{"id":33,"date":"2022-02-06T18:17:29","date_gmt":"2022-02-06T18:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/integrations.pressbooks.network\/oerstarterkit\/chapter\/chapter-3-building-your-team\/"},"modified":"2022-05-19T20:06:46","modified_gmt":"2022-05-19T20:06:46","slug":"chapter-3-building-your-team","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/integrations.pressbooks.network\/oerstarterkit\/chapter\/chapter-3-building-your-team\/","title":{"raw":"Building Your Team","rendered":"Building Your Team"},"content":{"raw":"
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Having a team to support your work is an integral part of any OER program. Team-building allows you to spread your message, gain visibility on campus, and garner insight from diverse groups. Whether you have an official team of OER staff at your institution or you\u2019re creating a committee to help support your work, team-building is a vital step in OER program management. As Cummings-Sauls et al. (2019) explain, \u201cEven when a library has the potential to support all aspects of an OER program, collaborating with allies on campus enables the resources and time of the library and librarians to have faster, greater, and better impact\u201d (para. 10).<\/p>\n\n

Soliciting Team Members<\/h2>\n

In some cases, you\u2019ll be assigned to a group put together by your administration or compiled from existing staff who have an interest in OER. You may even have student workers or other staff you supervise who support OER work at your institution.<\/p>\n

Even if this is the case at your institution, you still need to know how to reach out to potential external partners. This can also be useful for building connections across your institution and spreading awareness of your work, but outreach like this is often done when creating a committee. Soliciting committee members doesn\u2019t need to be difficult. Sometimes, it is as simple as sending a friendly email to someone who works in a relevant area. Here are some tips for those of you just getting started:<\/p>\n\n

Recruit Peers at your Institution<\/h3>\n

The first option is also the simplest. If you know someone from another office or department who would make a good addition to your OER committee, ask them. This can be done informally or formally. On the informal side, you might email or approach your peer to ask if they are interested in joining your committee. For a more formal approach, check with the potential team member\u2019s supervisor before approaching them with a request to join, or send a formal email invitation on which you CC your peer\u2019s supervisor. This email may be useful to your peer as a promotion and tenure item in the future when discussing their work on your team.<\/p>\n

To recruit new team members that you don\u2019t already know, it is best to send an introductory message to describe your team and why you think they would be a valuable addition to it. Here, it can be helpful to explain the story and motivations behind your OER program. What impact has your program had on your institution already, and how can your new team member contribute to make a difference? For those new to OER, providing a primer or offering to meet and discuss your work in more depth is a particularly good approach.<\/p>\n\n

Rotate Volunteers<\/h3>\n

Often, the best team members to have in your committee are new members. Building a rotation into your annual process can be useful, and it fits well with groups who rotate naturally, like a representative from your faculty senate, advisory board, or student government. Just be sure to follow up on these rotating positions each year to ensure that you don\u2019t suddenly lose a committee member without warning, if a past member is no longer at your institution or a part of the group they were representing.<\/p>\n\n

Utilize a Top-down Approach<\/h3>\n

When you\u2019re new to an institution, the best approach may be to contact the head of a specific department or office and ask for their opinion on who could contribute to your team. A few recommended partners are listed in the following section to help you brainstorm some options.<\/p>\n\n

Common OER Partners<\/h2>\n

You should build a team with members that have a range of experiences, expertise, and roles across your institution. Bringing in members who have a range of experiences can be incredibly useful when it comes to developing outreach and training programs on campus, since these members may have different perspectives that affect how they respond to your program\u2019s message.<\/p>\n\n

Institutional Library<\/h3>\n

Library representatives are often a staple of OER committees, and you might be a librarian yourself. Libraries are a natural fit for OER work, since they hold individuals experienced in copyright, content management, and publishing. The 2019 Connect OER Report from SPARC found that all of their surveyed institutions listed their college\/university library as engaged in their OER program, and libraries have provided a leadership role in the open education community for many institutions. If you haven\u2019t already, contact your institution\u2019s library. They may be a valuable partner and can connect you with other local, state-wide, and national OER support groups.<\/p>\n\n

Teaching and Learning Center<\/h3>\n

Aside from the library, the teaching and learning center (or equivalent group) is the second most common representative office on OER programs (SPARC 2019). These centers work in instructional design, which makes them a great complement for OER work. As many recent studies have emphasized, faculty can\u2019t just effectively change their course content with no changes to the way they teach (Pierce 2016). Because of this, it\u2019s incredibly important that OER programs have instructional design staff on their team to help faculty navigate their course design or redesign when making the change to open.<\/p>\n

Besides triage support for faculty concerned about OER, these instructional design staff can also be useful for engaging with faculty learning communities in outreach projects, building out infrastructure to support open pedagogy on campus, and connecting with pedagogically minded faculty partners who can further support your team\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n

Faculty and Faculty Senate<\/h3>\n

No matter how your OER team is made up, you should always seek faculty support for your work. Communicating with faculty members and with the faculty senate is important, and having one or more faculty members on your team can be incredibly useful when developing policy that affects instructors, putting together an outreach strategy, and testing professional development ideas. After all, if faculty members are one of your major audiences, it makes sense to include team members who represent this team. While this section has focused on \u201cfaculty,\u201d teaching faculty and instructional staff are also incredibly useful partners for OER work. Don\u2019t discount their importance when developing your team!<\/p>\n\n

Student Government<\/h3>\n

Similar to faculty partners, students can make excellent partners for OER teams when utilized well. However, finding students with the time and interest in OER work is often difficult. To help with this, we recommend reaching out to your local student government since student government members are more likely to have interest in extracurricular committee work.<\/p>\n

In addition, partnering with student government can help you by giving your team the opportunity to communicate with major student groups easily and to develop policies, such as student government recommendations for course material priorities. In addition to these policies, working with student government can help you share information about your OER program, create and disseminate student surveys, and gather student input on your work. This input is incredibly important. Like the campus food bank or scholarship programs, the work being done \"for\" students to adopt, adapt, and author OER in the classroom should reflect actual student needs. Working with your student government can help you orient your work toward students\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n\n

Online Learning Office<\/h3>\n

If your institution has a separate office dedicated to online learning, the staff and administration of these centers are likely familiar with the types of restrictions and needs of their distance learning students, and OER are often a component in online degree programs. This group may also contain instructional designers who are particularly well-versed in online learning, and can be an excellent partner for your program. Whether your office for online learning is aware of OER or not, they can make a valuable partner in this work.<\/p>\n\n

Campus Bookstore<\/h3>\n

Finally, a major partner you should consider for your OER program is your institution\u2019s bookstore. The bookstore is an obvious partner for OER work for a few reasons: they manage course material purchases for the institution, including software and ebooks, they gather adoption information from instructors about the materials they are using, and they provide lists for students to see what course materials have been assigned to their courses. In addition, bookstores have experience interfacing with vendors and can be a valuable partner in establishing standards for online platforms that are used at your institution.<\/p>\n\n

Program Manager Tips: Dealing with<\/strong> Bookstore Hesitancy<\/strong><\/header>\n
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Depending on your institution, partnering with your bookstore may be a more or less useful endeavor. Concerns about campus bookstore partners may include the following:<\/p>\n\n