Author:
Emily Frank
Subject:
Educational Technology
Material Type:
Module
Level:
Graduate / Professional
Tags:
License:
Creative Commons Attribution
Language:
English

Cohort: Collaboration and Advocacy

Cohort: Collaboration and Advocacy

Overview

This touches on finding collaborators for your open education efforts and sharing open education with others.

Collaboration and Open Education

It’s often important to find collaborators when rolling out an OER project. Are OER initiatives actively supported on your campus? If so, who supports faculty use of OER? These supporters and collaborators might be in the library, in a teaching and learning center, in online education, or elsewhere.

What Students, Faculty, and Library Staff Bring to OER

Listed below is some of the knowledge and expertise that students, faculty, and library staff can bring to the development and implementation of OER.

What Students Bring to OER

  • Preferences for the types and formats of course materials that work best for them
  • Preferences for how they would like to access course materials
  • Opinions and feedback on the quality or effectiveness of learning materials for their own learning

What Faculty Bring to OER

  • Knowledge of course objectives
  • Understanding of student needs and learning styles
  • Expertise in evaluating resources for use and application in a course
  • Experience in constructing and authoring instructional materials
  • Expertise in various pedagogical approaches and curriculum implementation

What Library Staff Bring to OER

  • Understanding of copyright and of how to select and apply open licenses
  • Knowledge of how to find resources and to make items discoverable by others
  • Understanding of the best way to share resources for future audiences
  • Expertise in technology for online authoring and publishing
  • Overall information literacy expertise
  • Experience with the content of college coursework

Adapted from "What Students, Faculty, and Library Staff Bring to OER" by The Learning Portal / Le Portail d’Apprentissage is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Why Collaborate on OER?: What Research Shows

  • Quality of Instructional Materials: 

Sapire and Reed’s (2001) study showed that faculty collaboration on the redesign of open course materials improved the quality of instructional materials, specifically in terms of the materials' ability to scaffold student learning across knowledge domains and to offer enhanced, inquiry-based learning experiences.

  • Student Learning: 

Azzam’s (2017) study showed that medical students’ collaborative contribution to Wikipedia articles cultivated core medical competencies while helping students to build their identities as digital contributors and socially responsible physicians. The study also revealed how students’ engagement with the content led to improvements in the quality of health-related knowledge disseminated in the global public domain.

  • Faculty Learning: 

Petrides et al. (2011) found that collaboration with peers around the integration of an open textbook into a statistics course led faculty participants to increase their collaborative practices in subsequent course planning efforts.

  • Sustainability: 

Petrides et al. (2008) found that when faculty collaborated in the creation of OER, they were more likely to continue creating and sharing content online on a consistent and ongoing basis, suggesting that communities and collaboration play a role in sustaining OER.

Research Cited:

  • Azzam, A. (2017). Why medical schools should embrace Wikipedia: Final-year medical student contributions to Wikipedia articles for academic credit at one school. Academic Medicine, Vol. 92, No. 2.
  • Petrides, L., Jimes, C., Middleton-Detzner, C., Walling, J. and Weiss, S. (2011). Open textbook adoption and use: Implications for teachers and learners. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, Vol. 26, Issue 1: 39.
  • Petrides, L., Nguyen, L., Jimes, C., and Karaglani, A. (2008). Open educational resources: Inquiring into author use and reuse. International Journal of Technology Enhanced Education, Vol. 1, No. 1-2: 98-117.
  • Sapire, I. and Reed, Y. (2011). Collaborative design and use of open educational resources: A case study of a mathematics teacher education project in South Africa. Distance Learning, Vol 32, No. 2: 195-211.

 "Why Collaborate on OER" by The Learning Portal / Le Portail d’Apprentissage is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Connecting Online

Here is a listservs I recommend for staying up-to-date on OER content and meeting collaborators beyond your institution:

The OER Digest is a bi-weekly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities, and reminders. Subscribe (at the link) to get it delivered to your inbox every other Thursday.

The CCCOER discussion listserv: from the Community College Consortium for OER. This is a listserv to share ideas, resources and best practices pertaining to OER, to communicate events and professional development opportunities for OER adoption, and to provide update about policy, research, projects and other news from the broader OER movement.

LOUIS maintains a statewide Affordable Learning Louisiana listserv. On here, folks share resources, opportunities, and questions. 

Sharing Open Education

Mapping Campus Constituencies: Stakeholder Perspectives

The open education movement is rapidly growing, with more and more institutions publishing or using open educational resources and practices. The role of the advocate is helping to promote and sustain this growth on campus. What opportunities and challenges lie with the various stakeholders involved in this movement? 

  • Upper administration:

Presidents, vice-presidents and other administrators take an institution-wide perspective, and are concerned about how open education can impact the bottom line (is there possibility for OER to lead to revenue generation, for example) and institutional reputation (what will attract more students, top researchers, grant funding, etc.)

  • Mid-level administration:

Deans and department heads take a program perspective, and are concerned about how open education can lead to program enhancement, attracting top faculty, better use of teaching and learning resources, etc.

  • Faculty:

In research institutions, faculty have concerns over teaching loads, research funding, and some may also have intellectual property concerns that need to be addressed before open education policy can be implemented. Teaching faculty have an opportunity to enhance their practice using open pedagogy.

  • Information technology:

The use of OER can have an impact on the way the LMS and other educational technology is used and configured.

  • Libraries:

Librarians connect the communities they serve with resources that meet their learning needs. They are often the first point of contact for students who are overwhelmed by textbook costs and looking for alternate ways to access course materials. Instructors look to librarians for resources to use in their teaching and learning practices.

  • Instructional designers:

Instructional designers work closely with faculty to design and develop courses.  For courses with an online presence (LMS shell) whether taught from a distance or face-to-face, instructional designers are often an important link between the teaching faculty and information technology staff.  They can play a key role in helping faculty incorporate OER and open pedagogy activities into courses.   

  • Students:

Student loan debt, including the high cost of post-secondary textbooks, is a concern for students, affecting their ability to access higher education. Student groups are some of the most vocal advocates of open education for this reason.

  • Bookstores:

Bookstore staff can be important OER allies. Because bookstores rarely make much profit on the sale of textbooks and face much larger threats from off-campus booksellers. Bookstores can help by raising awareness with faculty, procuring print on demand copies, or providing important data. 

From: "Chapter 7: Open Education on Campus in the Open Education Primer: An Introduction to Open Educational Resources, Practices and Policy for Academic Libraries", SPARC is licensed under CC BY 4.0

 

Faculty Advocating for Open: Strategies

How might you share what you've learned or experience with open education with others?

Are there scenarios where you might share or communicate the value of OER and how it can impact teaching and learning?

Here are tips to keep in mind as you engage others in conversations around these issues:

  • Focus on the Why

Focus on the problem that OER can solve for your stakeholders. For administrators, this might be textbook costs; for faculty colleagues, it might be lack of quality content. Reflect on your why and how you can articulate that to others. 

  • Understand the Barriers

Understanding the barriers to OER, and why your stakeholders may be resistant to its adoption, will help you to better tailor your advocacy strategy to specific audiences. What are the challenges you have faced along the way? What might others face? 

  • Engage the Engaged

Spend time and effort on those who are listening or curious. They may become advocate themselves with the capacity to act as partners.

  • Reinforce the Change

Keep your early adopters engaged through reinforcement strategies. Seek their feedback, showcase their work, and know what they are doing next.

From: Advocacy Strategies adapted from:  A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources, by Commonwealth of Learning, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Ways to Advocate:

We may think of advocating taking the form of a formal presentation or for those occupying a designated leadership role. But, there are two key activities I hope you consider as you move forward in this space:

  • Informal Sharing:

Sharing your personal story can be an impactful way to underscore your role as an OER champion in your community, and can draw engagement and interest from people in ways that formal educating and presentations may not.

  • Modeling:

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The “unknown” of change can be the biggest barrier of all and can loom large in people's minds. Modeling the outcomes of change and helping people observe what the end state will or can be is a great way to alleviate change related apprehension.

From: Ways to Advocate adapted from The Champion's Toolkit, by the Alberta OER Initiative, licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0