Compensation for OER Development

OERI Compensation for OER Development Survey (2023)

Estimating time needed to create and maintain OER textbooks – Summary of responses shared in response to query on the CCCOER listserv (September 18, 2023)

  • Fanshawe College: “In the colleges we compensate full-time faculty through a course release and part time faculty through a curriculum development contract to the equivalent of the FT folks. This works out to about 6 hrs a week for a 14-week semester and 12 hrs during the condensed 7-week summer term. We provide all the support, and the faculty member is responsible for the content. We take an agile approach where the faculty is delivering one chapter per week, and we are building in pressbooks right behind them.” Access additional information at Fanshawe Open Education Grant Program.
  • Clackamas Community College: The college has developed an OER Project Estimated Time Commitments chart that summarizes the number of hours per week for different types of OER projects.  Hours range from 1-3 hours/week for 1 term to adopt an OER, up to 6-9 hours/week for 3 terms to author a completely new OER. 

OERI Compensation for OER Development Survey Summary (2019)

Examples from 2019 Survey

The OER Work Group is accepting applications for faculty members who are interested in adopting an OER to replace a traditional publisher textbook. Interested faculty will need to fill out a brief application by Friday, January 25th. Selected faculty will receive a $500 stipend for successful adoption of OER and will need to meet the following criteria below. Space is limited and awards are determined by a variety of factors, including availability of existing OER in the subject and student impact. This stipend is being offered for each course conversion.

Stipend Deliverables:
1. Take the self-paced OpenWashington OER Online Course (approximately 1.5 hours).
2. Search the College LibGuides for your specific subject area.
3. Locate additional OER as needed; meet with librarians as necessary.
4. Review all OER materials and evaluate to determine if adoption is appropriate for your course.
5. Confirm your intent to adopt by Friday, March 15, 2019.
6. Complete a confirmation form by April 30, 2019 that confirms your adoption of an OER to replace a traditional publisher textbook and update existing course as necessary by the SUMMER 2019 OR FALL 2019 semester.

Please note: It will be the faculty member’s responsibility to review, critique, and determine if the resources are an acceptable alternative to their current textbook/course materials; this means that they will need to work closely within their division/departments to ensure that they adhere to local protocols and guidelines for selection of course materials. Faculty interested in this stipend opportunity should simply fill out this application no later than Friday, January 25th. Notification of awards will be sent by Friday, February 1st with more details regarding the deliverables.

We have received an OER grant and part of the grant money is being used to support faculty with a modest stipend for completing a month long online OER training course and committing to transitioning to OER. The stipend is $350. There may be additional stipends available for future support and support with transitioning material. In the future, there may be mentor positions that can help support other faculty with OER who have a lot of experience. And, have a librarian for support too.

At our college, at least for this academic year, there was a $1200 stipend to develop new zero-textbook cost courses.

As part of our recent ZTC Grant, we paid faculty the hourly instructional rate associated with the unit load of the course (i.e., faculty teaching a 3 unit class were paid 48 hours at the negotiated rate). Our district has also granted sabbatical time for faculty who developed material where little OER was available.

Our district has grant money that allows our faculty to attend a training about searching for OER, do around 20 hours of research to find OER that relate to concepts that they are teaching and then create a report of their findings. When they turn in the report, they are eligible for a $900 stipend.

I am a co-director of a grant that compensates faculty members for compiling already existing OERs for courses. This searching or harvesting or OERs is compensated monetarily after some training (approx. $900 for 20 hours of work). However, OER development – content creation – is not part of the grant. There are other colleges that are part of this same grant that are working on content creation, but I don’t know what their compensation structure is like.

Additional Examples

The ASCCC OERI has been providing $500 stipends to project participants for completion of its two courses, OER Basics and Accessibility Basics. These self-paced courses are intended to ensure faculty are prepared for OER development.

Open Educational Resources and Accessibility

The ASCCC OERI has developed two self-paced courses to prepare faculty who are planning to develop/curate OER. Please note that Accessibility Basics provides an overview of accessibility intended for all faculty – it is not limited to accessibility in the context of OER.

Important: All courses are offered via Canvas and set so that you can “self-enroll”. Please be sure that you are logged into your home instance of Canvas before attempting to access any PDC course. If this does not work – or you are not faculty – please contact us for assistance.

Register for ASCCC OERI – OER Basics

OER Basics serves as an introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER) providing faculty with new options for selecting textbooks and other resources so they can make the best decisions for their students. At the end of this self-paced course successful participants will be able to:

  • Properly identify the creative commons (CC) license on a resource and describe how this resource can and cannot be used.
  • Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of open resources using current research in the field as evidence.
  • Research, analyze and review repositories of open resources.
  • Effectively search for open resources and post reviews in an OER repository.
  • Create an open resource by remixing multiple existing resources and designate a license to this new resource based on the licenses of multiple resources use.

Register for ASCCC OERI – Accessibility Basics

This course was designed with two compatible goals. It is intended to:

  • introduce all faculty to the basics of developing accessible content and
  • provide faculty who will be developing and/or curating open educational resources (OER) with an understanding of accessibility basics.

The ASCCC OERI has integrated accessibility training into much of its work as today’s faculty member is certain to be interacting with students in a digital environment. As we hope to interact with all faculty in the California Community Colleges, we believe it is important to do what we can to ensure that no faculty member is creating accessibility barriers for students. Accessibility is a complicated topic. Our goal is to ensure that you understand the basics of accessibility. Many courses and OER projects will require more extensive training. Our focus here is on the creation of accessible online content, regardless of the platform you are working in.

Let the OERI know what your college or district is doing.

This page last updated October 4, 2023.