1. Kristi Park Executive Director, Texas Digital Library August 8, 2019
Developing a statewide OER agenda: Lessons from the 2018 Texas OER Summit
Kristi Park
Executive Director, Texas Digital Library
August 8, 2019
This presentation is licensed under a CC-BY license.

2. Agenda Texas Statewide OER Summit Texas OER Coordinating Committee
Outcomes
Lessons Learned
Texas OER Coordinating Committee
Follow-up to Summit
Texas Digital Library work on OER
Draft Recommendations for collective action

3. Background
As part of the development of that report, THECB gathered stakeholders to discuss the need for such a repository and the best ways to develop and maintain it. Among attendees at the meeting were representatives from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) and the Texas Digital Library (TDL). Separate and apart from discussions of repository feasibility, the need arose there for additional opportunities for cross-institutional discussion and coordination on OER initiatives, and for the development of priorities that aligned with expressed institutional needs.  

4. Ad Hoc OER Summit Planning Committee
Co-conveners 
Kristi Park, Texas Digital Library
Danielle Plumer, Texas State Library and Archives Commission
Members
Lea DeForest, Texas Digital Library
Earnstein Dukes, Texas Tech University
Dean Hendrix, University of Texas at San Antonio
Bruce Herbert, Texas A&M University
Jenny Hock, Angelo State University
Rusty Kimball, Texas A&M University
Pru Morris, Texas A&M University-San Antonio
Ariana Santiago, University of Houston
Kelly Visnak, University of Texas at Arlington
As a result, following the release of the THECB Stakeholders Meeting and Feasibility Study Report, TSLAC and the TDL co-convened a group of academic librarians active in OER work to coordinate a statewide meeting to provide opportunity for discussion and perhaps identify some areas where we might work collaboratively in support of OER.
After initial conversations by the committee’s co-conveners, the full Texas OER Summit Planning Committee convened in September 2018 to begin coordinating a two-day event in late fall The State Library sent invitations to their list of 2- and 4-year  academic library deans and directors. The invitation encouraged recipients to select and send up to two (2) representatives from their institution, and to consider reserving at least one of those seats for a non-library representative. 

5. The Result: Texas Statewide OER Summit
November 15-16, 2018 at UT San Antonio
Presentations + Strategic Planning
UTSA graciously hosted the event for us, which took place last November.
More than 100 people attended, including representatives of THECB, TSLAC, TDL, UT and TAMU System, and dozens of institutional reps from public and private 4-year universities, 2-year public  community colleges, , Medical and Health Science institutions, and others. The attendance was heavily library-focused, but we did have a handful of students, instructional tech, faculty, and others present as well.
The Texas OER Summit Program was divided into two parts, aimed at producing meaningful interaction and actionable outputs: 
Day 1 featured a series of level-setting workshops and presentations, intended to provide a shared base of knowledge among attendees about Open Educational Resources and various OER initiatives in the state of Texas and around the country; 
Day 2 built on this base of knowledge by asking attendees to engage in facilitated strategic planning activities aimed at surfacing concerns and interests related to OER, and collectively articulating a shared set of priorities for statewide action.
Dr. Maggie Melo, from the UNC Chapel Hill ischool (pictured on right) facilitated the second day of discussions and led the group through a series of table exercises aimed at narrowing a set of prirorities.

6. 3 major themes emerged from those exercise:
The need to focus efforts on funding and on developing SUSTAINABLE programs.
Balancing faculty concerns over academic freedom with incentives towards the use of OER and standardization of courses
And Building on the history of library collaborations existing in the state – particularly TSLAC, TLA, and TDL

7. Lessons learned
Enthusiasm to move forward was high among all attendees.
Expertise and resources to initiate campus programs vary greatly across campuses.
Libraries do and should play an integral role in OER work.
Concern over launching new programs without sustainable funding source.
Need to coordinate state legislative advocacy so we can dream bigger and get in front of publisher-driven bills.
Need more diversity in our collaborations (i.e. include all types of institutions, more faculty, students, and other non-librarians).
Will talk about recommendations for further action that came out of the meeting a little later, but I want to start with just a few lessons learned generally from the experience of the meeting.

8. Since the Summit

9. OER Coordinating Committee
Since the summit, the ad hoc planning committee morphed into what we are calling the Texas OER Coordinating Committee
The OER Coordinating Committee is comprised of representatives from Alamo Colleges District, Angelo State University, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Texas A&M San Antonio, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas Digital Library, the University of Houston, UT San Antonio, and UT Arlington. We began meeting monthly starting in January 2019.
The committee is intended to “bridge the gap” between the Summit and any formal coalition or institutional home at which any statewide OER effort might be housed. Though Texas Digital Library is taking the lead in convening this group, and will support its work as part of its mission, this committee’s work would be a truly community-driven effort not tied exclusively to our consortium.
The OER Coordinating Committee is focusing on three areas of work:
Report: Drafting of Summit report and white paper (i.e. analyzing outcomes of the Statewide OER summit and making strategic recommendations back to the community based on those outcomes)
Events: Coordination of further communication and collaboration opportunities among summit participants and other interested parties (e.g. at TLA, through webinars, etc.)
Advocacy and coalition-building: Identifying and enlisting key stakeholders for a more formalized coalition to support and act on the priorities set by the community

10. Texas OER Community for Higher Education Google Group
Some specific outcomes of the summit and the work of this committee are pictured here:
Outreach in the form of reporting in the TLA journal
The formation of the Texas OER Community for Higher Ed Google Group, which has begun to serve as a forum for sharing and conversation about OERs statewide.
The development of talking points for legislative advocacy used at TLA legislative day last spring – much of which focused on the distinctions between OER and inclusive access (HB1933)
And of course, the draft Report/White Paper
Texas OER Community for Higher Education Google Group

11. Draft Recommendations
Build capacity at the institutional level
Texas annual conference/meeting
Regular OER Webinars/on-going training
Statewide OTN membership
Increased collaboration to find synergies
Legislative advocacy campaigns
Collaborative OER authorship teams
More communication across agencies and multi-institutional groups involved in this work.
Develop common IT/Library systems
Publishing systems (e.g. Pressbooks)
Creation of meta-collections
Use of TSLAC and other consortially licensed e-resources
That report includes a number of recommendations for continued action

12. Texas Digital Library and OERs
Webinar series highlighting practical steps to getting OER programs started at the campus level.
Regular members of the Texas Digital Library Consortium can now save 30% on PressbooksEDU Silver and Gold book production networks. 
The Open Textbook Network (OTN) helps higher education institutions and systems advance the use of open textbooks and practices on their campuses. TDL Regular Members will be part of a consortial membership in OTN in FY20.

13. So much OER activity Not an exhaustive list!
THECB: grant program + statewide repository funding
This convening!
UT System Task Force
Houston OER Consortium
TSLAC K-12 summit coming soon
Individual institutional efforts
Not an exhaustive list!

14. Resources
Texas OER Higher Ed Google Group oer-community-he
Texas OER Summit summit/
Texas Digital Library
@TXDigLibrary