International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 66

International Journal of Open Educational Resources
upcoming campus TechFest symposium
organized by the IT division on campus.
This allowed for two initial outreach opportunities—a
library-sponsored OER
workshop and the IT TechFest symposium.
Both events proved useful in
identifying faculty members and staff
who were interested in OER at UMBC.
Following the workshop and
TechFest events, the librarian and IT
director recognized the need to take a
more strategic approach to organize
campus efforts related to OER. They
set up an initial one-on-one meeting in
April 2019 to discuss how to bring representatives
from various campus stakeholder
groups together to form an OER
working group. During the meeting,
the IT director and librarian discussed
the overall purpose of the group. Rather
than focusing merely on textbook
affordability, they determined the need
to highlight OER as a path to increasing
student academic success and advancing
innovative teaching and learning on
campus, thus tapping into the national
emphasis on the relationship of OER
to student success (Colvard, Watson, &
Park, 2018) and open pedagogy (Jhangiani,
2019).
As they grappled with the task of
building an initiative from the ground
up, the librarian and IT director found
descriptions of OER implementation
and strategic planning that were useful
in providing a foundational framework.
During their first meeting in April, they
discussed how their work fit with the
analysis phase as discussed by Jung et
al. (2017b). As they referred to the action
items in the analysis phase, the librarian
and IT director worked to align
the purpose of the group with UMBC’s
Mission and Vision, organize communication
and record-keeping processes,
and identify key stakeholders and invite
them to join the OER initiative.
Both the IT director and librarian
were aware and concerned about
the lack of initial institutional support,
and recognized that the work would
be entirely voluntary. They discussed
fears of overburdening themselves and
members of the working group and
addressed strategies to mitigate the
strains of taking on such labor-intensive
work. To this end, the IT director
and librarian set up the OER working
group to function as a collaborative
team, with shared leadership responsibilities
in their roles as co-chairs of the
group. They realized that setting forth
a central mission and vision, establishing
transparent communication channels,
sharing documents, and setting up
collaborative task assignments would
be vital to the success of the working
group. While there would need to be a
substantial investment of time in their
role as co-chairs, especially during the
critical initial phase of establishing the
group, the authors also recognized that
the summer months were more conducive
to allowing for a greater investment
of time outside of the busy fall
and spring semesters. They identified
priorities of the working group, including
the importance of educating faculty,
students, and staff about the possible
impact of OER adoption, and identifying
and implementing processes
and practices to facilitate the adoption
of OER at UMBC. In this way, the co-
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