This summer, teams at The Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning (CITL) have been busy transforming traditional textbooks and other materials for three University of Illinois courses into fully accessible, interactive, and engaging eTexts that students will be able to access via their favorite electronic device.
Starting on September 8, CITL will award a second round of $8,000 competitive grants to a limited number of faculty and instructors to develop their locally-produced course materials as required reading for classes on the Urbana campus.
Grant recipients will receive support in transforming assigned textbooks, workbooks, or readings for Spring 2022 courses to the award-winning eText@Illinois platform.
While all instructor-authors are eligible, those interested in creating required resources for classes with a large undergraduate enrollment (greater than 300 seats annually) are particularly encouraged to apply.
Grants may be awarded as service-in-excess appointments, or as stipends by arrangement with Department chair and business office. This grant is being offered in recognition of the amount of work involved in developing course content.
Please review the RFP for more details.
The deadline for proposal submissions is August 23, 2021. Applicants may email their submissions to citl-extextrfp@illinois.edu
Why eText@Illinois?
Created at and for the University of Illinois, eText@Illinois is an interactive, browser-based multimedia-capable platform for delivering original, instructor-developed course content in a cost-efficient manner. Students usually save been 50 to 75 percent over the cost of mainstream published textbooks (even over electronic rentals).
While eTexts cover the course content, they often contain embedded multimedia assets and additional features. For example, they allow for two-way communication between students and instructors, typed and freehand notetaking, as well as embedded assessments and practice problems linked from learning management systems (LMS) on campus.
The electronic platform enables students with myriad visual, mobility, language, and learning abilities to learn and interact with their course content, instructor, and peers in ways that best meet their learning strategies, putting them on equal footing with other students.
The electronic texts can be tailored specifically to a given course as it is taught on the Urbana-Champaign campus. Extraneous topics can be omitted and content supplemented with important background information and scaffolding as needed.
Currently, eText at Illinois hosts more than 70 eTexts (required textbooks for courses) and has served more than 70,000 textbooks to Illinois students since 2010. Fall 2020 saw the largest use, topping more than 16,000 student eTexts.
Learn more about developing an eText.
For more information or demo access to textbooks on the eText@illinois platform, please email Milind Basole, Principal eLearning Specialist at CITL.