The OER initiative at the City College of New York (CCNY) aims to increase education affordability by lowering textbook costs for students and supporting the use and creation of freely available educational materials on campus. We train instructors across departments to develop OER courses as well as provide technical assistance on building open course sites.

Our funding comes primarily from the OER Scale Up Initiative, a grant from New York State launched in 2017 to fund the growth of OER on CUNY campuses. CCNY is a leader within CUNY's OER community.

The CUNY OER Initiative award only covers undergraduate courses that require readings/textbooks. Studio courses and thesis courses, all graduate courses, and any course that does not have a required textbook are not eligible.

The Teaching and Learning Center offers this fully online training course, designed to support faculty interested in converting their course materials to open educational resources (OER) or zero textbook cost (ZTC) courses. These resources, which are created and/or collected by the instructor, are provided to students at low or no cost. This course conversion workshop will familiarize you with the fair use doctrine, copyright laws, Creative Commons, and open licensing and provide individualized support in the creation, curation, and development of an OER. 

Instructors who convert their courses to OER will receive $600 when they have: 

• Signed and returned a letter of intent.
• Completed every assignment in the course conversion workshop, including posting to the discussion board, following the course schedule.
• Submitted their current syllabus to the Course Conversion Seminar course site in Brightspace.
• Incorporated aspects of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) into their syllabus;
• Met with an OER fellow to review their revised syllabus

Instructors will receive an additional $300 payment if they submit their OER syllabus to CCNY's Academic Works. Finally, they will receive an additional $300 payment if they designate their course as Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) in CUNYfirst. 

Instructors who adopt a syllabus created by another faculty member will receive $600.

• Applicants can propose a higher stipend amount for lead faculty of large-enrollment courses (5 or more sections or 100 students). Department chairs must be included in any proposed conversion of large-enrollment courses. For more information about this, please discuss your proposal with an OER fellow or email us at  tlc@ccny.cuny.edu  .

Additional Course Conversions
If in the years following your completion of the course conversion workshop, you convert an additional course, submit the syllabus to Academic Works, and teach the course at CCNY, you may be eligible for an additional $600 award. After you have submitted the syllabus to Academic Works, send an email to  tlc@ccny.cuny.edu  letting us know the course title and the date you completed the OER Course Conversion workshop. Once the syllabus has been reviewed and accepted by the OER Director, we'll process the paperwork for an additional $600 award. There is a payment cap of $2,100 per instructor. 

There is an OER payment cap of $2,100 per instructor. 

• Brenna Crowe: "Satirical Essay Assignment prompt & calendar" by Brenna E. Crowe (cuny.edu)
• Kylee Pastore: "General Review of Elements Quiz for "Write or Left" textbook" by Kylee C. Pastore (cuny.edu)
• Jose Cobo: "Preparation for General Chemistry" by Jose Cobo (cuny.edu)
• Sarah Cohn: "Research in the Digital Age" by Sarah B. Cohn (cuny.edu)
• John De Lucia: "Intro to Jazz" by Jon De Lucia (cuny.edu)
• Anuradha Herath: "Demonstration Speech Guidelines" by Anuradha K. Herath (cuny.edu)
• Amy Kratka: "Intro to Jewish American Literature" by Amy W. Kratka (cuny.edu)
• Willie Mack: "The African Experience and Heritage in the Caribbean and Brazil Project" by Willie Mack (cuny.edu)
• Stephanie Rose: "Evolution and Adaptations - Choose an organism to explore" by Stephanie A. Rose (cuny.edu)
• Brent Maximin: "Psychology of Addiction: Discussion & Essay Questions" by Brent Maximin (cuny.edu)
• Lynne Foster: "Illustration" by Lynne S. Foster (cuny.edu)
• Kwame Baffour: "Web Design" by Kwame A. Baffour (cuny.edu)

Overview of the OPI Process
The Open Publishing Initiative includes five, 1.5‑hour remote seminars, which will be attended 
by all members of the current OPI cohort. These seminars will introduce you to various aspects 
of OER publishing, including project scoping and design, Creative Commons licensing, digital 
platforms, and the pedagogical principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as well as 
Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (IDE). Additionally, authors will participate in monthly meetings 
throughout the academic year to provide status updates and offer mutual support. You will also 
have the opportunity to meet individually with OER fellows as needed for guidance on 
identifying existing OER materials and building your textbook on the appropriate platform.

Collaboration
If there is more than one person developing your project, we anticipate that you will split the 
award evenly. If that's not the case, please let us know and we'll divide the money as you say. 
We cannot support more than four authors on any one project, and we cannot make payments 
to people who might, for example, be contributing to a part of a chapter. Please be aware that 
we will not increase the amount retroactively even if you decide to add members to your group. 
Please think carefully about what you’ll need to complete this project and if the CCNY OPI 
meets your needs.

Award Details
The award for your CCNY Open Publishing Initiative (OPI) project is $10,000 and will be 
distributed in three pieces:

•   25% upon completion of the Open Publishing seminars with the CCNY OER team 
•   25% upon completion of a rough draft of a chapter; and 
•   50% upon completion of the project 

If you are a full‑time member of the faculty, it is possible for us to transfer the funds to your 
department in order to secure one or two course releases (depending on the cost). To do this, 
we need the permission of your department chair and your dean.

CCNY accepts between three and five OER textbook projects every year. These texts are free of charge to everyone. Faculty who create an OER textbook with the Teaching and Learning Center will receive $10,000. We encourage faculty to submit their textbook proposals to us by emailing   tlc@ccny.cuny.edu  . Faculty members accepted into our Open Press Initiative program complete a five-session synchronous introduction to open educational resource practices and pedagogy. Following this introductory course, they work with an OER Fellow who provides both technological and pedagogical support until the project is complete. Project completion generally takes between one and three years.

• Listening to The World by Antoni Piza
• Electromagnetic Theory and Applications by Nicholas Madamopoulos and George Kliros
• Achieving Comprehensive Education for Understanding Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities (ACE IDD) by Patricia Sutherland-Cohen; Edited by Julia Brown
• Photography: What, How, Why by Maria Politarhos and Randy Matusow
• A Marketing Handbook by jmoritz

Students in some majors are able to earn a Z degree, which means that at least one section of every required course in their major subject is designated ZTC. These courses have to be offered with enough frequency that a student would reasonably be able to complete a degree in four years. Departments that offered Z degrees as of September 2024 include: 

• Black Studies
• Psychology
• Sociology
• (including creative writing, literature, and English Education)
• International and Global Studies
• Theatre
• Electronic Design and Multimedia 
• Music (including Popular Music, Sonic Arts, and Jazz Studies)

As Chancellor Matos Rodríguez reminds us, “universities can be the engines of change and badly needed reforms.” TLC is committed to supporting the diverse CCNY community in fulfilling the college’s founding mission of access and opportunity. Below are a variety of resources on anti-racist, diversity- and equity-driven pedagogies, many with consideration toward online learning environments. This list is ongoing, and we invite you to share resources that have helped to shape your teaching practices in these areas.  If you have a resource that you’d like to contribute, please contact us at tlc@ccny.cuny.edu

Videos: 

• Responding to Racial Biases and Microaggressions in Online Environments, CORA Webinar
• Employing Equity-Minded & Culturally-Affirming Teaching Practices in Virtual Learning Communities, CORA Webinar
• “Challenging Discussions” a resource on managing potentially difficult dialogues in the classroom from the USC CET
• Challenging the Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Noble
• Uprising in Context: The Struggle for Racial Justice in the United States, CCNY’s Colin Powell School

Books:

• On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life by Sara Ahmed
• Anti-Racist Scholarship: An Advocacy edited by James Joseph Scheurich
• Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks
• Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks
• Decolonizing Educational Research: From Ownership to Answerability edited by Leigh Pate

Web Resources and Articles:

• The USC Race & Equity Center
• Syllabus Review Tool from USC CUE
• Project Implicit
• “8 Ways to be More Inclusive in your Zoom Teaching” by Kelly A. Hogan and Viji Sathy
• “How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive” by Kelly A. Hogan and Viji Sathy
• Inclusive Teaching Strategies Reflection Checklist from U Michigan
• “Embracing Diversity in Your Classroom” module 2 from ACUE’s Effective Practice Framework
• Anti-Racist Resources, MLA Humanities Commons
• “Talking About Race” from the National Museum of African American History & Culture