RESOURCE: OER Outreach for Newbies

Sarah Crissinger (Davidson College) has authored a three-part series on “OER Outreach for Newbies” for the ACRLog blog. The first post, “What I Would Do Differently” details current OER faculty stipend projects at Davidson College, and how Crissinger might approach launching similar projects for other institutions:

As I answered questions about the stipend program, OER, and open pedagogy, I realized that the biggest misconception that faculty have is that free is the same as open. Other librarians seem to be thinking about how to address this misunderstanding (even if it means losing “open”) so those doing OER outreach should be prepared to articulate why this difference really matters. DeRosa holds the power of the OER movement isn’t actually about the learning object—it’s about the license. Supporting OER isn’t just about advocating for resources; instead, it’s about advocating for the continuous improvement of those resources by empowering anyone to improve and build upon them. Telling faculty that we care just as much about improving an open resource for the world (open) as we do about saving each of our students money (free) can be difficult.

Part two of the series, “Moving Forward,” discusses the next steps in OER outreach at Davidson, and the third post, “Embracing the Messiness,” details why Crissinger thinks sharing her learning process is important:

Perhaps one of the most important (and frankly disappointing) things I’ve learned as a new librarian is that academic librarianship can sometimes be an exclusive, impermeable club where our hiring practices enable us to swap superstars back and forth and our conference decisions mean that the same people are asked keynote again and again. We don’t always make entry and success easy for those new to the field or a specific area, like open education.