5 Ideas for Spreading OER

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 08/27/14
lightbulb
Photo: Shutterstock.com

What's the best way to get people moving in the right direction with open educational resources? "We always say that adopting OER is an all-college effort," declared Una Daly, community college outreach director for the Open Education Consortium. She suggested five ways to broaden use of OER within your institution:

1) Do a survey to understand the level of OER awareness among faculty and to find out who your OER champions are.

2) Set up an OER fellowship program that will give those champions public recognition; provide faculty with release time to allow them to develop and update OER curriculum; and reward them with spiffs such as tablets — inexpensive but relevant tools for supporting their efforts.

3) Integrate OER awareness into your professional development efforts, whether that's at your center for teaching and learning, part of your "flex" days or something else.

4) Put your librarians on the job. "They're amazing," said Daly. "They're ideal people to help faculty who might be looking for materials."

5) Get instructional designers involved, since they can make sure a particular piece of OER content is accessible to students with disabilities.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • teenager’s study desk with a laptop displaying an AI symbol, surrounded by books, headphones, a notebook, and a cup of colorful pencils

    Survey: Student AI Use on the Rise

    Ninety-three percent of students across the United States have used AI at least once or twice for school-related purposes, according to the latest AI in Education report from Microsoft.

  • abstract AI pattern

    Meta Forms 'Superintelligence Group' to Pursue Artificial General Intelligence

    Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is assembling a new team focused on achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), amid internal dissatisfaction with the performance of its current AI offerings. The team, known internally as the superintelligence group, is part of a broader effort to enhance Meta’s AI capabilities.

  • illustration of a human head with a glowing neural network in the brain, connected to tech icons on a cool blue-gray background

    Meta Launches Stand-Alone AI App

    Meta Platforms has introduced a stand-alone artificial intelligence app built on its proprietary Llama 4 model, intensifying the competitive race in generative AI alongside OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI.

  • university building with classical architecture is partially overlaid by a glowing digital brain graphic

    NSF Invests $100 Million in National AI Research Institutes

    The National Science Foundation has announced a $100 million investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes, part of a broader White House strategy to maintain American leadership as competition with China intensifies.