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FY 2027 – CUNY OER Content Creation RFP

BMCC faculty are invited to apply for open education (OE) content creation funding for the upcoming fiscal year.

Program Overview

The CUNY OER Initiative, managed by CUNY Central’s Office of Library Services (OLS), seeks to incentivize and empower faculty to support their students by reducing the cost of their course materials to zero and creating, adapting, and adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP). The OER Creation Application (see below) is for proposing OER creation and adaptation projects to be funded by the initiative.

OER content creation: The development of new, original educational materials that are openly licensed (typically under a Creative Commons license), and intended for use as Open Educational Resources (OER)—free for others to use, adapt, and share. Creating educational content that goes beyond basic compilation or curation (e.g., beyond simply gathering links or materials on a website). It typically involves substantive original work, such as: full-length textbooks, workbooks or manuals, multimedia instructional materials, or ancillary resources (e.g., quizzes, lecture slides, labs).

Example OER created by BMCC and CUNY faculty:

Application

To apply for content creation funding, complete this application, due Monday, May 10, 2026. Refer to A Guide to the FY27 OER Creation Application for important information about the application, along with reviewing the FY27 OER Creation Award Types (planning, production, revision), which includes funding ranges. Most new projects will fall under planning, and after completion would then be eligible for production funding. A Guide to OER Planning also provides useful information, especially for those considering applying for production funding.

Applications will be reviewed by BMCC Open Education team members in consultation with CUNY Office of Library Services. Prospective applicants should schedule a consultation meeting with the BMCC Open Education team prior to submitting an application by emailing oer@bmcc.cuny.edu.

For questions or more information, email us at oer@bmcc.cuny.edu.

Policy Requirements

Successful applicants will be required to sign a Letter of Intent (LOI) agreement with their campus. This LOI will include the following requirements of OER creators:

  • License the work they create with a Creative Commons license of their choice that allows for the reuse, remixing, and redistribution of the work.
  • Ensure that all component parts of the work are openly licensed or fair use.
  • Make the work publicly available via one or more CUNY administered platforms (Pressbooks, Manifold, CUNY Academic Works, the CUNY Academic Commons, the City Tech OpenLab, the BMCC OpenLab, etc).
  • Indicate work as “Funded by the CUNY OER Initiative” on finished work.
  • Ensure that published work meets CUNY accessibility standards.
  • Publish deliverables required by grant type by the June 30th, 2027.
  • Meet with campus OER representatives twice a semester to provide updates on the progress of the project.

OER creators will also be required to submit progress reports on their project twice each year, in February (midyear report) and June (end-of-year).