OER Degree Initiative FAQs

General

Where can I find out more information about the OER Degree Initiative? / Additional information about the initiative, grant forms and submission link can be found on the
Will this grant opportunity be offered yearly? / At the present time, only this one solicitation is planned.

Grant requirements & eligibility

Are applicants required to be Achieving the Dream member colleges? / No, there is no requirement that applicants be Achieving the Dream institutions.
If it is a state consortia, must all participating institutions be Achieving the Dream schools? / See above.
What is the application review process? / Each application will be rated by two independent reviewers selected from staff of ATD’s national partner organizations. Institutions with applications that receive positive reviews from both reviewers will advance to the next level of review: a one-hour phone interview with the college president and members of the cross-functional team. Applicants that do not advance to the second level review will be notified of their status in April. Applicants in the second level review will be notified of their final status by May 16, 2016.
What types of institutions are eligible to apply for the OER Degree Initiative grant? / All public, accredited two-year colleges in the US and Canada are eligible to apply.
Are four-year colleges and universities that also offer 2-year degrees eligible to apply? / See above.
Can an institution outside of North America partner with a US or Canada-based institution for this project? / No. Grant funds and subsidized technical assistance are for institutions in the U.S. or Canada only.
What is the single most important thing for a college to do when considering submitting an application? / Before moving forward with an application, an institution should first complete the OER Readiness Assessment. The results of the assessment will help an interested institution determine its capacity for taking on this work and next steps.
We are a small school in an economically challenged area. Are we eligible to apply? / Yes. While we seek to work with approximately 10-12 colleges large enough for 2,000 or more students to participate in the OER degree program for evaluation purposes, smaller institutions are welcome to apply as well to participate in a less rigorous evaluation.
Does a college interested in being an evaluation partner indicate this interest in its application, or will the evaluation partners be selected from the college finalists? / Both. If your institution is interested in being an evaluation partner, please note this interest in your application.
Can you provide more details about the faculty response in the RFP (Part C: Specific Questions for Lead Faculty)? Is this two pages per faculty member or for a combined response? Can a chair be a respondent? Is it 6 pages combined for an application from a consortium? / In Part C: Specific Questions for Lead Faculty, the responses from faculty should not exceed two (2) pages combined for a single college applicant or six (6) pages combined for a consortium applicant. A department chair may be a respondent; at least one teaching faculty member should also respond. Also, all respondents should be members of the proposed cross-functional leadership team.
Is there a template for the CEO letter? / There is no template; colleges should create their own.
What is the role of the project coordinator and can he or she be a member of the cross functional team? / The project coordinator will be responsible for overseeing the work and ensuring the project meets deadlines and required outcomes. The coordinator may be a member of the cross functional team as well as one of the faculty champions.
Is there an opportunity and/or expectation that faculty will work with faculty from other institutions? / Faculty and other college members will be invited to participate in one or more communities of practice organized by ATD and its partner Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER).

Matching grant, budgeting, and grant disbursement

Is there a template for the budget? / The link to the budget template can be found on ATD’s OER Degree Initiative web page at
What types of expenditures are expected to be in the budget? / The budget may include personnel costs, faculty stipends, meeting costs, travel costs, and other direct cost items. Colleges should budget for members of the cross functional team to attend Kickoff and the annual national meetings of the participating colleges.
Can you share a sample budget or typical costs for some elements? / The budget template should help colleges determine the types of expenses expected and needed.
If we propose a 1-year certificate rather than a 2-year degree, does that impact the amount of the grant? Or should we just reflect the different needs in our proposed budget? / The budget should reflect costs that the college anticipates for designing and implementing the OER degree program. Colleges developing a one-year program may be able to scale faster since there could be fewer courses to develop.
Can individual colleges request significantly less than the $100,000 maximum / Colleges may request less than the maximum grant award which would also lower the expected matching funds.
How are the project funds disbursed? Are they variable or fixed? / Grant agreements will be executed with each grantee and grant awards will be distributed in two installments. The first installment will be made upon signature of the grant agreement document by the college. A first installment for 50% of the award amount will be made in June 2016. Colleges that make sufficient progress by the end of the first year will receive the second and final installment (Summer 2017). Colleges requesting less than $100,000 will receive a first installment of $50,000 and the balance of funds in the second installment.
What if you don't make the target in terms of courses adopting OER. Would that impact the second installment of the grant? / The second installment is based on performance against the approved action plan; mid-course corrections are encouraged.
Can reassigned time count toward the match? What constitutes "cash" for the match? Can match be spread out over the three-years of the grant? / The match can be spread out across the life of the initiative. Faculty stipends or release time are examples of acceptable match as are other direct costs. The match is an indicator of the college’s commitment and ability to support the expansion of the program at the end of the grant period.
If more than one college is participating in the grant, does each college have to match the 25% or is it 25% overall? / The match can be 25% overall. However, a strong proposal will include plans for sustaining the degree program at each participating college, not only the colleges putting up the greatest match.
What are allowable sources of the 25% matching funds? cash, salary, college foundation? / All of these are allowable if they cover the added costs of developing and implementing an OER degree
How much of the money can be used for stipends to get Faculty to convert? / Applicants should determine what amount is needed for faculty stipends. It is not expected that colleges will offer stipends as a bonus for teaching with OER. Stipends could be offered as compensation for extra design work, extra engagement with evaluation, and other activities associated with developing and spreading the OER degree

OER courses, certificates, and programs

Are there specific degree programs grantees are required to select? / Priority will be given to institutions that propose to adopt existing OER degree programs in business administration, general education, social science, general or natural science, and computer science. Other degree programs will not have as many already licensed OER materials and will require more effort to develop and license materials.
Is the grant mostly geared toward open textbooks or open courses? / The OER Degree Initiative supports the creation of OER degrees. An OER degree is defined as a 1- or 2-year post-secondary credential in which the course materials in one or more sections of all required courses are free and openly licensed. The degree should also include enough OER course electives for a student to complete a full degree without textbook costs.
Can certificate programs that are shorter than 1 year be proposed? / Only one- and two-year credentials are eligible for funding.
Is this grant limited to degrees, or can it include other types of credentials such as diplomas and certificates? / Yes, an OER degree can include other types of one- and two-year credentials, such as diplomas and certificates.
Does this mean certificate programs through continuing education programs would not be eligible? / See above.
Does the grant allow the use of openly licensed print materials or do all materials have to be online? / In order to be shared publicly, all of the open course materials need to be in a digital format. However, colleges may customize materials for printing or for delivery in other instructional modalities. Lumen Learning can assist institutions adapting materials into different formats, if needed.
Can the degree program be offered as a 100% online degree program? / Yes. The degree program can be fully-online, hybrid, or face-to-face.
Have any institutions experienced accreditation issues from using open resources? / Lumen Learning has not observed institutions having accreditation issues since the curriculum and learning outcomes remain the same. Additionally, the quality of the open resources has been sufficiently high and the efficacy data to date show that students in OER courses are more likely to be successful than those enrolled in traditional courses.
When must the first OER courses be offered? / Colleges are not expected to offer all of the required degree courses at the start. However, colleges are expected to put some of the courses in place in early 2017 and other required courses as quickly as possible in subsequent terms. All courses in the OER degree program must be offered at least once by the close of the grant.
Are students expected to earn an OER Degree during the timeframe of the initiative? / It is understood that students may not complete an OER degree during the timeframe of this Initiative. The research and evaluation component will examine progress toward degree.
Does every OER degree have to include Developmental Education courses? / There is no requirement to offer OER developmental education courses. However, it is understood that many colleges now use co-requisite course models which allow students to take college level courses while receiving additional support to improve basic skills. If these courses are part of the required sequence for an OER degree, one or more sections should be offered via OER materials.
How much faculty time is needed to develop an OER course? / The amount of faculty time needed to create, develop, adopt, or adapt an OER course can vary significantly due to a number of factors including: the subject area of the course, the existing, high-quality OER in that subject area, and the specific objectives of the course at the institution. Assuming a well-curated OER course exists that is a good match for the learning outcomes of the targeted course and that faculty have adequate content and technical support, it can take as little as a day. As the level of adaptation and development increases, or support drops, the more time it will take to complete an open course.
Are the courses in Tidewater’s OER degree available for reuse by other institutions? / Yes, as are the OER courses developed by other community colleges. You can find a subset of TCC and VCCS OER courses here:
For any TCC courses not found at the link above, contact Linda Williams at

Timeline, events, and final deliverables

When are grant proposals due? / All OER Degree Initiative grant materials must be submitted to the online submission site by 5:00 p.m. (PST) on April 8, 2016.
When does the grant end? / The grant ends on December 31, 2018.
When and where is the Kick-off meeting? / The 2016 Kickoff is tentatively planned for June 12-14, 2016 on the west coast of the U.S.
Can the president send a high level designee if he or she is unable to attend the Kick-off meeting? / If there is an unavoidable conflict in the president's schedule, we will accept a high level designee. However, we much prefer that the president attends.

Open licensing and accessibility

Is it the expectation that grantees can only use OERs that are fully accessible/ADA compliant? / Generally speaking, yes. The goal should be to align the courses with each college’s policy for supporting ADA compliance. Lumen Learning can advise grantees on how to best accomplish this.
Will there be a meaningful accessibility review? / Lumen will conduct an accessibility review and will bring in external partners for additional review as needed.
Do general education courses included as part of the OER degree also need to openly licensed? / Yes, a full sequence of courses that complete the pathway for the degree program is required. Colleges should also offer a sufficient selection of OER elective courses to enable students to fulfill the degree requirements. One strategy is to select sthe most popular electives to include in the OER degree.
Will there be any ongoing costs at the end of this process to support the OER Degrees? / Materials developed during this initiative will be available as open educational resources.
Do only the curriculum and text for the OER degree need to be openly licensed, or are all instructional resources required to be open? / All of the course materials used in the OER degrees created through this initiative are required to be free and openly licensed with the appropriate Creative Commons license.
Will all newly created materials such as assessments also be required to have the Creative Commons license attribution? / Yes, all new materials created as part of this grant must be licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY).
Where do grantees find existing OER to use for this project? / There is no single location where all OER resources are hosted. One purpose of the community of practice, as well as Lumen’s technical assistance, is to help colleges locate high-quality resources. There will be time at Kickoff devoted to helping colleges locate these resources.
Visit Lumen’s OER Degree webpage, for more information.
Are there expectations or recommendations about where to place the materials that we develop? / In additional to being openly licensed, all materials created with grant funds must also be shared publicly. CCCOER and Lumen will assist with making new materials available for the public to use.
Is it acceptable to use our institutional library resources for OER, i.e., articles in our library databases that only enrolled students have access to. / For the OER Degree Initiative, all materials are required to be OER. This means they must be free and openly licensed. Openly licensed means that materials can be reused, revised, remixed, retained, and redistributed by anyone. Library resources are copyrighted, so can be used as supplemental resources but not core course materials.
Will there be a meaningful accessibility review? / Lumen will conduct an accessibility review and will bring external partners in for additional review of items presenting issues or challenges.

College systems

Can regional consortiums apply together (within the same state or province)? / Regional consortia may apply. There are advantages to including the state agency in the consortium as they may be able to help with scaling/spread. Applicants should have good strategies for how they will scale and grow their work. It the state is the applicant, we would expect the state to play a key role in helping the colleges develop their programs and encourage other colleges in the state to adopt OER degrees. There can be other scaling strategies, too.
For a system, do you want a system-level commitment letter and letters from the presidents of the participating colleges or just at the highest level? / State applicants should include a letter from the system head and each of the participating college presidents. System applications should have an active role for the state office. This is not simply an endorsement by the state office. It is a commitment to be engaged in the work with the colleges.
How should travel for a system be handled? Highest level personnel or presidents and teams from each participating college within the system? / System level and college level representation is desired; it depends on the size of the consortium how many people come to learning events. If there are, for example, 10 colleges working on the same degree, a strong team from across the partners should participate; the proposed decision making structure could inform a decision about the right folks to send to Kickoff.