Imagine there is a party and the host does not send out invitations. How would the guests know about this? What should the guests bring, what can they expect? If a university advocates openness in teaching and learning and wants to increase the visibility of teaching, if it wants to establish measures to promote open educational resources (OER) and “celebrate” a culture of sharing with teaching staff and university members, how can the target groups be officially invited?
With an OER policy, universities can set an example for openness and structurally anchor the promotion of OER. Many universities in the DACH region have already launched an OER policy to show not only that they are committed to OER, openness and a culture of sharing, but also how they want to achieve these goals and with what measures at the university. The path to an OER policy and its design is as varied and diverse as the university landscape itself. However, when a university wants to set out on the path to an OER policy, there are always similar questions: Where and how do I start? What should the policy contain or regulate? What needs to be considered from a legal perspective? Which stakeholders need to be involved?
There are fewer clearly defined answers to these questions, but there is experience of how universities have answered these questions individually for themselves. These have now been compiled clearly and interactively in the form of the OER Policy Kit by a working group consisting of twillo, the ORCA.nrw network and HAWK Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen. Over a period of six months, the six-member working group compiled experiences from universities that have already published an OER policy or are still in the process of doing so. During the writing process, feedback from networking meetings of policy activists was collected and incorporated.
The finished OER Policy Kit is an action guide that is intended to serve as a practical guide through the jungle of the OER policy development process. Regardless of where a university is at — whether it needs a proposal for a draft policy, wants to design a participatory process or would first like to explain the pros and cons of an OER policy to the university management — the OER Policy Kit attempts to provide general orientation, concrete tips and examples as well as helpful materials for the various stages, despite the existing differences between universities.
So if you are currently planning an openness party at your university and would like to design the invitation cards — then take a look at the OER Policy Kit. All files for reusing the policy kit can be found in this Git repository: https://github.com/twillo-lehre-teilen/OER-Policy-Kit.
And what happens after an OER policy has been adopted? We would like to invite you to the next OER policy network meeting — this time with experts Martin Ebner (TU Graz) and Simona Koch (UB Duisburg-Essen) on the topic of “Beyond OER policy” — on April 9, 2020.
Psst: A party is nothing without good sound! You can also listen to the podcast episode “How To OER Policy” of the podcast “zugehOERt” (on OERinfo or Spotify), which gives an insight into the background and development steps of the OER Policy Kit.