WARTBURG COLLEGE MARKETING & COMMUNICATION OFFICE
Two Wartburg College social work professors have secured grants totaling $5,500 to develop open-resource instructional materials for two undergraduate social work courses.
Tammy Faux, chair of the Department of Social Work, received a $2,500 grant to develop content for an interviewing and assessing course. Tricia Coleman-Waterbury, assistant professor of social work, will use her $3,000 grant to develop resources for an existing open-resource book for an introductory-level social welfare course.
“I am creating presentations, reading guides, chapter quizzes, exams and other activities for each chapter, which will make it easier for other professors and students to utilize the materials in the future,” Coleman-Waterbury said. “I did a midterm evaluation with my students to see if it was easy to use or if there were barriers to using the resources, and it was unanimous that they loved it.”
The grants were funded through the Iowa Private Academic Libraries’ Open Educational Resources Project, which received money from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund. Faux also received $3,000 in the fall to develop open-resource instructional materials for an undergraduate social work research course.
Open educational resources are materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license for use in teaching, learning and research. These resources can be used with no or limited restrictions.
“Our goal has always to been to have affordable materials for our students. These grants will help us ensure the materials our students are using are not only high quality but also free,” Faux said. “The standard interviewing and assessing textbooks are very expensive. I am creating this one as I go with websites, journal articles and other information. I have an advantage, though, because I have taught this class many times before, so I know where I want the material to go and what I want the students to take away.”
The open-resource materials the professors develop will allow students to bookmark, save and reuse them during future classes, in their portfolios and in their professional work.
Knight Wire 
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