SPARC OER Leadership Pilot - Capstone Project Proposal

For my capstone project, I will develop an OER grant program for faculty interested in incorporating open resources and practices into one of their courses. The grant program will be jointly run by the library and Gettysburg’s Johnson Center for Creative Teaching and Learning, a partnership which I’m hoping will facilitate an emphasis on pedagogical innovation made possible by the use of openly licensed resources. This pilot program will offer two grants, likely of $500 each, and recipients will be supported by the Scholarly Communications department in consultation with the director of the Johnson Center.

I intend to spend next semester pitching ideas to stakeholders and preparing the necessary documentation, from program goals and application instructions to eligibility requirements and FAQ. Two other grants offered jointly by the Johnson Center and the library will serve as my guides, but I hope to model our program on successful ones at other schools and especially at liberal arts colleges. The grant programs at Macalester and Davidson, as well as some at large universities like Iowa State, Missouri, Florida State, and Oklahoma, contain elements which I believe would work well at Gettysburg. The pilot would begin in Fall of 2018 with applications ideally opening at the end of next semester.

By the end of next semester I will have created an online presence for the grant, completed creating all the necessary forms, and finalized the basic concepts and goals of the program in conjunction with the Director of Scholarly Communications and the Director of the Johnson Center. I also intend to gather data from the bookstore and registrar that will illustrate the need for more OER on campus, especially in certain disciplines and courses where they can potentially have the most impact in terms of student savings and improved learning outcomes. 

Currently there are a handful of faculty at Gettysburg College who are utilizing open educational resources (OER) in their courses. In large part, this has resulted from continued outreach efforts by the Scholarly Communications Department (ScholComm) of Musselman Library over the last few years. While interested faculty currently are invited to contact ScholComm for assistance finding and using OER, there is no formal support program in place offering funding and guidance. There is also no mechanism for assessing the impact of OER use on book costs, class dynamics, and student learning outcomes, nor is there a platform through which Gettysburg faculty can share stories about their experiences with OER and thereby foster a community of practice on campus.

My capstone project will seek to achieve four goals:

Goal 1: Design an OER Grant program that is well suited to a liberal arts college environment in terms of its emphasis on individualized learning, small class sizes, and undergraduate research.

Actions:

• Research programs underway at other liberal arts colleges

• Talk to faculty already utilizing OER

• Compile a list of open educational practices and sustainable assignments from across 

        the three divisions upon which faculty can model their own efforts.

Goal 2: Create a web presence for the grant and write all the necessary documentation, from application guidelines to assessment strategies, as well as a step-by-step guide.

Actions:

• Determine a proper platform (e.g. libguide, page on CMS, Moodle site)

• Draft copy for each document and add content to guide each day/week

• Discuss criteria, guidelines, and general structure with JCCTL

• Ask colleagues to comment on documentation and make revisions

• Once close to completion, run the basic idea by faculty for feedback

Goal 3: Establish a working relationship between ScholComm and the Johnson Center for Creative Teaching and Learning in order to promote and support faculty OER efforts at Gettysburg.

Actions:

• Analyze other grants jointly offered by library and JCCTL

• Discuss pedagogical principles with Julie Hendon

• Determine how support will be handled as a team

• Discuss how this grant fits in with the long-term plans and other initiatives of the JCCTL

Goal 4: Craft an advertising and outreach strategy to get word out about the new grant.

Actions:

• Use faculty feedback and interviews with OER users to determine best promotional strategy

• Get faculty with experience using OER to help spread the word

• Employ a multimedia approach including flyers in mailboxes, messages in the daily digest, 

        announcements on the homepages of the library and the JCCTL, as well as targeted emails.

Keys for Sustaining OER Initiatives: Compensation & Recognition

While there is healthy debate about what it takes for an OER initiative to be sustainable, I would argue there are two components that must be present - no matter the underlying model - for there to be interest among faculty year after year: compensation and recognition.

In an excellent study from 2007 entitled "On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education," David Wiley makes the point that compensation can and should take forms other than money (6-7). Providing release time or credit towards tenure and promotion are a couple of ways that colleges and universities can reward time and energy spent creating OER or new courses based around them. For many already over-burdened and over-scheduled faculty, these are much more attractive than a stipend that traditionally ranges from $500 to $2000. A stipend is irrelevant if the recipient has no free time to do the work. Furthermore, faculty without tenure must know that their department will value their work with OER in some fashion when it comes to their review for promotion and tenure. 

Once the OER is created or the course redesigned, faculty must be recognized for their work in ways that will lead their peers to see what they've done and hear how it went. There is no better method for recruiting new faculty to an OER initiative than having their peers share their experiences and talk about how OER have helped them and their students. As a condition of participation within the initiative, faculty should be required to take part in a video interview wherein they answer a series of questions designed to help others understand the process, recognize the benefits, and think through whether incorporating OER would be right for one of their courses. These interviews should go on the school's website and be released in conjunction with an event, attended by high-ranking administrators like the provost, during which the participating faculty join a few of their students for a conversation about the impact and potential of OER in the undergraduate classroom. The higher the profile of the event, the more likely it is that faculty will pay attention and desire to be included themselves.

Through a combination of non-monetary compensation and campus-wide recognition, OER initiatives can be sustained without a major hit to the budget. While other factors are undoubtedly important, the presence of these two will go a long way towards ensuring a sustainable initiative.

References

David Wiley, "On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education,"  The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38645447.pdf