Our Work So Far

1. The Shift to Open Playbook

• • We designed a Playbook on Google Sites that takes those interested in shifting to Open Education through the process. There are six different Plays each of which explains something about the Shift to Open process. For example, what Creative Commons Licensing is, how to find OERs, how to adopt or adapt them, how to create and publish your own OER, and how to implement them. It was really fun to create this site, not only for the design aspect but because in learning about OERs, we felt like we knew what information people actually needed and we were able to create a Playbook based on our own knowledge and experiences. View the website here!

2. OER Newsletter

• • The CTE Department at the University of Utah has a weekly newsletter that we were asked to be apart of, focusing especially on Open Education. We wanted to create a newsletter with the same three sections but different content every week: Events, OER of the Week, and OER Stories. The goal of the newsletter is to get people interested in OERs and not bogged down in the technicalities. Each week we talk about different events or seminars relating to OERs, spotlight a unique or really well done OER, and share an OER story. This could just be our personal experiences, a faculty member using OERs, or other Open Education news. We also made sure to have a QR code to the Shift to Open Playbook, for those wanting to embark on their own journey.

3. OER Tabling and Data Collection

• • We really wanted to hear from other students, so we decided we would hold a tabling event in the library. To be honest, this was slightly overwhelming at first, but we wanted to gather data for our future OER projects. We talked to about 150 students and several of them took our poll. We learned so much by getting out there and hearing what was on students’ minds when it comes to textbook costs.

4. Social Media Marketing

• • We have met with social media groups at the University of Utah and plan to create posts about OERs on the Universities social media pages that include information about what OERs are and offer digestible information and resources students can use today.

5. Posters

• • To help people learn about OERs and to gather information about who wants them, we created posters and put them up around campus! See more here.

6. OER Poll

• • We created a poll for students to fill out that addresses textbook costs and their knowledge on OER. This helped us collect data on what students already know, and how they feel about affordable course materials. See more about what we learned here!

7. Meeting with ASUU

• • ASUU is the University of Utah’s student government. We will meet with them at one of their open sessions, explaining what OERs are, our vision, and how the student organization could help us.

8. OERizona Conference in February 2025

• • We spoke at the OERizona virtual conference on February 27, 2025. Our presentation is titled Jumpstarting an OER Awareness Campaign and you can view, read, and hear our thoughts on it here!

9. Utah Academic Library Consortium webinar series

• • We spoke at the Utah Academic Library Consortium webinar series about Open Education to share the student perspective, collaborating with students from Salt Lake Community College and Weber State University. We talked about the initiatives we have taken at our University and engaged in a panel-style Q&A.

10. Publishing this book!

• • We have decided to end this book at the end of our first academic year working at the library. While there are still so many things to learn, and so many projects we hope to do, it’s time to finish this project off and put it out there so it can (hopefully) be used as a resource and perspective for people wanting to implement OER themselves.