As we said in the first module, the community is at the heart of the OEN, and we learn from our members' experiences. Here, you can see some examples from OEN members who have been growing their programs.

Open education programs have a person or people to grow the program.

Member Story: Elaine Thornton, University of Arkansas

Picture of Elaine Thornton, Librarian Elaine Thornton, Open Education & Distance Learning Librarian at the University of Arkansas, has led the campus open educational resources initiatives at the University of Arkansas for over two years. Her interest in open ed. began when she joined the University of Arkansas Libraries in 2016 to help implement the open education initiative on campus. She knows that one of the best ways to overcome faculty reticence about engaging in open ed. is to simply listen, encourage, and stay connected. She advises people to listen to their teaching needs and the goals they have for their courses and encourage them to think outside the traditional approach to using textbooks. Finally, she suggests staying connected. Sometimes it takes years for an instructor to make the switch to open resources. The goal is to be there, connected and ready to help when they are ready to make the change. Patience is required! The thing she loves best about open education is that it can help faculty innovate their teaching with the open materials they assign and open practices they adopt. Open education also offers a means for providing students with equitable, affordable, and timely access to assigned course materials.

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Open education programs raise awareness.

Member Story: University of Hawaii

The University of Hawaii collected student stories of savings from OER and used them to raise awareness of OER and its impact on student debt for Open Education Week 2020:

Advertisement for OER Initiative at University of Hawaii

The University of Hawaii also created a brief video highlighting student savings through the adoption of OER:

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Member Story: Iowa State University

Megan O'Donnell and Abbey Elder catch people's attention during Open Access Week with these colorful posters. These posters are available for reuse and Megan and Abbey would love to see a picture of your versions!

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/oaweekposters/

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Open education programs educate.

Member Story: East Tennessee State University

ETSU asked students what they could have bought with the money they spent on their textbooks, took pictures of what the students wrote, and then posted those pictures around a commons area. This young woman wrote that she would have saved that money spent on textbooks:

East Tennesse State Student advertising savings through open textbooks

https://twitter.com/NJPIRGStudents/status/1169000351435055104/photo/1

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Open education programs engage.

Member Story: Minnesota State System

Karen Pikula designed OER Faculty Learning Circles to engage faculty across the Minnesota State System in open education.

Different pathways for OER Learning Circles

Within the OER Faculty Learning Circles program, faculty have three optional pathways: They can author OER, they can redesign their course using OER, or they can successfully complete one of the first two pathways and then pursue training to lead an OER Faculty Learning Circle at their own institution.

Faculty work in facilitated, cross disciplinary, collaborative learning circles for 10 weeks during the school year and for five weeks during the summer. Faculty meet for one hour a week virtually with other faculty completing the same pathways, they have access to an LMS Faculty Support Course Room, and they are paid a stipend for successful completion of their pathway. They keep weekly journals that document progress on an individualized and flexible work plan that provides scope and accountability for the path they have chosen.

*Here is Karen Pikula's presentation with faculty on OER Learning Circles given at the 2020 OEN Virtual Summit.

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Member Story: LOUIS (The Louisiana Library Network) with Emily Frank

As of summer 2020, LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network has hosted two rounds of the LOUIS OER Commons Faculty Cohort Program. This is a competitive program that results in faculty participating in a semester-long learning community. Library staff work collaboratively to create an environment of support and shared learning as faculty explore and deepen their knowledge of Open Educational Resources both more locally in terms of their discipline and institutions, and more broadly in terms of teaching, learning, and the higher ed landscape. They took inspiration from the OER Learning Circles organized by Karen Pikula and Portland Community College’s Equity and Open Education Faculty Cohort, organized by Jen Klaudinyi.

In addition to the learning community, the Cohort experience supports the exploration of open content by incentivizing the peer review of OER and the design of a detailed course syllabus using OER. Participants provide structured peer review of three materials from the LOUIS OER Commons site. Similar to the goal of the OEN workshop model, facilitators want faculty to take time to more deeply consider a small handful of open resources relevant to their field. They also want to build a collection of reviews to support other faculty exploring these resources. The goal is for faculty to engage in the process of working through how to design a course using open materials. The resulting syllabi are made public on the LOUIS OER Commons site to provide others with pathways and support for others curious about open course design.

Dr. David Stamps at LOUIS Libraries

https://twitter.com/louislibraries/status/1234554258130980872

Activity: Awareness, Education, & Engagement Strategies

Take a few minutes to think about the examples you read here and brainstorm others.

Up Next: The Open Textbook Library