International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 60

International Journal of Open Educational Resources
documented positive increase in student
grades and lowered rates of D, F,
and withdrawal letter grades (Colvard,
Watson, & Park, 2018). While there
have been impressive developments in
OER at other institutions in the state, a
centralized OER effort did not exist at
UMBC until the spring of 2019, when
a Reference and Instruction Librarian
and Senior Director of Instructional
Technology (IT) co-initiated a grassroots
OER working group on campus.
In the absence of OER institutional
leadership at UMBC, the OER
co-chairs faced the challenge of building
an initiative from the ground up.
Recognizing that greater awareness of
OER on all levels is needed in order to
influence institutional leadership support,
two major purposes of the OER
initiative were identified: namely, to 1)
to inform and educate faculty, students,
staff, and administrators about the possible
impact of OER adoption and 2) to
identify and implement processes and
practices to facilitate the sustainable
adoption of OER at the institution. Given
that the working group is comprised
of faculty and staff representing the
Humanities and STEM, Library, Faculty
Development Center, and Information
Technology departments, all with
primary job responsibilities in their
respective departments, the co-chairs
recognized a critical need to establish a
structured yet flexible working framework
for the group. Drawing upon the
literature of change management, strategic
planning, and labor inequity in
higher education, this article examines
collaborative leadership practices that
are helpful for engaging and galvanizing
a diverse team of library, information
technology, and faculty professionals in
OER awareness and implementation on
campus.
Literature Review
The growth of the OER movement
marks an increasing interest in
“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”
(UNESCO, 2002). Emphasis on
open licensing in the OER community
has resulted in widespread adoption
of five licensing rights that have been
coined as the “five R’s” (retain, reuse, revise,
remix, and redistribute), allowing
faculty to tailor the materials for their
classes and spurring greater innovation
and collaboration in teaching and learning
(Jhangiani, 2019; Sterling Brasley,
2018, p. 27; Wiley, 2014). The majority
of OER research for the last several decades
has focused on student and faculty
perceptions of OER and the analysis
of cost-savings and financial benefits
(Belikov & Bodily, 2016; Colson, Scott,
& Donaldson, 2017; Hilton, 2018; Seaman
& Seaman, 2018). Recently, there
has been a focus on the relationship of
OER use and increases in student GPA,
retention rates, and graduation rates.
In a survey conducted by the
Florida Virtual Campus in 2018, some
students indicated that textbook costs
have caused them to choose not to purchase
a textbook, even at the expense
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