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CSCU OER: Advocacy

Advocacy

In order to assist with your efforts to advocate for open education at your institution, we have provided the following guidelines for constructing communications encouraging support of open education.

OER Defined

“Open Educational Resources” mean a teaching, learning, or research resource that is offered freely to users in at least one form and that either resides in the public domain or has been released under an open copyright license that allows for its free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with attribution. -OpenCSCU Glossary

OPPORTUNITY: What are the key issues?

  • Student finances 
  • Need for flexible learning resources 
  • More freedom for educators to design resources 
  • Desire to implement authentic assessment. 
  • Need for timely and current resources.

AUDIENCE: Who are the key groups/stakeholders you are targeting with your advocacy?

  • Students
  • Faculty
  • Administrators
  • Bookstore 

APPROACH: How do OER contribute to addressing these issues?

  • By lowering direct costs to students
  • Providing equitable access to resources on first day of semester
  • Opportunities for academic staff to localize content legally
  • Offering students meaningful assessment practices to increase engagement and achievement.

TAKEAWAY: What do you want from your Audience?

Are you asking for endorsement of a proof-of-concept activity, time, funding, commitment to small-scale change or support to gather evidence or evaluation? Be clear with your request and consider consulting with colleagues beforehand to gauge the feasibility of your request.

LONG-TERM CHANGE: What would change in the long term if you are successful? Who benefits and how? Barriers you may encounter?

  • Students save [x] in an academic year
  • Faculty can customize materials to fit their course
  • Student retention will increase
  • Student success rates/rates of completion in courses rises

ALLIES: Who can help you access your audience? Who can help remove the barriers you’ve identified?

  • Librarians
  • Instructional Designers
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Faculty Champions (those using OER already)

BENEFITS:

1.    Reduce or remove the high cost of textbooks
2.    Remove the financial barrier(s) to learning (thereby making higher education affordable and accessible for all)
3.    Ease of use over multiple devices (phones, tablets, computers)
4.    Access to learning materials on Day 1
5.    Inclusive and equitable education
6.    Perpetual access to materials (no end date)
7.    Lifetime access

This OER Advocacy Decision Board is adapted from ’Getting Started with Targeting your OER Advocacy’ by the Council of Australasian University Librarians, who adapted it from 'Crafting a Message' by Quill West in Librarians as Open Education Advocates by Rowena McKernan, Tria Skirko, Quill West and Library as Open Education Leader, licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Accessibility Statement
“Open CSCU” by the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International License. The individual items included are subject to their respective license provisions.