The following was published on the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER) blog.
In September 2024, the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER) held a panel discussion titled, Faculty for OER. This blog post, written by Kimberlee Carter, OER Consultant who leads the Open Learning team at Conestoga College ITAL, offers reflections on the session and the insights shared. We invite you to explore the webinar archive, view the recording for this panel, the slides, and suggested links on the archive page for Faculty for OER.
Moderating this panel was a meaningful experience. The discussion highlights the potential of OER in making education more accessible, affordable, and customizable. It was inspiring to hear how faculty overcome challenges, leverage collaboration, AI, and co-construction with students, and are rethinking ways of working to develop open educational resources (OER) with limited time. Their dedication to advocating for time and support, focusing on student success, and creating culturally relevant resources showcases how open can move forward even during times of resource constraint.
Panelists included:
Adopting, adapting, and creating OER have become key to accessible, affordable, and customizable higher education. OER offers high flexibility and agility for course development and delivery, and they are free for students. However, faculty encounter several obstacles to OER creation, such as time constraints, technology limitations, and the traditional expectation for course resources to have ancillaries, especially when funding is limited.
Have you ever tried to tackle a large project alone? Collaboration in OER development offers peer support, resource sharing, and skill development. Sometimes collaboration is required for funding, but it can also arise from necessity.
At Central Lakes College, faculty receive stipends to join learning groups where they share resources and ideas. Sarah Kath learned to use open publishing platforms, share code, and solve OER adoption challenges.
Lori-Beth Larsen enjoyed co-creating with colleagues and found it rewarding. Larissa Conley added that management supports OER development time at Conestoga. She emphasizes the importance of “creating buzz” by sharing and seeing others’ work to inspire involvement.
Have you ever spent hours searching through commercial textbooks to find they don’t fit your course objectives or are not culturally or regionally relevant? You may have even considered changing your course to match the textbook, undermining your expertise.
Larsen found freedom in developing an OER, ensuring the course, OER, and pedagogy aligned well. Conley was thrilled to share a customized, regularly updated resource with her students and colleagues. Is it possible we just need to rethink our prep work as part of OER development?
A common barrier to OER adoption is the lack of readily available ancillary resources. Conley noted that faculty are already creating these materials. Allowing existing ancillaries to be updated and improved collaboratively with an open license on them can reduce development time.
Kath suggested using AI tools to create test-bank questions, which makes that task more manageable.
By developing and licensing ancillaries as open, we can spend less time searching for commercial textbooks and more time creating tailored resources. Faculty collaboration reduces duplication and allows for greater review of resources.
Co-creating OER with colleagues and students enhances skill development, produces culturally relevant textbooks, and disseminates knowledge meaningfully.
Co-construction engages students meaningfully, which leads to more success and arguably higher retention. For instance, Kath had great success engaging her students to create content for their OER textbooks, ensuring the material appeals to the students while guiding the theory.
Conley invites colleagues to co-create OER, allowing them to contribute their expertise and develop skills that enhance their prospects for permanent employment. As a hiring manager, I appreciate seeing work that has been produced and published.
Panel members emphasized the importance of advocating for time for yourself and support for your students.
They suggested focusing on metrics that interest administrators. Larsen highlighted that engaged students are more successful, which results in higher retention rates. Conley recommended emphasizing student satisfaction, tailored learning, greater access, and showcasing your institution’s brand. Kath shared that she likes to use language that she sees accrediting bodies use to show the alignment of OER work with accreditation. Larsen also mentioned that in some programs, the college purchases textbooks as part of their programming, so not only can OER save individual students money, but it can also save the institution money. The alignment of OER work with these educators’ values makes advocating for this work well worth their time.
Faculty have overcome hurdles by leveraging collaboration, building upon course preparation work, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) tools, co-constructing OER with students and colleagues, and advocating for support with administration.
Open advocates must demonstrate how, even during times of resource restraint, this work is important to the success of students and organizations. Let’s work together to find different ways of working and investing in education. I am grateful to be part of an open community willing to share and learn from each other to continue this important work.
Kimberlee Carter is an OER Consultant who leads the Open Learning team at Conestoga College ITAL and is a CCCOER Professional Development committee member. Winner of the 2024 OEGlobal Awards of Excellence Catalyst Award, Kimberlee is passionate about Open Education, curious to find different ways of learning and working, and enjoys moderating open education panels. Kimberlee’s OER publications include Building a Medical Terminology Foundation, Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators text and game simulations, and A Project Management Crisis: Moving a Multi-Institutional Collaborative Sprint Online teaching case study.
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