“Congratulations! You’re Officially A Publisher. Now What?” is the title of the Open Ed 2021 session by Andrea Scott, OER Coordinator, and Jen Hughes, New Media, and Educational Initiatives Librarian. Both are at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC). They shared their slides at: http://bit.ly/openedpub At SLCC, the OER Culture has grown for several years with support from a grant. I thought it was interesting that a course may be tagged as OER if it fits the low-cost/no-cost criteria the campus has established. To date, 165,000 students have benefitted from the program, and as of fall 2021, 99 courses are hosted. They implemented Pressbooks once they had the resources. They spoke about taking advantage of the expertise available and a webinar series by OEN. Instructors working with the OER Initiative Program can take advantage of review and support. Others, can work without support from the initiative and hire their own editor(s) and upload directly. The Library support services include consultations, making connections with OER experts, assistance from an in-house editor, Pressbooks integration/promotion… The speakers highlighted four “best practices” adapted from others. They adapted a consultation form. They worked on a copyright review checklist. There is an optional OER Copyright Review process, though, for addition into the SLCC OER collection, the review must be completed. They mentioned that the goal is for this to be a “copyediting copyright” check. The initiative has been using Google Analytics to track PressbooksEDU use globally. Google Analytics has also identified referring sites and what has helped increase the use of OER. Future implementation of a peer review system and adoption tracking strategies are being developed. Their takeaways were that: (1) adapt resources and processes when possible to save time since there is no need to reinvent the wheel; (2) reach out to the OER community when in doubt; (3) include stakeholders in the process when necessary; and (4) provide flexibility to opt-in and opt-out. I enjoy learning about what other campuses are doing to strengthen and sustain OER use, adoption, and development.
