CREATIVE COMMONS FOR LIBRARIANS AND EDUCATORS - 123 -
PERSONAL REFLECTION: WHY IT MATTERS TO YOU
What if there were institutional policies that supported your Open Education and open access efforts? What effect might pro-Open Access and pro-Open Education policies have on you and your learners?
Acquiring Essential Knowledge
Educational institutions have a broad menu of Open Education policy options from which to choose. Your institution can:
- Raise awareness of the existence of OER and their benefits for your learners and faculty.
- Action: Host an annual “Open Education” day at your school or university.
- Empower stakeholders to drive your institution’s Open Education strategy.
- Action: Create an Open Education Task Force comprised of learners, faculty, accessibility experts, deans, bookstore, financial aid, and library staff, instructional designers, eLearning, and so on.
- Ensure that all of the content you fund is OER.
- Action: Draft, adopt, and implement an open licensing policy requiring university or school-funded resources to be openly licensed (preferably CC BY 4.0). Use the OER Policy Development Tool (licensed CC BY 4.0, available at http://policy.lumenlearning.com/) to build an open policy for your institution. You can find examples of open policies that others have created at the OER Policy Registry (global; licensed CC BY 4.0, available at https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/OER_Policy_Registry) and SPARC’s “List of North American OER Policies and Projects” (licensed CC BY 4.0, available at https://sparcopen.org/our-work/list-of-oer-policies-projects/).
- Issue a call-to-action to solve an educational challenge.
- Action: Create an OER grant program. You could appropriate funds for supporting faculty and staff to shift your fifty highest-enrolled courses from closed content to OER.
- Example: The Maricopa County Community College started an open textbook initiative to lower the costs of teaching materials. They provided grants to create open courses and train faculty on OER. You can learn more about their process at https://maricopa.instructure.com/courses/811971.
- Action: Create an OER grant program. You could appropriate funds for supporting faculty and staff to shift your fifty highest-enrolled courses from closed content to OER.
