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Building Open Education Initiatives

Strategies & Steps for Growing OER Initiatives

This section provides some resources to support and grow open initiatives at your institution. The intention is to provide a variety of resources and tools to fit each institution based on where they are in their open education journey.

 Individual Level

If you are interested in becoming an OER champion at your institution, your first step could be to engage in open communities and learn from others. We have gathered a small sampling of networks and newsletters that you can review and join below.

Ontario
Canada
Global

Job Postings

It can be challenging justifying the need for open education support roles when competing with other funding priorities. A temporary position frees up time for overworked library faculty and staff who may have championed OER off the side of their desk. Administrators may be convinced to convert a temporary position into a permanent one when they see a demonstrated impact. Consider this post on Advice on one-year OER Librarian Positions for guidance on temporary positions.  The post also includes a list of ideas of action items to try when adopting an OER support role.

Institutional Group Level

If your institution is interested in supporting a community of practice or working group, the following resources may be helpful.

Open working groups are a great way to build advocacy, momentum, and gather like-minded individuals interested or already engaged in open educational practices (OEP). These groups often create timebound tasks, and sometimes champion projects like developing an Open Educational Resource (OER) strategy. Other groups may include cross-departmental members in charge of distributing OER grants.

At your institution, the term “working group” may suggest a formal committee or steering group, while others use the term to signify ideological driven action, with members working in partnership towards a common goal. Feel free to invent your own less formal name if you like—perhaps, “[School Name]’s Open Champions,” or “The [School Name] OER Fellowship.”

Included below are some information to help you establish a new group, or to renew/revitalize, or formalize an existing one. Also included are some examples of working groups and research about communities of practice.

Sprints

 

A Sprint Process by Krista Lambert and Lucas Wright BCcampus. Licensed under CC-BY 4.0. Click on the image to enlarge.

Long Image Description

The concept of a sprint comes from software design and is increasingly used as a strategy or approach for developing OER. The sprint approach can be used in a variety of contexts where a group of people (often cross-disciplinary) come together to focus on a specific project. In higher education, sprints are emerging as a way to accomplish a shared goal while working across disciplines and on a short timeline. Hackathons or Jams can follow a similar process — but often have a competitive element.

The sprint methodology involves the following features:

  • short timelines and achievable goals;
  • time-boxed working sessions (usually two to three days, but can vary according to context and needs);
  • a defined outcome (to produce a textbook or other resource, etc.);
  • a planning process to develop the sprint process;
  • multiple perspectives and skill sets;
  • identified/agreed roles for participants;
  • collaborative — rather than competitive — development processes

Sprint Resources

Explore more information and examples of sprints by clicking on the following links:

License

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McMaster - Mastering Open Ed: Licensing, Accessibility, Creation, and Publishing OER Copyright © 2023 by eCampusOntario is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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