The weekend went by quickly! Tonight we watched the Open Ed 2021 session entitled “Partnerships, Planning and Productivity: Forming and Sustaining an Open Education Working Group” by Kristina M. De Voe and Courtney Eger, both at Temple University. They both are at the University Libraries and have been SPARC fellows. With the aim of establishing the Libraries as a catalyst for open education, De Voe and colleagues helped promote a Textbook Affordability Project (TAP!). The Open Education Group wrote its own charge and guiding definition of Open Education with four responsibilities: facilitation coordination, education, and strategic planning. The group is cross-departmental and consists of standing and rotating members. The group also had rules for consensus and decision-making facilitation. I am impressed with the thoughtful planning. The team started meeting once a month and moved to twice a month. The group has a system for taking notes and allowing the editing and review of notes by all. The Open Education Group has partnered with numerous on-campus units and groups: the textbook task force, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, the faculty senate, the registrar, general education, North Broad Press (campus press), and the provost! Faculty selected for the Textbook Affordability Project awards are required to complete training! This is fantastic. I would have benefitted from this! The Open Education Group is involved in writing grants, training, faculty OER lists, and OER data wrangling. The group also writes a quarterly newsletter that shares OER and features “OER Champions.” The blog also seems to be very active and includes faculty features. For assessment, the group has established SMART goals, annual reports, group reflections, and specific projects. I appreciate the group reflections and how the team sets aside time for reflections in addition to collecting clicks on the newsletter and OER metrics. Eger explained how important “assessing the morale of the team” is. Eger and De Voe used three different GoogleDocs to crowdsource ideas for the formation of open education groups on other campuses. The documents were nicely set up with columns for names, stakeholders, wishlists, and responses from peers. I also thought it was nice to see that the presenters referenced the report by BayView Analytics, which we had learned about a couple of weeks ago. The attendees of the session were very active, and the GoogleDocs were quickly filled with ideas. The presenters shared tips for starting an open education group: start small, don’t be afraid to be the leader, find partners with students and other units on campus, and find OER leaders for inspiration. De Voe shared general recommendations: support your group members, keep the big picture in sight/be flexible, and celebrate the small wins. Eger also suggested the BC Campus Open Education Working Group Guide. De Voe, in response to an audience question, mentioned that the Alt Textbook group they work with has a student government representative. I am glad to learn that student representation is included. One question was if the group tracked views of the newsletter: the answer is yes. Eger mentioned they use Mail Chimp and have access to some metrics like clicks/views. I also learned from Eger that Mail Chimp can create a landing page. One of the audience contributions to the Google Docs was: “to be something that everyone has heard about.” I love that. Delftia?
