OpenEd20

If you think running an OER initiative is just about finding materials for faculty, think again! OER is tied to so many areas of librarianship that it is critical to reframe how we think about our work.

Our OER work does not just focus on the textbooks and materials created and used; we center our OER work as a service we provide to our campus, or rather, as a set of services we can provide to stakeholders across our campus.

This lightning talk will share how we see OER support as a service provided in tandem with instructional design, scholarly publishing, teaching, and copyright consultations. We will provide a case study for each of these areas and provide tips for those who want to take this approach in their own institutions. We have found that this approach was successful in particular because our initiative was bootstrapped and built with the elbow grease of librarians, rather than with institutional motivation and monetary support.

Framing OER as a service begs the question: service to whom? We find that, for us, OER work is a service to students, a service to faculty, and a service to the college as a whole. Serving students means decreasing the amount of money they need to spend on textbooks and course materials. Serving faculty means providing instructional support and fostering their academic freedom. And service to the college means supporting enrollment efforts which emphasize the low cost of attendance.

Viewers will find ideas for their OER programs at colleges big and small, public and private.

Viewers will:
- Learn how we positioned OER work as a library service and the benefits that may provide
- Hear a case study of OER work at a private college with several campuses
- Begin to determine whether this approach might be a good fit for their institution
- Understand how OER work fits into other library services