International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 169

What Does Free Mean? Orienting an OER Program Toward Sustainability
part of the ISU’s Foundational Studies
program (ISU, 2013).
After the pilot concluded, the
program evolved into its first stable iteration
and included the admittance
requirements and program elements
that remain today. Courses eligible for
the program include previously taught
high enrollment major courses and
those that are part of the ISU’s Foundational
Studies catalog. Classes admitted
must have been previously delivered
in at least two prior semesters. Faculty
members who complete the program
and successfully transform their primary
course materials to OER are awarded
a stipend of $3,000. Crucially, courses
included in the OER program have to
demonstrate the ability through previous
enrollment numbers to make back
the initial investment of $3,000 in two
semesters, another requirement of admittance.
The OER program includes a
self-paced Blackboard course that faculty
are required to complete during the
conversion process to familiarize themselves
with the definition of OER, their
associated boundaries and possibilities,
and integrating them into their courses.
Upon delivery of the new OER course,
students in the course are invited to participate
in a pre-survey and post-survey
administered at the beginning and
end of the semester. The surveys, approved
by ISU’s Institutional Review
Board (IRB), include questions about
students’ knowledge of OERs, their
use, and student budgeting practices
for textbooks. Students are encouraged
but not required to participate in the
surveys, occasionally with extra credit
or similar incentives. To-date, the program
has saved students an average of
$420,120.58 a semester, with an average
savings per student of $113.64 (ISU,
n.d.- b).
Program Review
In Summer 2017, the Librarian who
championed the OER initiative decided
to leave ISU. To ensure continuity
of the university’s OER initiative,
the role of OER advocate transferred to
the Electronic Resources & Copyright
Librarian, who quickly began to assess
the delivery of the program. The literature
around the variety of roles for
the library in open education efforts
points to librarians’ foundational experience
working with academic publishing
models as a strong justification
for the library’s continued leadership
of OER programs (Borchard & Magnuson,
2017; Braddlee & VanScoy, 2019;
Reed & Jahre, 2019; Salem, 2017). Previous
experience providing reference
services, licensing expertise, copyright
guidance, and electronic resource management
were extremely helpful in orienting
the librarian in her new role, but
the goals of the program and its desired
growth made it clear that work was required
beyond simple orientation. The
first task was to evaluate the current
state of the program.
OER efficacy and assessment
studies tend to focus on the overall quality
of OER artifacts (Hilton, Gaudet,
Clark, Robinson, & Wiley, 2013; Ross,
Hendricks, & Mowat, 2018); however,
assessment of delivery of an OER pro-
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