International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 168

International Journal of Open Educational Resources Introduction Indiana State University (ISU) is a land-grant institution of higher education that serves a population of primarily first-generation college students and hosts the most diverse student body in the state. The university also serves a high number of Pell grant recipients and 21 st Century college students (ISU, 2018). Greater numbers of traditionally underserved populations means ISU students often come into college with greater financial challenges that can be barriers to successful persistence rates. It is the open education movement’s principal goal of no cost, day-one access to high quality materials, which made the adoption of open educational resources (OER) significant to ISU’s mission. OER are defined as “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium—digital or otherwise—that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions” (Hewlett Foundation, 2018). While the materials created and curated in the open movement are free to use, there are still additional institutional costs that go into the process of a successful open educational initiative. These costs include personnel, systems, and time to produce quality content and training; “free” comes with associated costs (Annand, 2015, p. 4). Striking the right balance between training and support is a difficult challenge but a crucial task in assuring the future stability of an OER program. In Spring 2017, the OER program administrator, the Emerging Technologies Librarian, announced her departure from ISU. At that time, the Library Dean approached the Electronic Resources & Copyright Librarian to lead the ISU open education initiative. What followed was a year of discovery, strategy, and relationship building, resulting in a more sustainable OER initiative at ISU. History of the OER Initiative at Indiana State University A 2011 textbook affordability study led to the creation of the OER initiative at ISU. (ISU, c.) The program was conceived with the goal of reducing the overall cost of a student’s education at ISU to drive persistence rates by providing access to open and free course materials on day one. An advisory board on the initial design of the program included the ISU instructional design group, college deans, and teaching faculty. The OER initiative’s administration and process was led by the library from the start as part of the ISU strategic plan. Funding for the program, from the university’s strategic plan, provided for recruitment of teaching faculty, OER creation, and curation services. The program’s inclusion in the strategic plan also necessitated a reporting mechanism and static measures of success for the program to capture the overall progress of the initiative in meeting its stated aims of student success through cost savings. The initial pilot in 2013 included the teaching faculty from the advisory board who were teaching courses as 160