If you are a nursing student or have one in your life, this may be a familiar sight to you.
The Chippewa Valley Technical College-led effort that resulted in the recent
publication of the first open education resource (OER) Nursing textbook has earned the Best OER Award of Excellence from Open Education Global, a non-profit supporting the development and use of open education around the world.
The electronic version of the textbook, Nursing Pharmacology, became available in June and the print version on Aug. 2. It has already been adopted by CVTC and three other state technical colleges. It is expected to be adopted by the entire WTCS system and by colleges across the country in the coming years.
The textbook is the first of five Nursing textbooks to be developed by the project, which is made possible by a $2.5 million U.S. Department of Education grant involving all 16 Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) schools, with CVTC as the lead institution. Nursing students from throughout the country will be able to save thousands of dollars on textbooks as a result of the project.
Five developing authors, thirteen contributors, thirty-two national peer reviewers, and an advisory committee collaboratively created the Nursing Pharmacology textbook under the leadership of the CVTC Open RN team. CVTC Nursing Instructor Kim Ernstmeyer was the lead author.
But wait, there’s more! Literally. The Open RN team is currently developing two additional textbooks, Nursing Skills and Nursing Fundamentals, that will be published in summer 2021. The final two textbooks, Nursing Mental Health and Nursing Management, are slated for publication in Summer 2022.
