The UTA CARES Grant Program, sponsored by UTA Libraries, was established in 2017 to support educators interested in practicing open education through the adoption of OER and, when no suitable open resource is available, through the creation of new or remixed OER or the adoption of library-licensed or other free content.  Additionally, the program promotes innovation in teaching and learning through the exploration of open educational practices, such as collaborating with students to produce educational content of value to a wider community. UTA CARES Grants aim to increase affordability, equity, and student success by eliminating financial barriers to required course content.

Reporting Requirements

Monthly Updates

The UTA CARES Grant Program requires grantees to update UTA Libraries on a monthly basis for the duration of the project to report on your progress. Please submit your updates via the UTA CARES Monthly Report form by the first Tuesday of every month. Grantees will receive an Outlook calendar invitation with a reminder of the monthly deadline.

student Surveys

Each semester, students enrolled in UTA courses supported by the UTA CARES Grant Program and by Mavs Open Press are surveyed about their experiences using OER or other educational content available at no cost. All grantees are required to survey students enrolled in courses impacted by the program, and former grantees are asked to distribute the survey each semester the OER/alternative resources are used. If the OER you created is being used by a different UTA instructor, please consider forwarding the survey request to them.

The OER team will share a link to the QuestionPro student survey several weeks before the end of classes to be distributed to students at the end of the semester. If you would prefer to distribute the survey in print (this sometimes results in a higher response rate), you may do so using the provided PDF. Grantees who choose to distribute hard copies of the surveys must provide UTA Libraries with a spreadsheet of the data and submit the original hard copies of the surveys to the Libraries OER Department. Surveys are anonymous, but if you wish to offer extra credit for completion you may ask them to submit a screenshot of the confirmation page after submitting their response. Please do not ask students to add their name or university ID to surveys distributed in print.

Survey results should be incorporated into your final report. The anonymous responses from your students will be shared with you via email after the deadline for submitting grades for the semester.

Final Report

All grantees are required to submit a final project report summarizing the challenges and accomplishments of the project and its impact on student performance. You may incorporate survey results (both qualitative and quantitative) and informal student feedback into the report, though you should also include a reflection on your personal experience. Some questions to help you brainstorm content for the report:

• What went well?
• What challenges (anticipated or unexpected) did you encounter during your work on this project?
• Were any portions of the project left incomplete (if so, explain)?
• In what ways did support from the libraries assist you in this process and in what ways did it fall short?
• What kind of support would have improved the experience for you?
• What kind of feedback did you receive from students?
• What can you tell us about your participation in the project that will help us grown and improve the program in future iterations?
• What did the UTA CARES funding allow you to accomplish that you would’ve otherwise been unable to accomplish?

While we don’t have a specific template or length requirement, we do have a few examples in the institutional repository where your report will be archived. These are linked from the project descriptions on the UTA CARES Grant Recipient page. Dr. Habib Ahmari’s report is a good model.

Please submit your report as a PDF or Word document via email to oer@uta.edu.