OPEN EDUCATION PLANNING TOOL SUMMARY
Goal: Improve Affordability & Cost Savings for Students
Strategy: Make course material costs more transparent
Tactics:- Use course markings in student registration system.
- Coordinate course coding between bookstore, faculty and registrar/ compiling and tracking data.
Strategy: Convert as many classes as possible to zero cost
Tactics:- Remix and adapt materials that already exist, including library-owned materials.
- Find existing Open Educational Resources (OER) including open textbooks.
- Use platforms for sourcing and accessing OER e.g. Open Textbook Library, OER Commons, OpenStax, LibreTexts.
- Adopt and use existing OER including open textbooks.
- Adapt existing OER and open textbooks (e.g. localize, translate, contextualize, update, customize).
- Create new OER and open textbooks that fit your curricula needs.
- Establish capacity for open education publishing (e.g. subscription to or hosting of publishing platforms such as Pressbooks, Manifold, …).
- Curate your OER making it findable and usable.
Strategy: Target high enrollment courses as a means of maximizing savings for as many students as possible
Tactics:- Adopt, use and create OER for required courses and dual credit courses.
- Collaborate with other institutions on adoption, use and creation of OER.
- Engage in system-wide open education projects that benefit all those involved.
Strategy: Build academic pathways (e.g. Zero Textbook Cost degrees(ZTC’s)) where students have the option to take courses that have no textbook cost.
Tactics:- Remix and adapt materials that already exist, including library-owned materials.
- Create a set of courses in a specific program area that allows a student to earn a credential, such as a certificate program, associate degree, or bachelors degree with zero textbook costs by way of using open educational resources and/or free library materials.
Strategy: Encourage faculty to think about their choices in affordable learning materials
Tactics:- Offer a faculty workshop about affordability and OER.
- Use student need and testimonials to drive home the point that open is valuable.
Strategy: Create institutional policy
Tactics:- Create student centred policy related to ensuring course materials give students choice and best possible economic savings to promote student success.
- Create policy encouraging use of open educational resources as a means of alleviating students’ financial burdens and making courses more accessible.
Goal: Improve Affordability & Cost Savings for Institution
Strategy: Decrease the cost of course development for the institution by remixing and adapting materials that already exist, including library-owned materials
Tactics:- Remix and adapt materials that already exist, including library-owned materials.
- Find existing Open Educational Resources (OER) including open textbooks.
- Use platforms for sourcing and accessing OER e.g. Open Textbook Library, OER Commons, OpenStax, LibreTexts.
- Adopt and use existing OER including open textbooks.
- Adapt existing OER and open textbooks (e.g. localize, translate, contextualize, update, customize).
- Create new OER and open textbooks that fit your curricula needs.
- Curate your OER making it findable and usable.
Strategy: Create Institutional policy
Tactics:- Establish policy that aims to create sustainable academic resources for students, faculty, and staff.
Strategy: Calculate student and institution cost savings
Tactics:- Work with bookstore and registrar to calculate student cost savings.
- Track savings from the use of OER compounded over time.
- Track number of students reached / impacted.
- Track the number of courses or course sections that are using OER.
- Track conversion of courses to ZTC and number of ZTC degrees.
- Calculate Return on Investment (ROI).
- Consider total overall cost savings that may come from open education including improved student success and enrollments.
Strategy: Acquire funding
Tactics:- Apply for open education grant funding available through national, regional and state programs.
- Fundraise for open education via donors, students, alumni, gifts, grants, and endowments.
- Apply for open education funding from Foundations.
- Repurpose or include in funds for related initiatives (e.g. course refresh and conversion of course to online.
- Partner with other institutions to pursue funding opportunities including multiple institutions working on a large open education project together.
Goal: Increase Accessibility
Strategy: Make open education materials no cost
Tactics:- Remix and adapt materials that already exist, including library-owned materials.
- Find existing Open Educational Resources (OER) including open textbooks.
- Use platforms for sourcing and accessing OER e.g. Open Textbook Library, OER Commons, OpenStax, LibreTexts.
- Adopt and use existing OER including open textbooks.
- Adapt existing OER and open textbooks (e.g. localize, translate, contextualize, update, customize).
- Create new OER and open textbooks that fit your curricula needs.
Strategy: Make open education materials publicly accessible
Tactics:- Put open education resources in a publicly accessible repository.
- Add metadata to open education resources in repository as an aid to finding and understanding what it is and who it’s for.
- Encourage existing and potential students to look at open education teaching and learning material in advance of enrolling. This helps students with course selection and fosters advance learning.
Strategy: Make open education materials accessible to people with disabilities (e.g. Americans with Disabilities Act compliant)
Tactics:- Adapt and revise open education resources following Universal Design for Learning guidelines.
Strategy: Make open education materials retainable
Tactics:- Use open licenses to ensure open education materials have the 5R’s (reuse, remix, revise, retain, redistribute).
- Ensure open education materials are in technical formats that allow for the 5R’s.
- Encourage students to retain open educational materials for life. (Enables them to go back and reference it when needed, even after graduation (e.g. for lifelong learning and career sustainability)).
Strategy: Adapt open education materials to make them more accessible
Tactics:- Localize open education materials by adapting them to have local context and representative voices.
- Translate open education materials into different languages making courses more accessible to international students and students for whom English is a second language.
- Revise and remix open education resources on an ongoing basis to ensure they are up-to-date.
Strategy: Track and communicate increase in accessibility
Tactics:- Track and communicate adoption and use of existing OER.
- Track and communicate growth of curated OER collections.
- Track and communicate adaptations, translations, localizations, and customizations of existing OER.
- Track and communicate extent of authoring new or replacement course materials as OER.
- Track and communicate views and downloads of open education material from repository.
- Track and communicate participation in open education courses by key demographic groups (Race, Ethnicity, Pell Grant status, Gender).
Goal: Improve Student Success
Strategy: Raise student awareness about open education
Tactics:- Educate students about open education, including how it works and its benefits so they can have greater success when using it.
Strategy: Use open pedagogies to increase student engagement and motivation
Tactics:- Engage students as co-creators in producing and customizing course materials enabling them to be active contributors to knowledge production.
- Have students curate course content.
- Have students adapt or remix course OERs.
- Have students co-create new OER content for courses.
- Have students edit Wikipedia articles or other open content sources as part of coursework.
- Have students engage in assignments that generate public good such as solving UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Strategy: Measure open education impact on student success
Tactics:- Track and communicate the extent to which open education improves academic persistence, retention (reduces drop outs), and completion of courses.
- Track percentage of No/Low cost course sections.
- Track percentage of enrollment in No/Low cost course sections.
- Track comparison of Drop, Fail, Withdrawal between open education No/Low cost course sections and all remaining sections.
- Track impact on retention and impact on GPA for students in open education course sections.
Goal: Diversify Voices
Strategy: Create a sense of belonging
Tactics:- Modify open educational materials to include a diversity of voices so faculty and students see themselves as included.
- Revise and remix open educational materials to include examples, images and case studies relevant to your local context.
Goal: Transform Instruction
Strategy: Incorporate open education materials into instructional practices
Tactics:- Find existing Open Educational Resources (OER) including open textbooks.
- Adopt and use existing OER including open textbooks.
- Adapt existing OER and open textbooks (e.g. localize, translate, contextualize, update, customize).
- Create new OER and open textbooks that fit your curricula needs.
Strategy: Incorporate open pedagogies into instructional practices
Tactics:- Engage students as co-creators in producing and customizing course materials enabling them to be active contributors to knowledge production.
- Have students curate course content.
- Have students adapt or remix course OERs.
- Have students co-create new OER content for courses.
- Have students edit Wikipedia articles or other open content sources as part of coursework.
- Have students engage in assignments that generate public good such as solving UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Strategy: Provide funding incentives
Tactics:- Provide faculty incentive grants (innovation grants, course conversion grants, revision grants ...) to adopt, adapt or author OER..
- Vary grant funds based on scope of effort and goal. (e.g. peer review existing OER = $y, adopt existing OER = $x, adapt existing OER = $2x, create new OER = $3x).
Strategy: Provide release time incentives
Tactics:- Offer release time to support open education development efforts.
- Offer non-monetary “Time” grant that provides faculty with open specialists support for a period of time.
Strategy: Provide recognition for instructional innovation
Tactics:- Create policy recognizing OER use, adaptation, and creation as a meaningful scholarly and professional endeavor.
- Recognize open education efforts in promotion and tenure evaluation.
- Reward and showcase faculty impact on field (local and international) through their open education efforts.
- Promote and showcase exemplary OER work to increase awareness and interest. Elevates the profile and reputation of those involved. e.g. Faculty recognition awards..
- Students incentivized by creating something with a real world impact that lives on beyond completion of studies - receiving credit for open work.
Strategy: Provide support services
Tactics:- Provide services around finding and curating existing OER.
- Provide services around adopting and using existing OER & open textbooks (e.g. support for building courses, collections, or lists of resources from existing OER).
- Provide services around adapting existing OER & open textbooks (e.g. support for localizing, translating, contextualizing, updating, customizing).
- Provide services around developing new OER (e.g. support for development of new courses, textbooks and ancillaries from scratch and licensing them as OER).
- Provide copyright and Creative Commons open licensing guidance and support.
- Provide instructional design & open pedagogy support.
- Provide support for making materials accessible for students with disabilities.
- Provide copy editing support.
- Provide peer review and quality assurance services.
- Manage & support open education technology tools and platforms (e.g. institutional repository or technologies for accessing and/or sharing of OER by faculty and staff, publishing platforms).
- Provide support for adding OER to repositories (including Digital Object Identifiers (DOI’s) and meta data that enable search and retrieval).
- Provide print on demand services.
Strategy: Offer open education skills development opportunities
Tactics:- Create policy to provide opportunities for open education professional growth of faculty and staff including training and support..
- Offer awareness raising sessions, workshops and demonstrations that develop the open education teaching and learning literacies of faculty, students and staff.
- Develop a communication plan about open education for all stakeholders, including students, faculty, and university administration..
- Develop open education awareness raising and promotion materials.
- Develop open education informational and educational materials (e.g. libguides, orientation seminars, ...).
- Provide training and faculty development programs (e.g. OER trainings or OER professional learning resources for faculty and staff, workshops, learning circles, communities of practice).
- Join open education communities (e.g. Open Education Network, SPARC, Open Education Global, Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, ...).
- Enroll staff in open education / librarian certificate programs.
- Establish and / or participate in a learning community of practice around open education.
- Participate in open education workshops, conferences, seminars, presentations.
Strategy: Use open education to enhance autonomy
Tactics:- Show how open provides faculty with greater empowerment and creative control.
- Show how open increases academic freedom around choice of what is taught, how it is taught and with what resources.
- Show how the adaptability of open education can enable faculty to customize scope and sequence of their courses including resources specific to that scope and sequence.
- Show how open education enhances quality of learning.
- Show how open education is a means of regaining control of knowledge production away from publisher and vendor lock-in and reliance.
Strategy: Pursue and reward collaboration and partnerships
Tactics:- Support collaborative open education efforts between faculty in the same department, between different departments / colleges on campus, and between campuses / institutions. Collaboration reduces redundancy and increases quality..
- Bring together instructors across multiple campuses / institutions for collaborative sprints to create open textbooks or other OER.
- Partner on open education efforts with institutions pursuing similar goals (regionally, nationally, internationally).
- Partner with system agencies and regional education compacts.
- Participate in system wide open education consortial activities including pursuit of grant funding, participation in professional development opportunities (webinars, conferences, workshops, certificate programs, …), and participation in Communities of practice for knowledge and practice sharing.
- Partner with open education networks and communities (OEN, SPARC, DOERS, CCCCOER, OEGlobal...).
Strategy: Target open education efforts
Tactics:- Focus on building out open education in departments where Deans and faculty are already engaged.
- Establish faculty and student liaisons.
- Connect open education efforts with online learning to leverage the synergies between them.
- Include open education in institutional and library strategic plans positioning it to directly support institution and state priorities.
- Consider the formation of a working group or steering committee to guide program direction.
Strategy: Track and showcase instructional innovation and transformation
Tactics:- Track number of faculty who use, adapt, or create open educational resources.
- Track number of faculty/staff participating in professional development in OER training and education.
- Survey faculty / student perceptions of open education (feelings, quality, interest & engagement, extent current and up-to-date, appreciation of full control and academic freedom afforded by open education, extent of customization and curation).
- Publicly recognize and showcase people using open education.
- Have senior leadership visibly be advocates and supporters of open education (including President, Provost, Deans, Directors).
- Celebrate innovative instruction that involves students more closely in the curriculum (e.g. open pedagogy, students as co-creators of course resources, public facing assignments, ...).
- Host open education events (e.g. showcase faculty accomplishments and student involvement).
- Publish case studies and testimonials.
- Track number of courses using OER.
- Track growth of ZTC degrees.
- Track growth of OER use in lower division transfer course materials and high enrollment courses.
- Track spread and pervasiveness of open education by department.
- Track and showcase open pedagogies.
- Publicly report out on outcomes.
Goal: Serve Community
Strategy: Position open education to serve needs of community (local, regional, international)
Tactics:- Use open education to produce resources and knowledge that benefit not only students on campus but your local community.
- Use open pedagogies that involve students in creating public goods that benefit their communities.
- Use open pedagogies that have students involved in solving larger community challenges such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
- Track local and international views and downloads of your open education materials to show breadth of community being served.
Goal: Growth
Strategy: Promote and use open education as a means of fostering growth
Tactics:- Track impact of open education on enrollment (retention, completion and growth).
- Track enrolments in open education courses vs those not open.
- Maximize cost savings by scaling sections that use OER.
- Track growth of open educational resource collection.
- Track spread of open education within departments and colleges.
- Track growth of open education community of practice participation by practitioners.