Promoting Open Educational Resources: A Beginner’s Playbook

Abstract

The awareness, adoptions, adaptions, and publishing activity around Open Educational Resources (OER) vary greatly among institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania and beyond. This article provides an overview of the paths and efforts, described as preparation and plays, that I have taken to promote OER at Kutztown University and around the state as an OER Specialist for the Affordable Learning PA Project. While this article focuses on tactics for beginning OER promotion, readers who are further along in their efforts to develop and support OER projects may find some new ideas to explore and expand upon at their institutions.

Open Educational Resources (OERs) at European Higher Education Institutions in the Field of Library and Information Science during COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Despite various "push" and "pull" strategies [79] and specific actions [13,39,[81][82][83][84] for promotion and sharing, only half of the LIS schools/departments using OERs also promoted and shared them, while most of them did not monitor and evaluate OER use. This indicates a need for more focus on promoting and sharing existing OERs.…”

“…Within this category, communities of practice, particularly teachers and educators, should be engaged in promoting OERs and sharing their experiences with others in their community [39,80]. Specific actions of promoting and sharing OERs include: identifying communities of practice (both formal and informal), understanding the motivations for using OERs, surveying the "audience", building teams (teachers, librarians, OER users, other faculty members, and other institutions), engaging with the community through public discussions about OERs, providing individual consultations, offering OER workshops, translating and localizing the content of OERs, sharing OERs through repositories, platforms, and networks, creating policy guidance on the promotion of OERs that serves both as a benchmark framework and a matrix for planning and implementing OERs, publishing about OERs, and encouraging faculty members, including students, to publish their work as OERs [13,39,[81][82][83][84].…”