The Library supported two faculty members in developing successful applications to the Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) Faculty OER Mini-Grant Program. A team from the University of Maryland, College Park from the Biocomputational Engineering program at USG received a Create OER grant to create a course ENBC321: Machine Learning for Data Analysis, incorporating open educational resources (OERs) into it. A faculty member from the University of Maryland, Baltimore Nursing program also received a Create OER grant to develop the first three chapters of an open textbook titled “The Health Informatics Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to Systems Thinking in a Digital Age.” Each chapter will include an overview of the essential topic being covered, appropriate learning objectives, additional text, hyperlinks, tutorials, or multimedia resources to help guide readers, and will conclude with a practice exercise. Librarians will collaborate with the faculty as they implement these projects.

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For both of these courses, textbooks that cover their course content at a level for undergraduates remain scant so these new resources fill a gap. Also, with the rising cost of textbooks, OERs provide economic relief to students already struggling to cover the costs of their course materials. In addition, because of the adaptability and flexibility of OERs, faculty can modify them to better reflect the experiences and diversity of USG students than many traditional textbooks do.