During the last six months, members of the Online Education team at Western Colorado University have had unprecedented access to faculty curriculum. Library and Online Education Director Dustin Fife and Instructional Technologist Kimberly Yadon have used every opportunity available to them to insert Open resources into their own classes and the curriculum of their colleagues. They have found that a little bit of preparation before conversations about Online Education in general has led to the adoption of OER by several faculty. By having resources in mind when they were called upon to discuss any aspect of online pedagogy, Dustin and Kimberly have found they have been able to convince faculty who might not have been interested in the past.
Since the Online Education department manages Canvas, the learning Management System at Western, and has been helping move numerous faculty to online or remote learning environments, there has been no shortage of opportunities to initiate conversations about OER. Dustin and Kimberly are committed to not wasting this crisis by leveraging their positions in Online Education to always champion Open Education. They will be discussing how to identify appropriate resources before any conversation, identify faculty most likely to adopt, and build momentum at a small, public university.
Learning Outcomes: Strategies for identifying resources before conversations.
Identifying possible partners and faculty on the fly.
Learning to "never let a good crises go to waste."
