Steven J. Bell
Associate University Librarian
Temple University
Open educational resource (OER) activists increasingly organize within states to collaboratively advance OER awareness, adoption, and legislative advocacy. Working together in state or regional consortia can advance OER in ways individual institution efforts cannot, particularly in working to obtain state-level funding or legislative support that helps to offset efforts by commercial publishers to control learning material acquisition. Despite similar goals, how these statewide initiatives are organized for action varies widely. This session shares research on the governance structures of statewide OER initiatives, presents organizational options, and recommends strategies for organizing the projects. Session objectives include
- State the importance of statewide OER project governance structure in order to get attendees thinking about how they should change or create their structure for inclusion and effectiveness.
- Share examples and recommendations for statewide OER governance structures in order to enable attendees to think critically about the impact the organizational structure can have on statewide project outcomes.
