1. Big Fish in a Little Pond: OER in the Liberal Arts
Lauren Slingluff
@Caffeinebrarian
#OERgofish

2. Meet “the Pond” Often small and private
Prioritize teaching and instruction
Highly relational
Strong liberal ideals
Aspirations of creating lifelong learners
Value inquiry and dialogue
#OERgofish

3. Challenges Faculty Governance Lack of government funding
“faculty members have primary responsibility to determine the curriculum, subject matter, methods of instruction, and other academic standards and processes…” -nea.org
Lack of government funding
Less awareness of financial need
Skepticism over quality of OER
Faculty Governance overview
SPARC Open State Policy Tracker:
Lumen Learning OER adoption impact calculator:
-When attempting to use this in 2018 the credit hour cost sliding scale did not go up high enough for a
private liberal arts college tuition
#OERgofish

4. Strengths Passionate and creative educators
Commitment to issues of diversity and social justice
Small infrastructure to navigate
#OERgofish

5. Strategies Center the student voice and experience
Connect OER to the greater framework of equity and affordability
Emphasize pedagogical benefits
Celebrate and promote faculty accomplishments
#OERgofish

6. #OERgofish

7. Make a splash with OER!
#OERgofish

8. GO FIsh! Think of your own OER pond (your institution)
Identify a strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat
S & W are internal, O & T are external factors
In pairs or small groups
“Go Fish”
#OERgofish

9. SWOT Examples (give a man a fish…)
Strengths
Faculty focused on pedagogy
Passionate about social justice and equity
Source of funding for OER grants for faculty
Engaged staff, supportive administration, and interested faculty members
The President teaches a class using OER and loves it
Early OER adopters celebrated in campus magazine as well as local newspaper
Weaknesses
Faculty unaware of high cost of textbooks
Textbook cost not as large a percentage of cost of attendance
Perceived low quality of OER resources
Ingrained structure supporting “more authoritative” texts
New campus advocates who are unfamiliar with the ecosystem
Support from administration viewed as “overreach” by faculty
Opportunities
OER initiative connects with new CTL, Women in STEM initiative, and a HHMI grant to support representation of minorities in STEM fields
Regional consortium in MA forming to support OER
Threats
OER and OA work not valued sufficiently in promotion and tenure process
Overworked, overtired, and overloaded faculty
Open-washing by publishers and predatory inclusive access models
#OERgofish

10. Questions? Presentation: tinyurl.com/OERgofish
Handout: tinyurl.com/OERgofishSWOT
The handout is available as a google doc but may need to be downloaded and reformatted to print properly.
#OERgofish

11. Wheaton College - OER Adoptions
Individual Adoptions (IA)
Course-Wide Adoptions (CWA)
Planned Adoptions
Physics 110
Economics 112
Biology 115
Psychology 101
Biology 244
Business & Management 210
Religion 102
Biology 105
Biology 221
English 282
German 242
Psychology 345
Physics 170, 171, 180, 181
Chemistry 153
Math 101 & 104
Business & Management 111, 250, 350
Women & Gender Studies 101
Chemistry 232
Fall ’19
Biology 111 & 112 (CWA)
French 101 & 102 (CWA)
German 101 & 102 (CWA)
Psychology 101 (CWA)
Psychology 202 (CWA)
Wheaton College OER adoptions as of 4/19