Contributed by Abbey K. Elder, Iowa State University (ORCID)

This blog post will not attempt to propose some universal ideal for what OER support should look like on a college campus. After all, no two institutions have the same resources at their disposal. Instead, I will share a few practices you can introduce into your institution’s “OER test kitchen” so you can find the combination of programs and services that work best for you.

What’s in your cupboard? The environmental scan

The first place you should start with any recipe is to figure out what you have on hand. This information-gathering stage is often referred to as an environmental scan, but it doesn’t have to be a formal process. Self-reflection can take many forms, from a personal assessment of your campus’s strengths and weaknesses to a more traditional community survey. Regardless of the path you take, ask yourself the following questions:

Personal Level

1. How much time do you have to invest in projects for your OER initiative? 
2. How much training and experience do you have with open education, copyright, and publishing? 
3. Are you interested in pursuing professional development or training opportunities to advance your understanding of OER? 

Program Level

1. How many staff do you have available who can talk comfortably about OER on campus?
2. What projects have you completed so far, and how have your efforts been received?
3. Have you collected data on OER’s impact at your institution yet, and do you have any plan for publishing or sharing that data with your community?
4. What funding do you have available for your program, such as physical marketing supplies, awards, book purchases, and incentives? 

Institution Level

1. How many students on your campus are first-generation students or students from low-income backgrounds? 
2. Are there existing affordability initiatives that you can partner with to advance your OER message?
3. Does your initiative have the support of your departmental or campus administration? 
4. How many faculty at your institution are already using OER? 
5. What opportunities are available for partnering with other offices?

Based on what you find in this scanning phase, you can start to see what “recipes” are available to you. After all, you cannot make corn on the cob without corn. What you do with your ingredients can vary a great deal based on your experience and your campus community’s needs. Think about what you can make with your ingredients and how you can mitigate the effects of the barriers you’ve identified in your environmental scan. Additionally, if you want to make something specific, think about what other ingredients you will need to acquire to get your initiative into motion.

Recommended Resources

Askin, N., Brunet, M., Coughlan, R., Daniels, C., Durnin, J.,Khetarpal, M., Ludbrook, A., 

Morrison, L., & Smith, A. (2020). Environmental scan of open education service and support in Canada [Report]. Retrieved from https://www.carl-abrc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/OEWG_environmental_scan_formatted_eng.pdf

Rodriguez, J.E. (2019). OER readiness and environmental scan of departments with 

high-enrollment courses. SPARC OER Leadership Program Final Report. Retrieved from http://141.210.2.200/handle/10323/6858

The test kitchen: Start small and innovate

Once you’ve assessed your institution’s strengths and weaknesses, you can start further developing your OER initiative. This is the “test kitchen” phase, where you can start combining your ingredients and your cooking skills to make…something. But what will you make?

Start where it’s easy

During the environmental scanning phase, you should have identified at least one place where you already have the basic structure you need to get a project off the ground. Rather than trying to confront the barriers to your OER program, utilize the opportunities available to you and build something that might become the foundation for your program’s development later on.  

If you are uncertain about where to start, you can look at the meals others have made with similar ingredients. As I like to say: never build what you can borrow! Visit  SPARC’s Connect OER platform (connect.sparcopen.org/directory) for a few examples of programs and events that other colleges have implemented on their campus. Think of it like an OER version of Supercook (supercook.com), the website that tells you recipes based on what’s in your cupboard.

Now that you have some inspiration to work with, you are allowed and encouraged to innovate! Perhaps another institution made a pie with their flour and butter, but that doesn’t mean you cannot make some excellent empanadas with many of the same ingredients. In other words: do not base your definition of success on the successes of others. If you have a project in mind that more closely meets your institution’s needs, try out something different! Don’t assume that a program isn’t worthwhile just because it is novel or experimental. Your new idea may be exactly what your program needs to succeed.

Recommended resources

OER Listservs such as CCCOER and LibOER can help you contact the OER community and ask other program coordinators for advice. 

Make substitutions and accommodations

A recipe isn’t always the thing you start with when you’re making food. Often, recipe development is an ongoing process. Perhaps you’ve been developing a sfogliatelle recipe for over a year and you finally feel confident making it regularly, when you adopt a child who is allergic to gluten. Do you start over completely and throw away the recipe you’ve spent so long developing? Maybe you decide to make the recipe for yourself and make something new for your new child. Still, if this recipe is something that you want your child to enjoy, you might want to adapt the ingredients to meet their needs. Yes, you have flour available, but you’ve also realized that you have a fondness for corn flour and the funds to buy it. Why not test out a change and see what happens? 

https://affecttheverb.com/gallery/disabledandhere/kitchenscissors/

Let’s look at this example from an OER perspective. You have spent a year developing a marketing program on campus that uses the phrase “free books = an equitable education.” Then, a large student movement rises up to address the systemic issues around hunger and access to food on campus. Suddenly, your campaign feels like it’s missing something. You might scrap it and start over, or you can work with these student activists to craft a new multiple-part marketing campaign with a more inclusive message: “free books are part of an equitable education”;  “free food is part of an equitable education”; “education that does prioritize the well-being of its students is not equitable.”

Not every situation you encounter will be so obvious or so able to be corrected. Sometimes, issues might crop up around faculty misconceptions of OER or a lack of administrative support for open movements in your community. Still, you can adapt. Besides learning from your own experiences, you can also learn from the work that other institutions have already done through case studies and articles available online. 

Recommended resources

Lashley, J., Wesolek, A., & Langley, A. (Eds.). (2019). OER: A field guide for academic 

librarians. Pacific University Press. Retrieved from https://boisestate.pressbooks.pub/oer-field-guide/

Santiago, A.E. (2019). Enhancing OER support by developing a workflow and service 

model. SPARC OER Leadership Program Final Report. Retrieved from https://uh-ir.tdl.org/handle/10657/6978

Conclusion

As your program grows, continue learning, innovating, and testing your recipes. One nice thing about both food and OER initiatives is that you can repurpose the same ingredients in multiple ways! Leverage your successes and learn from your missteps. Eventually, you’ll have a meal worth investing in, and perhaps you’ll have discovered a fondness for new cuisines along the way. 

Examples from our recipe boxes

Below, I’ve compiled five recipes for you to explore based on real-life OER initiatives, with fun food-based puns to match. 

References

Askin, N., Brunet, M., Coughlan, R., Daniels, C., Durnin, J.,Khetarpal, M., Ludbrook, A., 

Morrison, L., & Smith, A. (2020). Environmental scan of open education service and support in Canada [Report]. Retrieved from https://www.carl-abrc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/OEWG_environmental_scan_formatted_eng.pdf

Barnes, C., Mayer, J., and Thornton, E. (2018). Open education on campus. 

In Open Education Primer 1.0 by SPARC. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Shzgk23fO9MYUNWR38iga5o2Krzu95Uv_xpYCser_eE/edit#heading=h.p4ft05v3r2ys

Langdon, A. & Parker, K. (2020). Bridging the gap: Rural librarians’ journey to understanding 

students’ role in OER outreach. International Journal of Open Educational Resources, 2(1). Retrieved from https://www.ijoer.org/bridging-the-gap-rural-librarians-journey-to-understanding-students-role-in-oer-outreach-doi10-18278-ijoer-2-1-7/

Lashley, J., Wesolek, A., & Langley, A. (Eds.). (2019). OER: A field guide for academic 

librarians. Pacific University Press. Retrieved from https://boisestate.pressbooks.pub/oer-field-guide/

Open Oregon. (2016, March 28). What makes a successful open initiative? [blog post]. 

Open Oregon blog. Retrieved from https://openoregon.org/what-makes-a-successful-open-initiative/

Rodriguez, J.E. (2019). OER readiness and environmental scan of departments with 

high-enrollment courses. SPARC OER Leadership Program Final Report. Retrieved from http://141.210.2.200/handle/10323/6858

Santiago, A.E. (2019). Enhancing OER support by developing a workflow and service 

model. SPARC OER Leadership Program Final Report. Retrieved from https://uh-ir.tdl.org/handle/10657/6978

Abbey K. Elder is the Open Access and Scholarly Communication Librarian at Iowa State University. In this position, she works to expand access to information by educating scholars about open access and open education. Abbey manages the open access publishing agreements at Iowa State, is a Pressbooks administrator for the Iowa State University Digital Press, and coordinates with faculty to help them find, adopt, and create OER for their courses. Her handbook for instructors, The OER Starter Kit, has been used in professional development programs around the United States.

This post is by Abbey K. Elder and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, except where otherwise indicated. Please reference OER and Beyond and use this URL when attributing this work; for more information on licensing, see our Open Access Policy.