Given the current pandemic and the changes it has forced on academia and an entrenched model of instruction, Open Educational Resources are now more important than ever. They are invaluable to higher education and have the ability to change the educational landscape, and now more than ever we need librarians who can advocate for, locate, create, and find these resources.
Although these librarians working the Open space are an indispensable link the chain or OpedEd, very little is known about the needs of these knowledge workers; while the literature of Open Education is heavy with faculty needs assessment (Belikov and Bodily 2016; Bauer, Heaps, and Jung 2017; Hong and Jung 2016), very little research has been done to understand the needs of librarians. As a community, we have been so preoccupied with making our case to faculty, university administrators, state legislators, and students, that we have neglected to ask the people who work on the front lines how they feel or what kinds of support or education they need.
My presentation, based on my research conducted during my SPARC Open Education Leadership Program capstone project, will discuss the formulation of my needs assessment project and how the data I gathered can provide insights into the needs of academic librarians regarding OER, their attitudes to OER, and, finally (in my opinion, most importantly) how we teach librarians about OER and Open Education. My hope is that my needs assessment will influence the curriculum we use to teach information professionals about OER.
In my presentation, I will discuss the context for the project, the project design (including data collection methods), and my top ten key takeaways from the data collected.
Learning Outcomes: Presentation attendees will be able to: 1. Formulate research questions 2. Match research methods to research questions 3. Design data collection instruments 4. Better understand the needs of librarians working in the OER space 5. Evaluate and reconsider current OER curriculum for librarians
