of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice 

Building on a course which already uses open and affordable materials, Ms. Appleby will continue to adjust the syllabus to keep students engaged and committed. She will utilize Blackboard to provide materials to students free-of-charge and add new podcasts to keep the course up-to-date with current policies and practices in the United States. Additionally, she will explore how to adapt this mode of teaching and instruction for all of her classes while sharing her experiences with other peers and instructors.  

Taught: Spring 2021 

35 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $0 

Jennifer Austin, Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Spanish and Portuguese Studies? 

For her “Introduction to Linguistics” course, Dr. Austin will replace the current textbook with an open source textbook which is free to her students. The new text contains video illustrations of key concepts and a self-administered quiz for students after each section. She will continue to supplement the text with relevant materials accessed through the Libraries. She will add a section to her course evaluation form specifically asking students to evaluate the open source textbook. She envisions her approach will have long-term sustainability, both in terms of students using open source materials and other instructors adopting it for other linguistics classes.  

Taught: Fall 2020 

40 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $5,000 

Karen Chaffee, Associate Teaching Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Chemistry

Xinbo Lau, Lecturer, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Chemistry 

For the past two years, Rutgers Chemistry Department has moved to a complete free and affordable text mode. Dr. Chaffee and Dr. Lau have already replaced the popular online homework program previously purchased through McGraw Hill with their entirely self-produced homework program. They plan to expand their course materials with a new set of pre-chapter exercises. Students will do these new exercises in the week before the instructor begins the specified chapter. They want to encourage the students to read and learn before lecture, thus making the lecture more effective. This expansion supplements the post-chapter quizzes which they previously developed. 

Taught: Fall 2020 

320 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $0 

Manu Chander, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, English 

At the heart of Dr. Chander’s course, “The Romantic Period”, is independent reading. Students are expected to work carefully through the texts before class discussion. They need access to reliable editions, as annotations by scholarly editors are essential to grasping literatures of earlier periods, given that many of the conventions are unfamiliar to modern-day readers. Dr. Chander will switch from a softcover anthology to an e-book anthology. Students will be able to access it at no cost. 

Taught: Spring 2021 

40 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $3,462 

Cleopatra Charles, Associate Professor, School Public Affairs and Administration, Public Affairs and Administration 

Using assigned peer-reviewed journal readings accessed through Rutgers library system, case studies, simulations, and experiential learning, students will be offered an opportunity to advance their theoretical and practical knowledge in Dr. Charles’ “Public Budgeting Systems” course. She will also use open access practitioner magazines and journals. Her intent is to make her students better prepared to face the waves of challenges that nonprofit organizations are trying to wrestle to the ground in 2020 and beyond. 

Taught: Winter 2021 

30 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $3,752 

Alison Howell, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Political Science 

Dr. Howell will convert to open resources for her "America and the World" course. She plans to use primarily scholarly journal articles available through the libraries' subscription services, online open access books, as well as supplementary popular sources available online, such as visual essays, newspaper articles, illustrated histories (comics) and similar resources. Her interest in converting to open resources is also driven by a desire to decolonize the syllabus, and in particular to highlight the work of scholars of color, women, and scholar-activists.  

Taught: Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Spring, 2021 

160 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $4,800 

Adam Kuczynski, Lecturer, School Public Affairs and Administration, Public Affairs and Administration 

Mr. Kuczynski’s course, “Economic Issues for Public Administration”, will utilize a number of free textbooks available in the Open Textbook Library. These will useful in providing students with basic, foundational subject knowledge. He also plans to reimagine the class by using various interactive and free video resources readily available online, and through instructor-created labs, slides, and quiz banks. Online and visual learning works well to reinforce lectures and helps students more easily comprehend complex economic/public administration scenarios while allowing the instructor to adapt to student abilities.  

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

90 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $19,890 

Jesse Liss, Teaching Instructor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Sociology and Anthropology 

Dr. Liss has already eliminated standard textbooks from his “Introduction to Sociology” class. He found textbooks often rely on material and examples that are outdated and/or not relatable to many students. Keeping the materials free to students requires he continue to craft in-class discussions, activities, and group work. The goal in developing these materials is to not only enrich the course but to increase student engagement and in class participation. He uses and continually adopts existing materials to suit course topics, including library licensed materials, e-books, permalinks, media, and databases. 

Taught: Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

490 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $0 

Miriam Rosenberg-Lee, Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, Psychology 

Dr. Rosenberg-Lee’s overall approach is to use primary research articles, supplemented with Open Educational Resources (OER) and popular press articles to replace a traditional textbook in her “Cognitive Development” course. As an upper level course it has more specific content requirements than lower level courses, or even a cognitive development courses without neuroscience content. She plans to make readings available through Canvas’ Reading List feature. She will continue to partner with the libraries as the reading list is developed and finalized. 

Taught: Spring 2021 

95 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $11,545 

Tanay Talukdar, Lecturer, Rutgers Business School, Management Science & Information Systems 

Mr. Talukdar course will be organized based on self-contained chapters/modules. The material for each chapter will be freely available for either download or online access through the Blackboard course management system. It will consist of a set of slides, along with video lectures developed by the instructor. Relevant sections of the chapters which need more in detail analysis will be referred (i.e. compiled selection of links to relevant online material, papers, YouTube videos, etc.). (Directors Award) 

Taught: Fall 2020, Spring 2021 

240 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $21,600

Joseph Fondell, Associate Professor, RWJ Medical School, Pharmacology 

Dr. Fondell is the course director of “Physiological Basis of Disease”, a requisite core course in the Masters of Biomedical Science (MBS) program already using Open Educational Resources (OER) materials. Because the course is team-taught (seven different lecturers covering multiple physiology systems), no one single textbook is used. Rather, each lecturer has chosen one or more specific physiology texts to cover their respective topic. Students are provided with the specific URL address for each text, freely available to them electronically as an e-book via the libraries. He will partner with the libraries to identify new or alternative physiology textbooks and reviews that would be suitable for this course. (Directors Award) 

Taught: Summer 2021 

125 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $0 

Jeannette Manchester, Assistant Professor, Rutgers School of Nursing, Nursing 

DNP Manchester’s course is doctoral-level and a single textbook or resource does not allow students to understand or appreciate the full scope of finances in healthcare. She will include a variety of open and affordable resources. Each resource will be highly beneficial and provide a full basis for advanced practice nurses in leadership positions. The diverse range of students includes those studying to become acute care nurse practitioners, certified nurse anesthetists, mental health nurse practitioners, and nurse executive students. Having an assortment of resources will help meet the needs these wide range of specialties. 

Taught: Summer 2021 

30 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $7,740 

Ram Mani, Assistant Professor, Rutgers Health, Neurology 

The RWJMS Neurology Clerkship uses a mix of provided education content housed under Google Classroom (Rutgers-sponsored) for most of the didactic education of this required clinical course. The shift to the didactic electronic format started in 2017, and it gradually adds more content each year. Class materials have been designed by RWJMS neurologists, including Dr. Mani. (Directors Award) 

Taught: Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Spring 2021, Summer 2021 

405 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $18,225 

Claire O'Connell, Associate Professor, School of Health Professions, Physician Assistant Studies 

Ms. O’Connell’s course is the first of a three-part series required of Physician Assistant (PA) students. She will be adopting material offered through the Rutgers Health Libraries and continue to work RBHS librarians to expand toolkits for the program. These toolkits centralize many Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) resources offered throughout Rutgers. Students will use the text and the library sites to guide them through the curriculum. They will return to both the text and toolkits for the successive courses, as well completion of their capstone master's EBM report, in the spring of the final (third) year of study. 

Taught: Summer 2021 

50 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $9,050 

Diane Radler, Associate Professor, School of Health Professions, Clinical and Preventive Nutrition Sciences 

In January 2020 Dr. Radler updated some of the required course resources by replacing a $100 medical nursing textbook with a similar library-licensed text. While this reduced student cost there were still materials they needed to purchase. Due to the nutrition focused nature of her course, replacing a medical nursing text with a similar online version does not meet the needs of the overall curriculum. Department of Clinical and Preventive Nutrition Sciences (DCPNS) faculty have developed innovative teaching content with copyright-free images and audio narration. However, additional content needs to be updated. Dr. Radler will work with the Libraries to find appropriate content to enrich the teaching and learning experience for her students while also reducing costs. 

Taught: Summer 2021 

40 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $2,400 

Barbara Sinacori, Instructor, Rutgers School of Nursing, Nursing 

Dr. Sinacori will replace the traditional textbook with articles, book excerpts, audio, and/or video licensed through Rutgers University Libraries, open access, or freely available online. Her course focuses on the theoretical, clinical, and scientific knowledge relevant to the nursing care of culturally diverse adults and older adults. Faculty supervised clinical experiences in simulation and health care settings enable students to apply acquired knowledge in a variety of clinical settings. Using open and affordable resources will facilitate the use of current evidence-based articles, videos for visual learners, and other free or low-cost resources in place of a textbook. 

Taught: Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Summer 2021 

796 students impacted per year | Projected savings per year: $79,600