International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 173

What Does Free Mean? Orienting an OER Program Toward Sustainability
Designing the team approach
To strengthen and define the new
cross-campus partnership, the OER
team met to discuss a new workflow
map that details the alignment of a
faculty member’s progress through
the Blackboard course and their interaction
with the support team (the
Electronic Resources & Copyright Librarian
and one assigned instructional
designer). In the previous iteration
of the OER education delivery, faculty
received minimal feedback via two
journal entries and a single in-person
meeting at the beginning of the course
redesign process. After considering the
changes to the program materials and
desired results of the program for faculty,
the team settled on three tailored
meetings for faculty. The first meeting
would take place after faculty had gone
through the introductory module in
Blackboard and before they began the
process of investigating open materials,
a second mandatory meeting midway
through the program as they began to
build their course, and a third optional
meeting prior to delivery of the content,
each meeting with its own goals to assist
faculty in their conversions.
The first meeting’s goal was to allow
faculty time to address their open
resource search needs and copyright
concerns with the OER team prior to
building their course. This first meeting
effectively acts as a reference interview
with faculty in which the OER
Librarian can build iterative searches
of open materials for the courses in
conversion. Searching by librarian is a
new addition to the process, with the
dual goals of further guiding faculty
towards how and where to find quality
open materials and alleviating any
information overload the faculty in
the program might experience as they
wade through open resource sites. The
librarian shares keywords and sites
where materials in their discipline are
found, as well as highlighted materials
for inclusion in the course. As subject
matter experts, faculty members make
final decisions on what materials will
work or not for their course. The second
meeting is scheduled as the faculty
members begin to engage with the OER
rubric to address their student engagement
and learning outcome concerns.
Here the librarian and instructional designer
provide feedback on attribution,
course delivery, and design. Finally, the
third optional meeting is arranged after
the faculty member has produced three
weeks of course content for overall review
of design, copyright, and appropriateness
of open educational materials.
If the faculty member elects not to meet
in person, the librarian and assigned
instructional designer each conduct a
three-week review of the revised Blackboard
course site and provide in-depth
email feedback to the faculty member.
This final review is an important new
addition to the course conversion process
with the intent of creating a more
meaningful and lasting conversion experience,
greater program accountability,
and fostering faculty OER champions.
With details captured in the team
workflow map attention turned to documenting
the program management
process and imbuing the program with
a flexible assessment schedule to ensure
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