State OER Grant Programs

As mentioned in the previous section on legislation, SB 810 created a statewide OER Grant Program to encourage faculty at institutions of higher education to adopt, modify, redesign, or develop courses that use only open educational resources. Established in 2018 and administered by the THECB, the competitive state-funded program provides grants to Texas public institutions of higher education to adopt, modify, redesign, or develop courses using only OER. There have been three rounds of grants cycles, with the most recent in spring 2023.

The most recent awards included two categories:

Development Grants

A maximum of $25,000 to Texas institutions of higher education to develop new or substantially improve existing OER for one or more courses. These grants are matched with one-to-one contributions from the institution or institutions (contributions can be in-kind but cannot include faculty salaries).

Implementation Grants

A maximum of $5,000 to Texas institutions of higher education to support the substantial redesign of one or more courses to incorporate existing OER resources.

These grants have had significant impact on affordability for students; for the OER Grant Program Fiscal 2018-2019 Awards, grantee faculty members and colleagues served 6,918 students during Fall 2019-Summer 2021 for a total savings by those students of $1,014,416.00. For the OER Grant Program Fiscal 2020-2021 Awards, grantee faculty members and colleagues served 6,454 students during Fall 2020-Fall 2022 for a total savings by those students of $669,724. You can read more about the outcomes and impact of the grant programs, as well as possible future OER opportunities, in Open Educational Resources (OER) Grant Program: A Report to the Texas Legislature in accordance with the General Appropriations Act, SB 1, 87th Texas Legislature, Article III, Section 49.

In recent years, the THECB also has offered OER development and implementation grants through the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER) Fund  and also has utilized Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) funds to support OER development across the state.

Resources  created through all these programs are available in the THECB Grantee Collection in OERTX.

Federal OER Grant Program

The U.S. Department of Education has supported the growth of open education nationally through its Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE). Most recently, its Open Textbook Pilot Program has supported projects that create new open textbooks and expand the use of open textbooks in courses that are part of a degree-granting program. This pilot program emphasizes the development of projects that demonstrate the greatest potential to achieve the highest level of savings for students through sustainable, expanded use of open textbooks in high-enrollment courses or in programs that prepare individuals for in-demand fields.