Our Projects
We are always working on something in Montana!
We offer a variety of professional development and learning opportunities for those interested in open education every week, ever month. With funding from the Montana Board of Regents, we have a grant program that supports faculty working with OER. TRAILS also offers publishing services for Montana faculty authoring their own openly licensed texts.
Learning Opportunities
Each month, we host virtual workshops, webinars, and connection with those hosted by our open community.
You can see and sign up for TRAILS events on our Event page.
Our Spring semester of events can be seen here as well as the Events page. Interested in a specific event for your campus, department, or learning more about a topic we haven't covered? Contact the State Coordinator, Christina Trunnell, with your ideas and suggestions. Check regularly for updates.
In addition to events, we offer a free class for faculty who are considering changing their course materials to incorporate OER or other affordable material choices for their students. This class is open to all faculty.
For details or to sign up, click here.
Montana Faculty Projects
And now, to highlight the work that our amazing faculty champions are doing....
Here are publishing projects that are currently being developed through this program.
WRIT101/121 Composing Mindfully: Writing Fundamentals, an Introduction to Technical Writing - a co-requisite approach to developmental and technical writing skills that will allow students to be more prepared for the job market. Textbook will include instructor's manual and other ancillary teacher's materials.
M111 Technical Math - a textbook for technical mathematics specifically for the Machining Industry. This text will include not only the basic math principles required for technical and machining mathematics, but also business math concepts to best prepare students for optimal job placement.
NUTR 411 Nutrition for Sports & Exercise - a lab manual to coordinate with other open textbooks which will include specific laboratory exercises and activities.
Business Entertainment Management - a downloadable and interactive app that teaches students how to identify, buy, market, and present artists in venues and meet revenue goals. This app is the first of its kind and will replace all texts for the EM program.
ECHM/EBIO 442/443 Technical Writing for Chemistry, Biology, and Engineering majors - a technical writing textbook that includes upper division technical writing skills, technical communication, and statistical methods with relevant examples and specifications for engineering, chemistry, and biology fields. This textbook includes ancillary example sheets and instructional videos.
LIT 309 Literature Genres: Serial Killers and Violence in Pop Culture - an entire open course including a textbook, current and classic literature readings, multimedia presentations, lecture outlines, project prompts, and assessments. This model can be modified for other topic areas.
M161 Survey of Calculus - textbook that covers all learning outcomes for Calculus course with authentic biology and environmental sciences examples, applications and content.
Faculty Grants
This program is committed to helping improve textbook affordability for all Montana higher education students.
One of the ways that we can do that is through faculty incentive grants. Currently, we only have the ability to offer grants to MUS institutions.
This program values work that all faculty are doing in this area. In the early years of this program, our focus is on high enrollment courses, though all faculty are encouraged to apply.
For reference, see the previous RFP below.
**Grant Update**
A new round of faculty incentive grants is announced for spring 2021. For the full Call For Proposals, visit here.
You will find the application here.