Brunswick Community College, BCC, in Bolivia, NC has 1,482 students and 112 faculty. In order to market OER to the faculty at this school, I would start by involving the students to help them understand the ways that OER can help them, especially in regard to textbook costs (BCcampus). Many professors are likely unaware of just how much their students spend per semester on their textbooks collectively if they only consider how much the books for their course cost. By encouraging students to be open about the costs, both financial and otherwise, of traditional resources for them, hopefully, faculty would better understand the benefits that they could bring to their students through adoption and engagement with OERs. Since many community college professors are less involved in research than their counterparts at research universities, community colleges and their faculty tend to have a greater emphasis on student-professor relationships and interaction (SparcOpen). Hopefully, this means that the professors at Brunswick Community College would care that the high costs of traditional education materials can so negatively affect their students.
In order to market OER adoption directly to the faculty, a multiple-step plan would need to be implemented. First, the faculty should be provided with external resources to educate them about the benefits and potential problems with OERs. The potential issues should be addressed to ensure that faculty feel that they are being given the entire picture and the most complete information; failure to do so may lead to resistance. These resources should include general information about OER usage and OER usage in the community college setting. The Community College Consortium for OER has a publicly available archive of past webinars that faculty could explore to better understand OER usage and topics as they pertain to them (CCCOER). Additionally, at this stage, faculty should also be made aware that the BCC Library currently has several open educational resource databases that can be found in their database collections catalog. This will help lend credibility to the concept and the validity of such resources.
Next, the faculty should be invited to OER workshops that cover the general information again, resource types, and potential integration strategies. This would also allow them to voice questions and concerns at this time. The implementation strategy I would likely market to the faculty is to start small and incorporate OER materials as supplementary resources in their classes so that they do not feel overwhelmed by large changes especially if they are uncertain about OER (Texas, 15). The ideal goal here would be to replace one traditional paid resource with an OER equivalent.
Utilizing OERs is a good start but ideally, faculty would create OER materials as well. In order to incentivize professors to create materials, the university could include the creation of materials in tenure, or equivalent position, decisions. Since this might not apply to all faculty, the university could also declare that the creation of OER materials could be factored into salary and contract negotiations. Additionally, hopefully by making the faculty aware of the benefits to students, such as a decrease in stress due to lack of materials and financial strain, and increased performance, they would also be incentivized to create materials that would benefit their students (Texas, 17).
Despite training and possible incentives, the faculty would still likely have several concerns about OER, several of which are discussed below. One of the most common concerns about OERs is the quality of the materials. In response to this, I would establish that the resources would be assessed before use just as textbooks and other resources should be. Additionally, I would point out that even the best quality textbooks are no good if the students cannot access or afford them (Texas, 17). Lastly, I would again remind faculty of the other similar institutions that use OERs and the fact that the BCC library already includes some OER materials so clearly there are high-quality resources available (SparcOpen). Faculty may have a follow-up concern, that they do not have the time to assess the new materials (Belikov, 241). In response to this, I would remind them that course materials should be assessed regularly whether they are OER or traditional and that it does not necessarily have to fall onto the lone professor; the department could work on it as a project together or if there are resources a department assistant could be hired to assess potential resources (Belikov, 241). Finally, if faculty question the viability of implementing OER in their settings or for their subject, I would refer them to examples of other community colleges that have very successful OER programs and access (SparcOpen; CCCOER).
Sources:
Belikov, Olga Maria, and Robert Bodily. “Incentives and Barriers to OER Adoption: A Qualitative Analysis of Faculty Perceptions.” Open Praxis 8, no. 3 (2016): 235–246. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.283536367861626.
“A Look At Community Colleges Leading the Way on OER.” SparcOpen. Sparc, 2019. https://sparcopen.org/news/2019/community-colleges-leading-oer-in-the-sparc-community/.
“OER Student Toolkit.” BCcampus Open Education. BCcampus, 2016. https://opentextbc.ca/studenttoolkit/chapter/step-three-how-to-advocate-on-your-campus/.
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Academic Planning and Policy. “A Study on Open Educational Resources and Their Potential for Use at Texas Colleges and Universities.” 2014. https://reportcenter.highered.texas.gov/reports/data/a-study-on-open-educational-resources-and-their-potential-for-use-at-texas-colleges-and-universities/.
“Webinars.” CCCOER. CCCOER Community College Consortium for OER.
https://www.cccoer.org/webinar/.
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