Alaska Open Education Initiative (AOEI)

The Alaska Open Education Initiative (AOEI) was a UAA Textbook Affordability grant project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Alaska Native-Serving and Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions Education Competitive Grants Program (ANNH). The $474,908 grant was managed by project directors D'Arcy Hutchings and Veronica Howard, and supported by the UAA/APU Consortium Library. Originally slated to run from September 2019 through August 2021, the grant period was extended through January 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors. Dave Dannenberg and Veronica Howard wrote the grant proposal with the support of D'Arcy Hutchings and others; Hutchings replaced Dannenberg as project director in October 2019 before project work began in earnest.

The AOEI consisted of two main facets:

• Developing and executing a faculty development program on open educational resources (OER) and other zero-cost course materials (ZTC) (Textbook Affordability Fellows and OER/ZTC Certificate programs)
• Developing and executing a student OER/ZTC advocacy and leadership training program (Textbook Affordability Student Ambassador program)

Full, openly-licensed curricula are available for:

• Textbook Affordability Fellows program
• Textbook Affordability Student Ambassador program

If you use or revise any part of our curricula, we would love to know!

• 2019 USDA NIFA Request for Applications
• AOEI Project Abstract and Information
• AOEI Original Grant Proposal Narrative
• External Reviewer 2021 Progress Report and Final Report