International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 67

Advancing an Open Educational Resource Initiative through Collaborative Leadership
chairs positioned the working group as
a means to build awareness of OER at
the individual and department levels to
work towards the goal of securing more
sustainable OER adoption and topdown
leadership, funding, and support.
Following this initial meeting
in April, the co-chairs reached out directly
to invite representatives from the
following institutional offices and academic
departments: the Faculty Development
Center, STEM and Humanities
faculty, and Division of Information
Technology. Potential members were
identified from the list of attendees
from the library OER workshop held
earlier that spring. The IT director also
met with the Vice President of Information
Technology to secure higher-level
leadership support for the initiative.
The co-chairs soon recognized the need
for student representation, and as a result,
invited a recent graduate working
in the IT department to join the group.
During this period, the statewide
OER initiative managers sent an invitation
to campus leaders at all the universities
and community colleges to select
a team of OER leaders to serve as representatives
for the upcoming 2019 OER
State Summit (University of Maryland
System William E. Kirwan Center for
Academic Innovation, n.d.-a). The IT
director helped recommend OER leaders
for the summit team, which included
two instructional designers from
the IT department, the Reference and
Instruction Librarian co-chair, and a
staff member from Disability Services.
By attending the event, these campus
representatives learned about several
state-level OER initiatives and resources
available to them. These representatives
also served as a base of support
in the months following the summit to
help advance the newly initiated OER
work at the local level.
As the co-chairs prepared for the
inaugural OER working group meeting
on campus, they drafted the mission,
purpose, and initial priorities of the
group and decided on logistical strategies
the group would use for meeting
organization, communication, and record-keeping.
Meeting participation
would be possible through either faceto-face
or virtual attendance. Schedules,
shared documents, and records
would be achieved via Google applications.
The co-chairs identified a set of
action items the working group could
prioritize as short-term projects and
goals. These initiatives included faculty
outreach and education by way of
participating in the annual Provost’s
Teaching and Learning Symposium,
providing a one-day OER introduction
as part of a week-long program offered
by the Office of Instructional Technology,
and offering a range of OER professional
development options including
workshop and lunchtime discussions.
Longer-term goals were identified such
as building a larger OER community
group open to all interested faculty,
conducting an OER pilot study in a
high-enrollment course, and working
on establishing a no- or low-cost course
designator in the registrar’s course
schedule.
By June, the co-chairs established
the initial membership of the working
group and scheduled the group’s first
meeting. As a result of the inaugural
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