International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 32
International Journal of Open Educational Resources
From the library’s point of view,
the social aspects of the course were the
most successful. Building partnerships
with campus stakeholders, including
teaching faculty, is an important component
of successful OER initiatives
(Salem, 2017), but early efforts by the
library to gauge faculty interest in and
usage of OER on campus were not especially
fruitful. By cultivating relationships
with grant recipients, especially
through mentor groups that assigned
faculty to one specific librarian, the
library now has strong OER connections
in many departments on campus.
Plans are being discussed to host one or
more events in the library in the future,
where participating faculty can discuss
and showcase their projects with other
faculty on campus. Librarians teaching
the course—the authors—have presented
at local conferences alongside one
of the grant recipients (Kraft, O’Byrne,
Scronce, & van Arnhem, 2019) and
have solicited feedback on the program
from all current grant recipients in an
effort to provide an opportunity for faculty
to share their own experiences. The
authors plan to continue to collaborate
with grant recipients in the future on
additional presentations, assessments,
and scholarly writing, as they continue
to learn more about OER resources and
use or create them for their courses.
Cognitive presence.
Figure 10. Cognitive presence in the OER training course.
Finally, the third element of the CoI
model of learning, cognitive presence,
is closely related to “Exploration,” “Integration,”
and “Resolution” (Garrison
et al., 2000)—i.e., critical thinking. Because
the course did not incorporate
traditional assignments or assessments,
cognitive presence is more difficult to
identify than teaching and social presence.
However, in many ways, supporting
faculty as they make connections
and facilitating the exchange of infor-
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