Listening Tour

Textbook & Course Materials Listening Tour

I worked with my Trinity College colleague Cait Kennedy (Research, Technology, and Outreach Librarian) and a student on our library student advisory board to develop and pilot a textbook and course materials listening tour. The interview protocol for our listening tour is adapted from the interview protocol designed by Temple University librarians for their listening tour. In Summer 2021, we piloted our interview protocol with a small number of faculty who used OER, engaged in OER-enabled pedagogy, or taught larger introductory classes with high enrollment.  

Our listening tour is designed to help us learn about the textbook and course materials selection habits of academic departments, including which departments rely heavily on (expensive) textbooks; the needs and challenges of departments; and faculty awareness, perceptions, and use of open educational resources (OER). A listening tour also helps us to ensure that our OER initiative addresses the specific  needs and challenges of individual academic departments, including barriers to adoption of OER. 

As a next step, we are planning to schedule listening tours with individual academic departments starting in Spring 2023.  We are planning to assemble teams that would include myself or Cait Kennedy, and the assigned liaison librarian and instructional technologist for selected departments. We will use the results of the listening tour to design an OER Faculty Fellows program that is paired with the mini grant we offered previously. In creating a faculty fellows program, the goal is to ensure the sustainability of the initiative by working to build a faculty community of practice around OER.