Running the Play
Having a committee that meets regularly and is charged with making decisions and promoting OER can be very helpful in creating awareness and moving the initiative forward.
Strategies and Steps
- Select enthusiastic chairs with complementary skill sets (ideally offering release time or stipends for their service)
- Compile a list of potential members
- Ask the Executive Sponsor to make recommendations and send invitations
- Select a diverse committee. Consider including many of the following:
- Faculty (experienced, new, and leaders)
- Department Chairs
- Administrators
- Librarians, Instructional Designers, IT
- OER Builders, Adapters, Adopters, and skeptics
- Experienced and new faculty
- Stagger lengths of service to keep the committee fresh without losing momentum
- Establish a budget to fund:
- Mini-grants for faculty adopters/adapters/builders
- Professional development activities (OER day, conference attendance)
- Promotional items
- Empower committee to make OER related decisions and recommendations
- Criteria and rubrics for mini grants (emphasis on high enrollment courses)
- Award grants
- Recommend policy and procedure additions and revisions
- Require members to advocate for OER to their constituencies
- Increase student awareness with No cost/low cost designations in your course catalog
- Slides from webinar about OER Designations
- Encourage members to present at conferences and workshops
- Maintain a list of faculty using OER. This helps you track progress with your initiative, and these people may be good candidates for the OER Steering Committee in the future.
Example – Santa Ana College - Advertise textbook savings and other impacts of OER scaling.
Example – Salt Lake Community College