🌐 Overview

An OER Working Group brings together faculty, staff, students, and administrators to support a long-term culture of open education. They focus on OER adoption, policy development, and professional growth,equity, access, and innovation. Early actions include identifying leaders, starting small, and celebrating progress. Sustaining the work means tying it to broader initiatives, offering incentives, and tracking impact. Strong leadership, transparency, and patience are key to lasting change.

📖 Table of Contents

Defining Purpose, Vision, and Goals
- Why Form an OER Working Group?
- CARE Framework
- SMART Goals
Strategies for Launching Your Group
- Early Action Steps
- Choosing Structure: Formal or Informal?
- A Phased Approach to Develop your Working Group
Lessons in Leadership and Project Management
- Good Leadership Practices
- Project Planning Tips
- Sustaining the Work
Cultivating a Community of Practice

✔️ Defining Purpose, Vision, and Goals

Establishing an Open Educational Resources (OER) Working Group promotes a sustainable culture of open education in your institution.

📌 Why Form an OER Working Group?

Benefits of creating an OER Working Group include

Coordinate campus-wide efforts to promote OER and open pedagogy.
Support affordable, accessible education aligned with Vision 2030 goals (equity in access, support, and success).
Provide professional development and faculty incentives for adopting or creating OER.
Shape institutional policy around OER integration into curriculum design and course review.

📌 CARE Framework

The CARE Frameworkwas created to articulate a set of shared values and a collective vision for the future of education and learning enabled by the widespread adoption and use of OER. Its purpose is to empower individuals, institutions, and organizations to be good OER stewards and to contribute to the growth and sustainability of the OER movement.

Contribute knowledge and resources openly.
Attribute creators and collaborators properly.
Release materials under open licenses when possible.
Empower all stakeholders to participate meaningfully.

📌 SMART Goals

The SMART acronym outlines a strategy for creating goals that are

Specific: What exactly will you achieve (e.g., 10 new OER adoptions this year)?
Measurable: How will you know you succeeded?
Achievable: Do you have the time and support needed?
Relevant: Does your goal align with institutional strategic directions?
Time-bound: Set a clear deadline.

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✔️ Strategies for Launching Your Group

📌 Early Action Steps

Identify a lead or co-leads (consider pairing a librarian and a teaching center specialist).
Recruit broadly across departments and student leadership.
Set an initial purpose (awareness-raising, small pilot adoptions, mapping OER efforts).
Start with manageable goals, such as offering a few faculty workshops or creating an OER LibGuide.

Build a strong, collaborative team by including individuals from across campus

Librarians. Experts in copyright, curation, and open licensing.
Teaching and Learning Center Staff. Faculty support and pedagogy specialists.
Faculty Champions. Early adopters and discipline-specific advocates.
Students. Voices for affordability, access, and basic needs.
Administrators. Bridge to institutional policy change.
Technology Services Technical platforms, accessibility support.
Bookstore Staff. Practical insight on course materials and adoption processes.

📌 Choosing Structure: Formal or Informal?

Formal Working Groups

Recognized by academic governance (Senate, Curriculum Committee, etc.).
Assigned chairs, defined membership terms, and reporting requirements.
Easier to secure funding and institutional support.

Informal Network

Grassroots, volunteer-based.
Allows for flexibility, experimentation, and coalition building.
May need extra work to gain visibility and long-term institutional backing.
Tip. Even if informal at first, start documenting your work. This helps you advocate for formal recognition later..

📌 A Phased Approach to Develop your Working Group

Western University’s Open Education Working Group model offers an example of structured, phased work for developing a working group. Expand the section below for a summary of their strategy.

✏️ Western University Case Study: A Phased Approach

Template and detailed strategies

OER Workgroup Model (accessible Word Doc)
OER Workgroup Model (Google Doc)
OER Workgroup Model (PDF)

Phase I: Define Scope and Questions

Agree on common definitions (e.g., “open education”).
Develop initial research questions about current campus attitudes and needs.

Phase II: Community Engagement

Subgroup 1: Collect individual OER user stories.
Subgroup 2: Broad surveys, focus groups, and workshops across campus
Sub-Group 3: Report Writing: Draft and seek feedback from the group

Phase III: Synthesis and Reporting

Host a retreat to analyze data and draft concrete recommendations for leadership.

Key Themes

Celebrate local efforts while identifying barriers.
Engage diverse groups, including faculty, students, administration, and tech staff.
Align open education efforts with your institution's strategic goals.

Result: Clear, actionable recommendations embedded in Western’s larger academic planning.

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✔️ Lessons in Leadership and Project Management

Building an OER Working Group is more than creating a committee. It’s about building a movement rooted in collaboration, empowerment, and equity. Your group can lead the way toward a more affordable, accessible, and inclusive educational future at your college.

📌 Good Leadership Practices

Be transparent with communication.
Distribute work equitably.
Empower different members to take initiative.
Recognize the emotional and intellectual labor involved — and celebrate it.

📌 Project Planning Tips

Set realistic expectations for timelines and participation.
Use clear documentation (meeting notes, action plans, decision records).
Remember that advocacy work is iterative — culture change takes time.

📌 Sustaining the Work

Tie into major initiatives (Equity Plans, ZTC Pathways, Vision 2030). See SPARC's OER State Policy Tracker
Build incentives, such as stipends, certificates, and recognition.
Celebrate small wins publicly.
Track impacts (courses redesigned, dollars saved, students reached).

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✔️ Cultivating a Community of Practice

Building a strong working group is not just about completing tasks, it’s about nurturing relationships grounded in shared purpose and trust. A Community of Practice (CoP) helps build a foundation for sustained collaboration.

The domain centers the group around a common commitment to open education, student affordability, and equity.
The community is built through regular communication and co-leadership opportunities.
The practice emerges in the group's shared routines. These can include vetting OER, aligning resources with the college’s educational master plan, or developing course marking protocols.

For example, at one California community college, an OER working group began as a small team of a librarian, instructional designer, and two faculty. They established shared values, rotated meeting facilitation, and used a shared planning doc to track goals. Over time, the group expanded to include classified professionals and students. Together they developed a ZTC roadmap that was adopted into the institution’s strategic plan. By focusing on both the people and the purpose, they built not just a task force but a movement.

💡Tip: Start small. Be strategic. Keep equity at the center. And remember: open is a journey that you don't have to walk alone. Building an OER Working Group is more than creating a committee. It’s about building a movement rooted in collaboration, empowerment, and equity. Your group can lead the way toward a more affordable, accessible, and inclusive educational future at your college.

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🖊️ Attributions

Content adapted from

Working Group Guide Copyright © 2019 by BCcampus; licensed CC BY 4.0 unless otherwise noted.
The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) Copyright © 2019 by Apurva Ashok; Zoe Wake Hyde; and Kaitlin Schilling; licensed CC BY 4.0 unless otherwise noted.
This Open Education Working Group, copyright Western University, licensed CC BY 4.0