海角直播

Our History

Open educational resources (OER) help increase access, equity and affordability for college students. 海角直播 Denver established its OER task force in the fall of 2018 to promote awareness and use of OER at 海角直播 Denver. This group was renamed the OER Program Steering Committee in fall 2026 to recognize the ongoing nature of the OER Program at 海角直播 Denver.

Institutional Faculty Awards

Spring 2026 OER SOAR Award - Mr. Brian Healy

Over the past four years, Prof. Healy has transformed the way we think about using open educational resources at 海角直播 Denver. His OER journey began in 2022, and by 2023, he was co-facilitating the OER Faculty Learning Community, which connects faculty across all colleges.

Prof. Healy created a roadmap for a Zero-Textbook-Cost pathway through the Communication Studies major, collaborated on an OER grant for state OER funding to support the work, and launched a Lecturer-specific OER FLC, empowering faculty to embrace innovative teaching strategies. He designed and piloted a new OER-based course shell for COMM 1010 that dramatically improved student success. As a member of the 海角直播 Denver OER Taskforce, Brian has organized institutional celebrations, presented at the Colorado State OER Conference,听 and advises 海角直播 Denver鈥檚 first OER Student Club.

Spring 2024 OER SOAR Award - Dr. Jon Dyhr

Since August 2022, Dr. Dyhr has been representing Colorado faculty in his role on the State of Colorado OER Council through the Colorado Department of Higher Education. Dr. Dyhr has been an early leader in OER at 海角直播 Denver. His BIO 4300 – Neurobiology Senior Experiences course is Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) course.

Dr. Dyhr has also made substantial changes to make Human Anatomy and Physiology low cost by remixing multiple OER laboratory manuals, adopting the Openstax Anatomy and Physiology textbook and converting PowerPoint slides to use images that are either Creative Commons Licensed or Public Domain. He has created some of his own images, which he shares via Wikimedia commons.

Spring 2023 OER SOAR Award - PSY 1001 Development Team

The 2022-2023 Open Educational Resources award goes to Dr. Chris Garris, Dr. Lisa Hagan, Dr. Laurel Hyslop, and Dr. Chrislyn Randell from Psychological Sciences and instructional designer Craig Ibarg眉en (Center for Teaching, Learning and Design) for the collaborative redesign of the online section of PSY 1001, Introduction to Psychology. They adopted Psychology 2e from OpenStax, but this team went way beyond just adopting an open textbook! Working together, faculty wrote custom assessments that were deployed in Canvas, eliminating the need for an online homework. This team, along with eleven additional Psychology faculty, collaborated on creating 44 mini-lectures so introductory students are exposed to a breadth of faculty in their course. This OER course showcases the strengths of the 海角直播 Denver Department of Psychological Sciences, offers students a customized learning experience, and has already saved over 600 students more than $60,000 over fall 2022 and spring 2023.

Fall 2021 OER SOAR Award

Dr. Ann Diker, Professor, Department of Nutrition, adapted an OER textbook for NUT 2040 Introduction to Nutrition and prepared the Canvas template which has been used in all sections of the course since Fall 2020. This free textbook is estimated to be a $170,000 cost savings for the over 1,000 海角直播 Denver students taking this General Studies Natural and Physical Sciences course annually.

 

Spring 2019 - Roadrunners who soar awards

Dr. Andrew Bonham ( Department of Chemistry) and Dr. Todd Laugen (Department of History) were recognized as 海角直播 Denver’s Open Educational Resources Used in a Course winners.

  • Dr. Bonham was recognized for his adoption of OER in a master course for CHE 2100, Introduction to Organic and Biochemistry, a course taken by about 120 students per year and with a high textbook cost (over $100).
  • Dr. Laugen co-wrote 鈥淐olorado History Detectives: Teaching Historical Literacy to School-Aged Readers鈥, which benefits K-12 students and teachers across the state and was also used in Dr. Laugen鈥檚 Spring 2019 section of HIS 3425, 鈥淐olorado and the Nation鈥.

Alex McDaniel (Associate Director of Instructional Design) received the OER Promotion on Campus award.

  • Since 2005, Alex has worked with individual faculty members to create or improve hundreds of online, hybrid and face-to-face courses. Throughout this time, Alex sought out opportunities to infuse OERs into course design processes, maximizing student learning and making learning more affordable.
  • In his current role as Associate Director of Instructional Design, he has worked with his team to increase the overall adoption and creation of OERs within the design of Online and Hybrid courses.

August 2020 - SOAR Awards

Samuel Jay (Department of Communication Studies) and Brooke Woolman (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) were recognized as 海角直播 Denver’s Open Educational Resource Used in a Course Champion Soar Award winners.

  • Samuel Jay, associate professor of communication studies, adopted OER in the online section COMM 1010, Public Speaking. He then scaled the project to all sections of the course, which enrolls approximately 1600 students a year!
  • Brooke Woolman, lecturer in the department of chemistry and biochemistry, taught 234 students in OER sections during the 2019-20 year for an estimated cost savings of up to $29,000 and developed OER sections of three different chemistry courses.

Ellen Metter (former Auraria Research Support Librarian and Library OER Lead who retired May 31, 2020) was recognized as the OER Promotion on Campus Champion.

  • Ellen was an effective champion for OER at 海角直播 Denver as well as CCD and CU Denver.
  • She served on 海角直播 Denver鈥檚 OER task force, including the grant-writing sub groups that wrote grants to CDHE that led to $136,000 over two years.

OER Program Steering Committee

Early Bird Articles

The OER team has published multiple articles in the 海角直播 Denver’s daily news publication for faculty and staff, the Early Bird, and in RED.

Read the Early Bird and RED stories below to learn more about grant funded OER initiatives and the course marking system that gives students information about courses with no or low cost for materials at the time of registration.

Spring 2026

Fall 2024

Spring 2024

Spring 2022

Fall 2021

2020-2021

2019-2020

2018

Current Grants

Learn more about the three State of Colorado OER grants awarded to 海角直播 Denver

Read our award history
Emily Ragan looking out a window holding two books in each arm

Our OER Coordinator

Emily Ragan

Emily is a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry and was been fortunate to represent 海角直播 Denver on the state from 2017-2021. Emily helped establish the 海角直播 Denver OER task force (now the OER Program) in September 2018 and has led the University’s efforts to obtain grant funding to support faculty work around OER.

Interested in implementing OER in your courses?

Email US

Email the OER Coordinator, Emily Ragan, to learn more about OER opportunities and to learn how to start the OER process.

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