Successful Open Education Programs (Essential)
What a Successful Open Education Program Looks Like
Our goal is simple: we want open textbooks to be the default curricular choice for faculty. Easy, right?
We know - getting faculty to make that choice is hard work. While there is no one-size-fits-all structure for successful open education programs, successful programs do have similarities. These programs have a person who understands barriers to faculty adoption of OER and can find ways around those barriers through raising awareness, educating, and engaging faculty and campus partners about open education.
Open education programs have a person or people to grow the program.
On many campuses, this person is a librarian, but might also be an instructional designer, Center for Teaching and Learning staff, administrator, faculty champion, or other staff who are working to grow the open education program on their campus. Often, that person does not even have open education in their job description. Whether formal or informal, successful open education programs have a person who will advocate for increasing access to learning through open education. But what do these people do?
Open education programs raise awareness.
Many faculty realize that there are issues relating to access and affordability - the cost of higher education and its impacts on students are all over the news. However, it's helpful to bring these problems to the forefront as you raise awareness for your open education program.
Among the three strategies, raising awareness is the easiest, lowest-impact one. Sending an email, tweeting, putting a note in a faculty announcement, creating a LibGuide, and creating a student textbook video are all examples of raising awareness. While these steps to raising awareness might seem small, they are also vitally important.
However, faculty adoption doesn't happen through awareness alone. Faculty need a way to learn and to connect to the content.
Open education programs educate.
Educating lands in the middle of the three strategies; these involve more work than the ones associated with raising awareness do, but they also may yield higher rewards. Educating our college and university constituents about open education and the problems that students face which make open education solutions even more compelling can take many forms: workshops, webinars, speaking at a faculty meeting, presenting at a Teaching and Learning Event or presenting to the student government are all examples of ways in which we might educate our constituents about open education.
Open education programs engage.
Engaging faculty, students, staff, administration and other constituents in open education takes time, energy, and resources, but, engagement yields the best rewards. The OEN's Faculty Workshop (which you will view later) follows a strategy that raises awareness, educates, and, most importantly, engages faculty.
This strategy invites faculty attendees to explore a book in the Open Textbook Library after they have attended a workshop. They are then invited to write a review of a textbook.
Of the faculty who attend a workshop, 66% write a review, and 47% adopt an open textbook.
Engagement doesn't usually happen all on one's own. Beyond the faculty workshops, creating an Open Education Committee or task force for your institution provides avenues for engagement with multiple constituents. Reaching out to faculty, students, administrators, offices focused on student success, first generation students, veteran's affairs, and diversity, equity, and inclusivity, and the bookstore (yes, the bookstore) are all good ways to ensure engagement extends across the institution.
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
Growing your open initiative will not happen over night. Nearly all OEN presenters have held workshops with seven or fewer participants, but sometimes, all it takes is one faculty member to adopt an OER who tells her colleagues and becomes a faculty champion. In addition to a person who will lead your open initiative, you need strategies to raise awareness, educate, and engage constituents in open education, and you also need patience and perseverance.