Dr. Joseph Williams, Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric in Louisiana Tech’s College of Liberal Arts, has been awarded the Interactive Open Educational Resources (OER) for Dual Enrollment Program Grant from the Department of Education and the Louisiana Library Network on the Louisiana Board of Regents (LOUIS) consortium to pursue the creation and improvement of OERs.
OERs are programs that each “have the potential to cut back prices and enhance outcomes for 250,000 complete student enrollments statewide per educational 12 months” and align with the strategic initiatives that the University of Louisiana System (ULS) has pursued beneath the management of ULS President Dr. Jim Henderson, mentioned LOUIS Associate Commissioner Dr. Teri Gallaway.
The LOUIS consortium is in partnership with educational libraries — together with Tech’s Prescott Memorial Library — state and personal libraries, museums, and archives, and is well known as a mannequin for cost-effective collaboration in increased schooling. The community works to guarantee equitable entry to assets, companies, and applied sciences by maximizing buying energy and sharing experience.
“Besides relieving the strain of scholars buying pricy textbooks, OERs help in open schooling, curriculum design, curation and analysis, and authoring,” Williams mentioned. “I plan to apply what I’ve realized from my OER coursework and facilitate open-access supplies statewide, particularly associated to Business Communication (English 305).”
The outcomes with these interdisciplinary cohort collaborations will finally present unparalleled academic opportunities for these concerned with English 305. Williams has been educating the course for a 12 months and, with the assistance of his OER cohort — he’ll be assigned a accomplice and fellow grant winner inside the UL System — he plans to “make the category higher, stronger, and ‘cooler.’”
“I’d like to develop extra community-based motion initiatives,” Williams mentioned. “For instance, Tech’s administration requested me to develop an task that assisted with advertising methods for every of Tech’s graduate packages throughout Winter 2021. It was mutually useful, as my college students have been doing a strong for Tech, and Tech was instantly using my college students’ knowledge. Another class analyzed COVID-19 posters focused for numerous populations in Louisiana, thereby honing my college students’ analysis abilities in addition to helping the Louisiana Department of Health.
“Secondly, I’m concerned about offering my enterprise college students with extra real-world conditions by which they’ve to assume on their ft and make fast selections — one thing that the College of Business appreciates,” he mentioned.
Williams is the one Tech Faculty recipient of this grant, with provides a three-year stipend of $8,000, payable in installments of $2,000 the primary and third years, and $4,000 the second 12 months.