In 2018, the state higher education commission offered a series of informational programs to increase awareness and adoption of OER in colleges and universities. This spurred our university to include OER as part of the current strategic plan and to form a working group to create a sustainable program of OER education and adoption on campus. At the same time, the library was prioritizing the purchase of textbooks and other course material to increase both physical and electronic course reserves to help ease the burden of textbook costs for students. In this session, the presenters, one a librarian who is a member of the OER working group and the other the University Librarian who made TAI a priority, will discuss how they combined their efforts to support the launch of a faculty stipend program that includes money not just for traditional OER but also leverages library resources and fair use guidelines to support textbook affordability. This program, launched in May of 2020 has funded 15 projects to date, some using adoption/adaption/creation of OER, some using course reserves and e-resources, and some using a combination of OER and library resources. Though this first year has exceeded our expectations, we also learned lessons and adapted the program as we went along to better meet the needs of the students, faculty, and administration. We will discuss these lessons learned and how we plan to continue to refine and improve our program over the course of the next year.
Learning Outcomes: After attending this session, participants will be able to utilize the research and information shared in order to scaffold a similar program at their institution.
Attendees will understand potential issues that may impact the success of their programs and will be able to avoid them.
Participants will be be able to advocate at their institution for a similar program.
