Track Session Type

Sustainability: Grant Acquisition & Management, Sustainability, Engaging Student Leaders, OER for Resilience, OER Community Building, OER and Technology

Presentation Type

Presentation

OER Level of Expertise

Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Audience

Librarian, instructional designer, Administrator, Staff

Extra, Extra, Read All About…Open Education News: Creating and Sustaining an OER Newsletter for Faculty

Session Abstract

The open education community regularly discusses the importance of faculty buy-in as a way to increase success in open educational practices (Spilovoy et al., 2020). That is the reason why an open education working group from a large university strategized ways to increase faculty engagement with open educational resources (OER) and open pedagogy. How could we share learning opportunities, new publications, pedagogical techniques, and more? We wanted to raise awareness about the libraries’ own initiatives, and expose faculty to the wider world of open education. This session will introduce our marketing and outreach initiative of a quarterly online newsletter. You’ll hear about our entire planning process, covering staff roles, content creation, online tools, and assessment. We will also share marketing strategies.

Spilovoy, T., Seaman, J. & Ralph, N. (2020). The Impact of OER Initiatives on Faculty Selection of Classroom Materials. Bay View Analytics. https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/reports/impactofoerinitiatives.pdf

Objectives of the Session

1. Attendees will be able to articulate a timeline and process for writing, editing, and publishing an open education newsletter.

2. Attendees will understand ways to market a newsletter to encourage subscribers.

Full Description of the Session

Attendees will learn about our process of creating a faculty OER newsletter (to which anyone can subscribe!) from start to finish: planning, drafting, editing, sharing, and marketing. We’ll discuss the guidelines and structures we put in place, both for the workflow and the newsletter itself. The types of information, where we gather stories, and how the team contributes and evaluates content will be detailed. The audience will learn what features to look for when deciding upon a platform, including the availability of metrics for assessing the newsletter’s performance. We will share our strategies for advertising and encouraging subscribers. Finally, we will reflect on lessons learned as we finish the first year of this project. An openly-licensed template will be shared so attendees can start their own newsletter.

This session is appropriate for any level (beginner, intermediate, or advanced). Those who work within open education and are interested in ways to market to and engage with their faculty should attend.

Presenter Bios

Courtney Eger is the Learning and Engagement Librarian at Temple University’s Health Sciences Libraries. She is the subject librarian for the Health and Rehabilitation Sciences program in the College of Public Health. Courtney is a member of Temple University Libraries’ Open Education Group. She is a graduate of SPARC’s Open Education Leadership Program, 2021-22 cohort. Her capstone project, Marketing Open Education and Pedagogy to a Medical School, focused on a school of medicine, an underrepresented population in open education. With an emphasis on encouraging open pedagogy in medical education, this project serves as a resource for other health sciences librarians. Courtney also serves as an editorial board member and proofreader for Marketing Libraries Journal, an open access publication. Prior to Temple University, Courtney worked for 12 years as a community college reference and instruction librarian.

Publishing Permission

1

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Presenters

Courtney Eger, Temple UniversityFollow

Start Date

5-4-2023 11:00 AM

End Date

5-4-2023 12:00 PM