The Champion Award winners, clockwise from top left, are: Burcu Ozden, Penn State Abington; Kaitlin Farnan, Penn State Altoona; Tara Beecham, Penn State Berks; Tracey Carbonetto, Penn State Lehigh Valley; Larry Dupak, Penn State Greater Allegheny; Nasibeh Zohrabi, Penn State Brandywine
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Six Penn State Commonwealth Campuses recently named faculty members as Open Champions, recognizing their work with open education in the fourth year of Penn State’s Open and Affordable Educational Resources (OAER) Champion Awards. The OAER Champion Award began as a pilot initiative in 2022 and seeks to recognize excellence, innovation and impact in open educational practices at Penn State campuses.
The following faculty members were recognized for their work with open education at their campuses:
Penn State Abington
- Burcu Ozden, assistant professor of engineering, for demonstrating a sustained and exemplary commitment to expanding access and affordability in a discipline that has among the highest textbook costs and relatively few affordable options.Through her efforts, students in engineering — particularly those in "EE 210: Circuits and Devices," and "EDSGN 100: Cornerstone Engineering Design" — now benefit from high-quality, zero-cost course materials that remove financial barriers to learning. The committee said they were impressed not only by how Burcu has adopted open educational resources (OER) in her own courses, but also by her active promotion of open and affordable course materials among her engineering colleagues at Penn State, which has resulted in widespread adoption of OER among "EDSGN 100" instructors.
Penn State Altoona
- Kaitlin Farnan, instructor in management, for integrating high-quality video resources to capture co-curricular opportunities like study abroad programs, study-away trips and site visits that not all students can attend due to education costs. By partnering with other areas of Penn State to capture those experiences to implement in the classroom, the committee said she made it possible for all students to engage in unique remote experiences as if they are there. Farnan presented her work at Penn State Altoona’s second Open and Affordable Showcase in May.
Penn State Berks
- Tara Beecham, assistant teaching professor and English coordinator, Common Reading Program, for working diligently to leverage the transformative power of OER in her courses. She was instrumental in providing free copies of the Common Reading selection to all incoming first-year students, peer mentors, and instructors for "PSU 005: First-Year Seminar;" securing Barnes & Noble grants; and collaborating with the Academic Advising Center and the bookstore to ensure that students receive these books at no cost. Beecham approaches the design of her own courses with open educational practices in mind, using an open textbook for her "Principles of Multimedia Journalism" course and curating a variety of no-cost readings for her students. She and Brett Spencer, reference and instruction librarian, collaborated to eliminate textbook costs for first-year students in the "Rhetoric and Composition" course by creating a custom reading list of OER and library resources tailored to students’ needs.
Penn State Brandywine
- Nasibeh Zohrabi, assistant professor of engineering, has significantly reduced financial barriers for students by integrating OAER into her courses. Since spring 2022, she has eliminated textbook costs in three second-year engineering courses — "EE 210: Circuits and Devices," "CMPEN 271: Introduction to Digital Systems," and "CMPEN 275: Digital Design Lab" — that serve as prerequisites for upper-level engineering course work. She replaced textbooks with materials she developed herself, including chapter-specific handouts, custom homework assignments, quizzes, exams and free online books carefully selected to maintain a rigorous and engaging learning experience.
Penn State Greater Allegheny
- Larry Dupak, lecturer in information technology, has since 2018 explored and utilized an evolving mix of open and library-licensed resources to mitigate the costs of course materials for his students. He chaired the campus Faculty Senate’s ad hoc Textbook Affordability Committee for four years, spearheading several advocacy initiatives. He also leveraged the campus’ Digital Fluency initiative to encourage the use of OAER e-books on the iPads that all Greater Allegheny students receive as part of the program.
Penn State Lehigh Valley
- Tracey Carbonetto, associate professor of engineering, for her work adopting open educational practices into her "EMCH 211: Statics" course. Penn State Lehigh Valley’s Open Champion Awardee is chosen by vote during applicants’ presentations of their work at the annual Open and Affordable Showcase. This year, Tracey presented her use of open educational resources and experiential learning practices to improve her students' exposure to and understanding of technical contract review skills desired by employers in her industry. One nominator wrote, “Her syllabus contract will have a deep impact on new engineers … Turning syllabi into a contract with OER is an amazing ‘disrupter’ to the traditional syllabus.”
For more information on open education at Penn State, visit oer.psu.edu. If you have questions about open education or are a faculty member interested in adopting OER or creating open pedagogy assignments for your courses, contact the OER team to request a consultation for services.
