Outreach Communication Planning
by Megan Simmons 6 months, 1 week agoBefore drafting your outreach communication, take some time to consider the following:
- Identify your audience and outreach goals - Who are you hoping to reach out to and what are you hoping to accomplish with your advocacy?
- Determine the content of your outreach – What do you want to share? Be sure to clearly communicate the value add for your intended audience, as well as any relevant links, images, resources, videos, etc.
- Select an outreach method(s) – How will you share? What communication channels would be most effective? (social media, blog, website, listservs, presentation, etc.)
- Call to Action: outcome and impact – What action do you hope others will take as a result of your outreach? What will you invite them to do? What outcomes and impact do you hope to see?
Refer to the Outreach and Advocacy Plan section of our OER Planning Template for more information. Please share a draft of your outreach communication by replying below.
Upcoming Outreach Opportunities
2024 Northeast OER Summit: A World Beyond Affordability, April 4 and 5 There’s still time to register at the early bird price of $35!
Open Ed Virtual Conference October 8-10, 2024
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:
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.
At VCU, we will target the following audience:
Our outreach goals will include:
The content of our outreach will be:
Our outreach methods will include:
Our call to action:
Outcomes:
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
Content
Methods
Call to Action