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OER Toolkit : Train Others on OER
Train Others on OER: Sustainability Section 3 of 3
This module will help you design and plan how you will train others in OER use and implementation.
Plan Your Training
Before you begin to design your training, it is important to research who your audience is, and understand their needs, priorities, timeline and content gap areas.
Example:
My training audience is 15 faculty and three library staff who are working together to integrate open textbooks for an Introduction to Biology course next Fall. They want to engage students with digital content and help meet some of their accessibility needs.
Once you have an understanding of your audience’s needs, you can start to identify what your learning goals and outcomes are.
Example:
My goals are to ensure the participants have a basic understanding of OER and open educational practice, and to support them in finding, evaluating and curating at least five OER for their courses.
Consider the following elements as you determine your training approach:
- Time – How much time will you have to accomplish your training?
- Setting – Will the training be face to face, virtual or a blended approach?
- Style – What type of activities will you have – for example, presentation of information, collaborative group work, self-directed learning activities?
Example:
Training will consist of a three hour face-to-face event in computer lab, and a one hour virtual follow up meeting. There will be a mix of presentation and collaborative group work to practice using the tools for OER search, evaluation and curation.
Now you are ready to create your training agenda. It should include all of the activities that will take place, with descriptions and time needed. Use the OER Training Design Template to get started in creating your agenda.
Consider ways to provide participants with support to plan and implement their OER work.
Example:
Participants will be given a planning document to help them organize what next steps they need to take to adopt OER for their courses. A virtual follow up meeting will be offered three months after the training to share updates on everyone's OER work, and to discuss their successes and any challenges they have encountered.
Showcase Exemplary Content
Inspire your training participants by showing examples of what high quality OER looks like.
- Showcase Open TextbooksFind great exemplars from ecampus Ontario’s Open Textbook Library - opens in a new window, a curated collection of open textbooks, many of which have been reviewed and vetted by educators across Canada.
- Showcase Open Course MaterialsShare resources from the Open Course Library's - opens in a new window collection of course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts.
- Showcase Open MediaTry the Getty Institute Open Images - opens in a new window, a searchable database of open images, or the Creative Commons image search tool - opens in a new window.
- Showcase Open CollectionsShowcase content from the University of British Columbia’s Open Collections - opens in a new window, a repository that includes digital photos, books, newspapers, maps, videos, theses and more. These publicly-accessible collections are constantly growing and reflect the research interests of the UBC community and beyond.
Celebrate Successes with Use Cases
As part of your training, try to identify examples of successful OER use cases, and show how they connect to the needs of your audience.
Example: OER Adoption Use Case
In this video, faculty discuss how their adoption of open textbooks in their courses impacted their freedom to innovate, and their ability to meet student learning outcomes through iterative refinements to core materials.
Video from Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY.
Quick Training Resources
- OER Training Design Template - Word - opens in a new windowAdaptable template that you can use to help you plan your training.
- Are You Ready to Free the Textbook? - PDF - Opens in a new windowVisual handout demonstrating the steps that faculty may go through in identifying or creating content to replace their textbooks.
- Open Textbook Sprint - Checklist - PDF - opens in a new windowDownloadable checklist outlining the steps and considerations in setting up a face-to-face “sprint” to collaboratively author open textbooks.
- The What and Why of OER - PDF - opens in a new windowDownloadable poster developed by BCOER, a group of British Columbia post-secondary librarians working together to support the use of OER.