Developing Open Education Alliances

I wanted to share this upcoming opportunity, too - I've attended this in MA when it was in person - happily it is virtual now and some of the sessions on point for our goals! 

Info from their email: 

We’re excited to share the schedule for the 2024 Northeast OER Summit: A World Beyond Affordability, which is taking place on April 4 and 5! There’s still time to register at the early bird price of $35!  

The Northeast Open Educational Resources (OER) Summit is a virtual event for new and experienced OER advocates offering the opportunity to learn and share effective practices in awareness building, implementation, collaboration, strategy, and research.

We strive to make the Summit accessible to all. Registration is always free for undergraduate students, and scholarships are available for attendees for whom the registration fee is a prohibitive barrier. Please contact any member of the steering committee for scholarship information.

For the most updated information, please visit our website.

Audience and outreach goals 

Campus OER committee, administrators, and university bookstore management -- goal is to make honest cost comparisons for inclusive access packages vs. low/no cost course material options (OER/library resources/used/rented, etc.) 

Content of outreach

Cost, retention rates, parent opinions, student opinions (existing surveys?)

Outreach method(s)

Well-researched and factually backed up:

• presentations to groups: faculty, OER committee members, administration & bookstore (both synchronous and asynchronous)
• email

Call to Action: outcome and impact

Would hope that faculty would choose the low/no cost options over inclusive access. I would want them to see that adopting OER does not have to be a difficult or long process (I have heard faculty say that the inclusive access packages are "easier" and that students are guaranteed to have their materials on the first day of class). I would also like to show that inclusive access isn't necessarily the cheapest option either, and that what is described as OER in those packages often isn't, or makes up a very minor percentage of what's included.

• Identify your audience and outreach goals - Our OER committee is still working on this but our ID department has organized some OER grants for faculty so we hope to work closely with them to select recipients strategically, then help coach and support the recipients with the end to facilitate their work spreading to their departments or at least others in their departments. 
• Determine the content of your outreach – Our outreach would involve providing a wealth of resources for the grant recipients, as well as some guidelines and standards. Of course we will connect them with VIVA resources, TransferVA, as well as other repositories!
• Select an outreach method(s) – This will be an internal outreach so we will need to work closely with the ID department, the faculty committed to the grants, probably in the form of meetings and shared drives. 
• Call to Action: outcome and impact – My goal is to make this process so positive for the grant recipients that they a) spread the word throughout their departments b) continue to develop more OER courses and materials to share c) incite the administration to provide more and broader funding for OER grants.

• Identify your audience and outreach goals
  • Librarians and Faculty with a goal of general awareness of OER tools and support available.
• Determine the content of your outreach
  • Librarians: Familiarize librarians with resources already available through the library so that they can direct faculty and students to the resources efficiently.
  • Faculty: Connect faculty with OER LibGuides to help them navigate concepts, tools, and real world examples.
• Select an outreach method(s)
  • Librarians: in person or virtual staff meeting
  • Faculty: brief department meeting drop-in presentation
• Call to Action: outcome and impact
  • Librarians: incorporate OER into routine library support interactions with faculty.
  • Faculty: Explore and become familiar with OER support resources to build comfort and confidence in the practice.

At VCU, we will target the following audience:

• Individual academic and or teaching teams at VCU 
• Librarians- teaching students about open during one-shot instruction sessions, leverage relationships and existing trust between liaisons and faculty in other departments

Our outreach goals will include:

• Build awareness of the affordance of OER
• Frame the use of OER as a solution to learning and teaching challenges (affordability, resource mismatch with intended curriculum, accessibility of existing resources)
• Establish the library as a place to get information and support about open resources 
• Build professional confidence 
• Build community among OER practitioners (and would-be/future practitioners!)

The content of our outreach will be:

• Videos of students talking about how textbook cost impact their academic careers
  • Impact of Textbook Costs
  • Benefits of Free Textbooks: VCU Student Stories
  • The goal of the videos is to help build awareness of the affordance of OER and highlight the choices that students are making when it comes to purchasing or not purchasing their textbooks
• Videos of OER champions or faculty who have created an OER for their course. 
• OER Stories (Video) and blog posts
  • The OER Stories are designed to help connect the use of OER and have faculty talk about their first-hand experiences with using/creating the materials and the impact that it has had on their student’s learning
  • Provide the opportunity to hear from other faculty about the impact and outcomes of their OER on their students
• OER Author Guide (designed for our affordable course content awards - ACCA)
  • Resource for how to create an OER and what faculty need to consider. Topics would include:
    • Copyright and self-publishing
    • Diversity Equity and Inclusion
    • Generative AI and how these tools can be used in open educational resources and open pedagogy
    • Open pedagogy and reusable assignment
• Information about the library’s service offerings in this area - What does the library have to offer
  • Revamped web presence with clearly defined learning resources vs. publishing resources

Our outreach methods will include:

• Faculty listserv
• Via our Liaison Librarians (newsletters)
• Communications department (news items, social media, etc.)
• Current faculty that we are working with/word of mouth
• Attending departmental meetings
• Libraries’ Website

Our call to action:

• Starting off small - encourage faculty to attend a workshop, review a textbook, substitute one assignment for OER
• Encourage faculty to apply and participate in our OER awards program, ACCA

Outcomes:

• Workshop attendance
• Number of ACCA applications
• Better reporting on OER usage across campus, reflected in impact tracking project

hi Karen,

Please let me know if any VCU biology faculty is intersted in joining forces for building Biology alliance. 

thanks

-Charu. ( cmirajkar@brightpoint.edu)

Audience: Biology faculty in VCCS / Va / anywhere.

Outreach goals: Building strong, and sustainable resources for Biology courses 

What would I like to share:

1. my general experience in bulding OER for Biology,

2. resources that I have created 

3. various grant / funding ideas, rubrics 

4. various OER repositories, Ex. how to find license free ,good quality images / graphics

5. 

How will I share:

1. presentations at OER conferences, New Horizons, VCCS Peer group, Florida Instructional Designers, Educause, etc.

2. within my college by advocating a proactive OER college committee.

Call to Action:

1. review, feedback , add more to the repository 

Outreach communication, in my opinion, is the best way to raise awareness to others. For me, I want to focus on outreach particularly with teaching faculty and staff as well as our liaison librarians. 

We have this wonderful faculty engagement program (CAFE, Center for Faculty Engagment) that offers faculty wrkshops at the beginning and end of the semesters, as well as random programs throughout the year. I personally think doing a formal presentation sponsored by CAFE would be the best way to reach my faculty. Even though I think a formal presentation would be more successful, I do believe emailing and speaking one-on-one with faculty would work as well. When it comes to the liaison libraraians, an informal presentation would do, as I could just discuss ways to reach faculty to discuss OER during one of our weekly meetings. 

During these workshops, I would want my faculty to understand the importance of OER, especially focusing on how to find and adopt OER within their courses. Many faculty members don't realize that it can be fairly easy (for certain discipline areas) to locate OER if they know where to look. 

For the call to action, I want faculty members to communicate with each other in terms of OER. Starting a conversation, especially with others in their department, could be key in how faculty members find and adopt OER. 

Communications faculty, who have expressed interest at the department level to move to OER.

Start with email.

Set up work plan directly wth them.

[Email to faculty members in Communications department]

As your department begins to explore using OER materials for your core courses, I'd love to work with you on this and am offering my assistance in locating content and possibly getting funding to help offset the strain this puts on your workloads.

I'm glad you are looking at using open content in these courses as the benefits to students in cost savings is tremendous.

I am here to provide support in any way I can, whtehr deprtment wide or individually. If possible, I would love to come to a department meeting to answer questions and explore these options in more detail.

Audience and outreach: My main audience will be faculty and my goal will be to create a campus committee for OER (formal or informal).  

Outreach content: The content of my outreach will be some examples of OER adoption, ideally here on our campus, and the benefits that came with the adoption.

Outreach methods: Word of mouth/presentation: I will probably start with the few OER champions that I already know about and ask them to identify other interested parties and either speak to them individually or try to get them together in one room.

Call to action: Starting with a small goal, I hope to get a small group of people interested in, and talking about, OER.  If I could persuade this group of people to meet on a regular basis (twice a semester?) and discuss OER, that would be a great outcome.

Audience/Outreach Goals:

-Targeting student leaders on campus; being a small school, students being vocal about their wants/needs can have a positive impact

Content:

-Focusing on education surrounding what kinds of resources are available, how to access those materials, more long-term goals would include discussion and education about publishing open

Methods:

-Word of mouth and social media have been most effective in reaching students on other topics, so we want to continue down those routes.  We also want to reach out directly to relevant student organizations and their leaders

Call to Action:

-Ideally students will continue to spread the word, perhaps also allow us to come and speak at meetings or events. The hope would be to see both an uptick in OER usage as well as increased interest or discussion amongst students regarding OER generally as a topic to indicate understanding

Audience & Goals:

Teaching faculty/staff with a goal of general awareness of OER tools and support available.

Outreach Method:

Presentation. We already have several platforms for presentations to faculty - Teaching and Learning Center, Lunch and Learn, etc. - that I want to get set up with for my presentation.

Content: 

A general overview/explaination of current OER, What are the benefits of using OER, general overview of types of OER (it's not just textbooks!), what resources are out there if they are interested in integrating OR creating OER, and finally how the library is here to consult with and support them.

Impact/Outcome:

Get faculty more familiar with the OER landscape and some of the resources available to them. Also let them know that the library is here to work with them and support them 1-on-1 if they decide to pursue OER.

Audience and Outreach Goals

• Audience
  • Faculty currently engaged in OAR conversations
  • Faculty not yet engaged in OAR
  • Administration
  • Office of Student Success
• Outreach Goals
  • Library Strategic Goal: "Expand the Library’s open textbook initiative to a fuller program addressing textbook affordability and Open Educational Resources"
  • Establish identifiable OAR campus program

Content

• Join in, make a difference, provide the best student educational experience

Methods

• Faculty currently engaged in OAR conversations-personal communication
• Faculty not yet engaged in OAR-email lists and presentations
• Administration-personal communication and formal reports
• Office of Student Success-personal communication

Call to Action

• Library is a partner in course material conversations
• Lots of options for course materials
• Students need clear, easy access to course materials