51 SPEC Kit 351: Affordable Course Content and Open Educational Resources
We envision a role where we actively advocate for OER by offering support to create OER and
identifying content, education services, and copyright consultations.
We need to build an audience for the OER services that the library provides. Without engaged
recipients, we’ll just have websites that no one needs or uses.
We think the library should play a key role on campus as the advocates for OER adoption/creation.
Further, we can provide a critical support role in helping faculty identify possible OER content, as well
as offering incentives to encourage OER adoption/creation. The library should be the campus leaders in
this area, in addition to creating the necessary infrastructure for these activities.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
34. Please enter any additional information regarding affordable course content/open educational
resources activities at your library and institution that may assist the authors in accurately
analyzing the results of this survey. N=16
As mentioned earlier, we don’t have any institutional initiative that is focused on ACC/OER. However,
the library does have a copyright office that was established in June 2014 following a request from a
vice provost. Its main objective is to ensure course material conformity regarding the Copyright Act. In
addition, the office does offer some education services and copyright consultations and it does suggest
alternative ACC/OER when the cost to use a specific resource is too high. Now that the office’s activities
are smooth and regular, we can envision a more active role in ACC/OER promotion. Our liaison
librarians sometimes make suggestions of OER to professors as well. Recently, a portal was created on
our website to promote OER in sustainable development for one of our institution’s MOOCs.
Currently, the state of Connecticut is having severe budget problems that have resulted in major cuts to
university programs. When the economy recovers, I believe the University of Connecticut will be able
to provide more funding and course release time for faculty who wish to develop ACC and OER.
I think one of the most exciting things in this early phase is how quickly we have identified interest and
begun collaboration between academic departments.
In planning stages leveraging Boston Library Consortium OTN initiative to train staff, increase
awareness, and formalize local initiative beginning this summer 2016.
Joined OTN in summer 2015 and hosting workshops for librarians and instructional designers, OER
creators, and teaching faculty in spring 2016.
Our activities are in an experimental stage and, so, have no structures in place and no
coordinated effort.
Our campus has invested in several “e-textbook pilots” that explored the features and formats students
valued in relation to what they’re willing to pay for textbooks. That effort led to an OER-focused pilot
program and now into a strategic campus effort that’s still being developed. Most of our responses to
this survey have been related to a recent small-grant project, but our campus is currently developing
a larger-scale, no-longer-pilot effort to support and sustain OER. I expect we’ll be able to make that
strategy document available by June 2016.
Our initiative was initially launched as a pilot in order to assess the levels of interest, effectiveness, and
work involved. It has been recently relaunched as a formal part of the library’s service portfolio, but
we don’t yet regard it as having strictly defined parameters. We’re still very much adapting the service,
considering new types of awards, thinking about different methods of assessment, expanding our
outreach efforts, building up partnerships across campus, and learning about new ways in which we
can support instruction and instructors. It’s very exciting to have this opportunity!
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