Developing and implementing a departmental award for textbook savings at Texas Woman’s University

Abstract

As a smaller, public, higher education institution with extremely limited resources, the drivers for OER adoption on the TWU campus are threefold-- grass-root initiatives, strategic campus partnerships, and a large helping of librarian tenacity. Named the H.E.A.R.T. Initiative (Helping Education with Alternate Resources and Textbooks) in a nod towards the TWU motto as a “campus with a heart,” this project began with the goals of developing a departmental award for textbook savings in order to improve awareness of Open Educational Resources (OER), forming a collaboration with campus partners to develop programming and communicate with appropriate campus leaders regarding the award, and developing a marketing campaign in order to spread awareness of the award. In the span of one year, what began as an exploratory conversation transformed into a model recognized and supported at the highest level of campus administration.