An NMI faculty team of John Weatherford, Chris Gerlach, Tyler Mazurek, and Kyla Sterling were selected to receive an $8,500 Affordable Learning Georgia Continuous Improvement Grant to revise and enhance its OER (Open Educational Resource) for the NMI’s Web Development course.
OERs are free-to-access materials used for teaching, learning, assessment, and research purposes. The NMI has long made use of these types of affordable resources in their classrooms. The Web Development OER, known as the Web Dev workbook to students, is regularly used by over a half-dozen faculty members teaching multiple sections of Web Development for both undergraduate and graduate students, in person and online. Over the previous year, the workbook received nearly 60,000 views with over 7,000 visitors.
The ALG-funded revision focused on:
- A comprehensive content audit to remove outdated lessons, update all lessons to current best practices, and better organize all content for accessibility and consistency.
- A major expansion of the WordPress unit, with a focus on the platform’s new Full Site Editing experience.
- Updating the site’s decade-old theme to a modern Full Site Editing-compatible theme.
The Full Site Editing template, patterns, and content blocks created with this grant, combined with the updated technical content, enables NMI faculty to more easily update the site to stay in step with an ever-evolving tech industry.
The NMI was one of two UGA groups selected from nearly 70 applications representing 11 University System of Georgia institutions. Recipients of this grant will save Georgia students an estimated $700,000 per year.