Open Educational Resource (OER) initiatives are underway on multiple campuses across SUNY and are already saving students hundreds of thousands of dollars, while enabling faculty to rethink, innovate, and create. The State University of New York Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology (FACT2) organized a task group composed of faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and students, to propose a systematic and complete framework for SUNY campuses to assess their readiness to develop and/or curate, implement, support, scale up, and sustain OER.
Based on an existing Institutional Readiness process developed to achieve excellence in online teaching and learning, the OER Institutional Readiness process is designed to build capacity and sustainability both on individual SUNY campuses and system-wide. It will be driven by measurable outcomes based on mission and goals.
In the process of working toward our goals and outcomes we had to address issues ranging from the technical challenges of making curated OER easily available to faculty to strategies for changing campus cultures based on traditional textbooks and learning materials. OER is not just about saving students money, it is also about empowering faculty to create, use, and reuse learning materials optimally, flexibly, and creatively.
The Task Group Charge was:
Standardize a definition of OER
Engage the SUNY community and other OER experts to determine the necessary elements for a successful campus-wide OER implementation.
Use the Open SUNY Institutional Readiness Process as a model to adapt for assisting campuses to build their own capability to implement a successful OER initiative.
Create a potential set of tools that would be helpful to campuses for implementation of OER (consider the tools used in the Open SUNY Institutional Readiness Process as a starting point).
Determine where there would be benefits for benchmarking and sharing best practices between campuses to advance the development and implementation of OER across the SUNY system.
Guide SUNY campuses in using OER to improve the academic quality of educational offerings
Our Outcomes/Deliverables Were:
1--The Ensuring Success in the OER Implementation Process Rubric
7 categories 28 Indicators
Institutional Support of OER
Technology Support of OER
OER Integration into Course Development & Instructional Design
OER Course Delivery
Supporting Faculty in the use of OER
Supporting Students in the use of OER
Evaluation and Assessment of OER initiative
2 -- A Three Step Self Assessment Process
This process allows you to explore the benefits your campus can experience from implementing OER. A successful OER implementation requires a strategy that includes addressing the following criteria: financial and human resource commitment from campus leadership; infrastructure and support; accessibility; sustainability; and copyright and licensing. The provided rubric, process, and assessment tools will help you identify the resources you already have and what you may need to move forward with OER.
Overview of Process & Campus Commitment & Expectations (1-2 hours virtual or on campus)
Self-Assessment (facilitated, - day on campus)
Implementation Planning (facilitated,1/2 day on campus or virtual)
3 --A recommended set of tools to be used in the process:
