Department of Education awards first-ever OER grant to UC Davis open textbook project

The federal government will award the entire $4.9 million of its first-ever round of OER funding to a STEM-focused open textbook project out of the University of California, Davis, the Department of Education planned to announce Tuesday.

The terms of the grant required applicants to submit on behalf of a consortium. Aside from UC Davis, the winning project comprises 11 institutions: three four-year institutions in the Midwest, one community college in Maryland and seven community colleges in California.

According to the abstract submitted by the applicant, UC Davis’s project will expand the institution’s existing LibreTexts project “into an expansive living library of content that can be customized to faculty needs.” The team will build over time a library of publications on career and technical topics, with a focus on chemistry textbooks that will add up to a zero-cost textbook option for a bachelor’s degree curriculum certified by the American Chemical Society.