In the summer of 2021, the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and University of Northern Iowa libraries announced a joint funding opportunity for the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER). This program was open to 2-4 person teams of faculty, graduate students, and staff at any of the three Board of Regents State of Iowa public universities.

This grant provided awards to project teams hoping to create new open educational resources for their courses. In addition to financial awards, successful applicants received intensive training on OER creation and development. This training included an OER development “sprint” in October 2021, where grantees had the opportunity to work on their projects over an intensive two-day workshop. Grant recipients also received support for finding source material, using OER authoring tools, developing content, understanding open licensing, and OER project management before and after the workshop.

The Regents OER grant program was created with support from the Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER Fund), which was established in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed by Congress in 2020.

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