Kettering College Professor Receives OhioLINK Mini-Grant
Kettering College is a part of OhioLINK, an online consortium that gives students access to research materials located in other Ohio academic libraries. This sharing of scholarly resources expands opportunities for learning, so we are proud to be a part of this important organization.
OhioLINK has teamed up with the Ohio Department of Higher Education to implement initiatives that reduce the cost of attending college. One way of achieving this is to help instructors teach with no-cost course materials instead of traditional costly textbooks.
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free course materials, making education more accessible —a goal we strive to achieve at Kettering College. To encourage more use of OER, OhioLINK has recently awarded 29 mini-grants to faculty members across Ohio. The grants’ purpose was to show instructors how to locate free materials with the goal of implementing them more in the future.
“While many faculty are interested in making the switch from traditional textbooks, there is a learning curve associated with understanding no-cost options and then adapting their curriculum with alternative materials.”
-Anna Bendo, OhioLINK Director of Affordable Learning
When our Health Science Chair and Associate Professor Elizabeth Golba heard about this opportunity at a faculty forum, she applied for one of the grants and received it. The grant gave her access to over 3 weeks of training as well as a final course project submission. She received a personalized review of her syllabus and assistance in identifying OER and/or library resources that meet her course’s learning objectives.
“I applied to the OER mini-grant because I am well aware of the continued rising costs of textbooks for students. The current cost of the textbook I use for my HESC 340 class is $98, and I wanted to offer a free option of this if possible.”
-Elizabeth Golba MEd, RRT-RCP, NPS, RRFT
Professor Golba found the course very beneficial and, as a result of her training, plans to no longer use the current textbook for her course and instead provide students with OER.
Kettering College is always looking for ways to make higher education more affordable, and we thank Professor Golba for her dedication to this mission as well. She saw an opportunity, voluntarily pursued it, and as a result, will bring her valuable knowledge back to her students and other faculty.
About Kettering College
Kettering College is a fully accredited, coeducational college that specializes in health science education. A division of Kettering Health, the College is located on the Kettering Health Main campus in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, and is chartered by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Kettering College offers an Occupational Therapy Doctoral program, a Master of Physician Assistant, Bachelor and Associate of Science degrees, and certificate programs.