Tasks for the OERL Intermediate
Welcome! As someone who is very familiar with OER, you're in a unique position to formalize your role as an OER advocate and to impact local OER attitudes and adoption. As someone with an intermediate knowledge base, we look forward to having you share your expertise, as well as your local OER challenges. Nothing about the OERI is top-down - as a faculty-lead initiative, our focus is on leveraging the existing knowledge and experience in our system - please don't ever be afraid to share. Please note that some of the tasks listed below may be things that you have done or that simply are not necessary given your OER background. We've included the steps we are encouraging our beginners to take as a starting point to ensure that there is some consistency, as appropriate, to your local OER advocacy efforts.
As an intermediate OERL, what should you be doing?
- Complete your tasks as delineated in the expectancies document - OER Liaisons - Spring 2019 Expectations Download OER Liaisons - Spring 2019 Expectations.
- Introduce yourself locally. Share with your faculty colleagues, part-time and full-time, that you are the college's OERL and that your role is to share resources with them - as well as communicate their needs to the OERI. An e-mail to your colleagues would be appropriate, as would a visit to your local senate and other relevant committees.
- Determine the status of OER at your college.
- If no one has provided the OERI with information regarding the number of courses and sections at your college using the zero textbook cost designation during fall 2018, provide that information. If you are not sure what to do, please ask for assistance.
- If information regarding the use of the zero textbook cost designation has been provided, explore the criteria used for making this determination and determine whether or not these course sections tend to be using OER or not. In other words, educate yourself regarding the use of this designation as an initial exploration into the status of OER at your college.
- Engage faculty in one or more disciplines about their use of OER - why or why not are they using OER?
- Explore the following:
- Printing OER. Has a process for making printed OER available been established? If not, what are the barriers?
- Informing students of OER. What information does your course schedule provide to students regarding the OER being employed in a given course? Are students provided with information for accessing or obtaining OER resources in advance of a course's start? Is there room for improvement in how this communication is handled?
- Has your local senate formally indicated it's support for the use of OER?
- Identify next steps related to the items in #5 - and take them.
