🌐Overview

Creating a thriving Open Educational Resources (OER) culture requires outreach across campus communities. This section focuses on how to engage students, faculty, and administrators to sustain an OER movement. A successful launch relies not just on adoption but on building a shared sense of ownership and purpose. A central principle, drawn from student development theory, is the cultivation of a "culture of care," where students, faculty, and staff feel seen, supported, and valued. OER is a critical pathway to creating that environment.

📖 Table of Contents

Launching a Sustainable OER Culture
Engaging Students: The Heart of the Movement
Engaging Faculty: Building Trust and Champions
Engaging Administrators: Aligning with Institutional Priorities

✔️ Launching a Sustainable OER Culture

A culture of open education is not built by a single office or committee. It flourishes when students, faculty, and administrators feel invested, supported, and energized. Successful campuses:

Center care and community in their OER messaging.
Actively foster relationships across constituencies.
Focus on both structural change and grassroots energy.
Celebrate wins — large and small — and sustain momentum over time.

Building an OER movement is ultimately about creating a campus culture where affordability, access, and academic excellence are shared values and where everyone, together, says "yes."

🛠️Toolkit: Resources to help you engage with students, faculty, and administrators

Comprehensive OER Advocacy Guide. A step-by-step advocacy framework
- Advocacy Guide (accessible Word Doc)
- Advocacy Guide (Google Doc)
- Advocacy Guide (PDF)
OER Advocacy slides. Slides that can be customized for framing OER discussions with different stakeholders.
- Advocacy slides (accessible PowerPoint Slides)
- Advocacy slides (Google Slides)

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✔️ Engaging Students

Students are the most direct beneficiaries of OER and often the most passionate advocates. Empowering and mobilizing them creates energy and authentic urgency for institutional change.

Strategies to Engage Students

Collaborate with Student Government Associations to pass resolutions supporting OER, create awareness campaigns, and build a united advocacy voice.
Support student-led initiatives like #TextbookBroke campaigns, OER awareness weeks, and peer-to-peer education events.
Celebrate faculty who use OER through student-led "OER Champion" awards or social media spotlights.
Encourage students to share personal stories about textbook costs and how OER has impacted their success, using quotes, videos, or events.
Include students in all OER planning committees and grant review panels to ensure their voices shape the work.

Key Message to Students: You matter. Your voice can drive change. OER is about you having equitable, affordable access to the education you deserve.

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✔️ Engaging Faculty

Faculty are the pivotal decision-makers in course material adoption. To gain faculty support, focus on academic freedom. Offer real help and recognize their role in improving student success.

Strategies to Engage Faculty

Frame OER as an option that enhances pedagogical flexibility and academic freedom, not a mandate.
Highlight stories of faculty champions who have adopted, adapted, or created OER. Faculty trust their peers.
Integrate OER workshops into existing faculty development programs. Focus on key topics such as licensing, pedagogy, and accessibility.
Offer stipends, course release time, or sabbatical opportunities for faculty engaged in OER projects.
Provide 1:1 consultations, instructional design help, and technical assistance to lower the barriers to adoption.
Encourage research on OER outcomes and make the creation or adaptation of OER count toward promotion and tenure.

Key Message to Faculty: OER empowers your teaching, supports your students, and honors your professional expertise. You are the leaders of change.

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✔️ Engaging Administrators

Administrative leadership is critical to integrating OER within institutional framework and ensure long-term sustainability. Their engagement transforms OER from a grassroots effort into a campus-wide priority.

Strategies to Engage Administrators

Frame OER as advancing student success, equity, digital transformation, and affordability. These are all key priorities in many strategic plans.
Share metrics on cost savings, increased retention rates, and enrollment boosts tied to OER adoption.
Encourage Presidents, Provosts, and Deans to voice public support for OER while upholding academic freedom.
Advocate for the inclusion of OER in educational master plans, equity plans, board policies, and accreditation reports.
Establish formal roles for OER Coordinators or Faculty Fellows. Assign clear responsibilities and ensure they receive institutional recognition.
Work with advancement and foundation offices to secure external funding to expand OER initiatives.

Key Message to Administrators: "OER is a smart investment in student success, institutional excellence, and educational equity. Leadership in this area is leadership for the future."

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🖊️ Attributions

Content adapted from

Chapter 10 - Encouraging a Yes: Effective Institutional OER Initiatives Copyright © 2018 by Nicole Finkbeiner, Daniel Williamson, Richard Baraniuk; licensed CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted.
Advancing OER to Amplify a Campus Culture of Care from OER and Beyond by Dr. Jaci Lindburg; licensed CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted.
OER: A Field Guide for Academic Librarians | Editor's Cut Copyright © 2018 by Christy Allen; Nicole Allen; Jean Amaral; Alesha Baker; Chelle Batchelor; Sarah Beaubien; Geneen E. Clinkscales; William Cross; Rebel Cummings-Sauls; Kirsten N. Dean; Carolyn Ellis; David Francis; Emily Frank; Teri Gallaway; Arthur G. Green; Sarah Hare; John Hilton III; Cinthya Ippoliti; DeeAnn Ivie; Rajiv S. Jhangiani; Michael LaMagna; Anne Langley; Jonathan Lashley; Shannon Lucky; Jonathan Miller; Carla Myers; Julie Reed; Michelle Reed; Lillian Hogendoorn; Heather M. Ross; Matthew Ruen; Jeremy Smith; Cody Taylor; Jen Waller; Anita Walz; Andrew Wesolek; Andrea Wright; Brady Yano; and Stacy Zemke; licensed CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted.