Planning and Implementing an OER Initiative on a Budget

Although Open Educational Resources (OER) have clear and widespread benefits for stakeholders in higher education, implementing an OER initiative on a college campus is easier said than done. To help you plan an OER initiative of your own, Abbey Elder, Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian, will share her team’s experience creating and marketing an Open Education Mini-Grants Program at Iowa State University. Their mini-grants program was developed and implemented in less than twelve months, but garnered interest from more than twenty academic departments across the Iowa State University community. This talk will discuss practical strategies for planning OER initiatives, from university-wide task forces to grant programs and events. Specific strategies covered will include contacting stakeholders, enlisting early adopters, and assessing your institutions’ weaknesses. The focus of the talk will be on how these tasks were completed at Iowa State, but the lessons learned will be applicable to other institutions as well. This talk is intended to support librarian and faculty attendees working on future or present OER initiatives on an institution-wide level. Participants will benefit by learning strategies they can apply to approach all levels of the initiative-development process, from planning to marketing