 Hi everyone, welcome and thank you for coming to this session one step at a time reflecting on a path towards an OER creation program. My name is Ariana Santiago and I'm the OER coordinator at the University of Houston. The University of Houston is a large public research institution serving more than 47,000 students and we have a very diverse student body. The OER program at UH officially got off the ground in 2018 with the launch of an incentive program for OER adoption, adaptation and creation. And the hiring of my position and OER coordinator dedicated to growing and supporting OER across campus. Now in 2022 we launched a new OER creation program, which provides funding professional development and library services to support the creation of OER for UH courses or programs. In this session I'll be sharing information about that creation program as well as quite a bit about how we got here and why this program was formed. I always find it helpful to hear stories about how programs that other institutions develop and why they change over time. So I hope that sharing that kind of information about our program will be helpful for you. You may notice that I started by mentioning an incentive program and that's one that's different from the one I'm here to talk to you about today. However, knowing a little bit about that initial program may help understand what led to the OER creation program. That first program is called the alternative textbook incentive program and it launched in 2018 and we still run it today and it offers monetary awards and library support for instructors who replace required commercial textbooks with OER library resources or a combination of those or other free resources. The focus is very much on removing the cost of textbooks for students, saving them money and allowing them to be more prepared and engaged in class because they have immediate access to their learning materials. This focus on student savings was particularly strong in the earlier years of our OER program because it grew out of student advocacy around textbook affordability. Our student government association played a significant role in gaining support from the provost around OER and that helped us start out strong with administrative support and funding. When the alternative textbook incentive program was first developed, it incentivized adoption, adaptation and creation. We operated with that scope for a few years, however, over time I realized that it was a bit too broad. There's a lot of variation within that scope. An instructor may be simply adopting an open textbook to replace the previous commercial textbook or they may be attempting to write and publish an entirely new open textbook or something else along that spectrum. Basically, there's a range and the level of support that's needed and it can be difficult to ensure that everyone who we're encouraging and incentivizing to adopt OER is getting the support they need at all steps throughout the process. And that's exacerbated by the fact that this has been a successful program so far and that's great, but that means we're awarding on average 19 projects per round, which becomes a lot to manage. In the most recent iteration of the alternative textbook incentive program, we tightened that scope a bit and made it so this program awards adoption and adaptation and creation of ancillary materials. Any projects that were primarily authoring a new content would be directed to the OER creation program instead. The idea is that separating this out would allow for more dedicated support for those significant creation projects and more clearly articulate that support upfront as they have different needs. Another factor throughout all of this is that through conversations with our faculty and instructors, I found there was a pretty consistent interest in creating their own OER. Many were interested in adopting OER but in searching available resources didn't find existing OER that were suitable for them to use. Of course, in those conversations, I remind instructors that they can adapt OER when the license allows and draw from multiple sources rather than attempt to rely on a single open textbook to meet all their needs. Many end up doing those things and there are also those who still have a need to primarily develop their own new content. We ended up licensing with Pressbooks to support these needs around adapting and creating OER. Pressbooks is a self-publishing platform with features and support that are advantageous for OER creation. Providing this platform for our faculty and instructors addressed many questions I was hearing often. For example, where does my OER live once I've created it? How do I share it with students? What tools should I use or how can my students have a seamless experience when I'm drawing from or adapting multiple different OER? Basically, having it recommending and providing some support around this tool helps our instructors see a clearer path for making their idea come to life by addressing some of their technical questions. Lastly, we had the opportunity to have a pair of faculty participate in the Rebus textbook success program. This is a year-long professional development program on OER publishing offered by the Rebus community. I'll talk more about that in a little bit. But the takeaway here is that I saw the immense benefit of this dedicated professional development as it provided community and support for those faculty members, resulting in a higher quality end product and likely deeper engagement with the process of developing their OER. All of this together is what led to the OER creation program, which we launched earlier this year. These are the program goals. Make higher education more affordable and accessible for UH students. And that connects directly to our university's strategic plan and goals for student success. Support through creation of high quality OER for UH courses or programs. And expand the impact of UH created OER. Here, we're intentionally trying to shift how our instructors think about this as many focus on creating materials just for their students in their course, and thus may not take the steps to openly license and share their work with others. This is a shift to also thinking about the broader audience that could use their resource and sharing their OER with the broader OER community. The program is structured so that applicants were required to assemble a project team to create OER rather than going it alone. The team could be from two to four people, most for faculty members, though they can also include instructional designers or others to support the project. And these are the three main components to support the work of the accepted project teams. Financial support of $5,000 to $10,000 per project team. Participation in the Rebus textbook success program. So that pilot project from a few years earlier really influenced this direction. There is a fee to participate in this program and we decided it was worthwhile to have a full cohort of project teams participate and benefit from that professional development. And support from UH libraries, including OER consultations, open licensing guidance, access to the press books publishing platform, and assistance with archiving the completed materials. And this is the kind of support that's already provided through my role and in collaboration with other library units. So the hope is that by pairing the existing OER support with the textbook success program and financial support that the project teams will be well supported from beginning to end. To be eligible for the OER creation program, proposals needed to be for the creation of OER that will be used as required course materials for a UH course or program fills a gap within existing OER content in the subject area. And primarily consists of newly authored content and or significant adaptation of existing OER content. Here is the overall timeline for the program, which may help with understanding how those pieces all work together. The application period was in spring 2022 and selected projects signed a project agreement, which is similar to a memorandum of understanding and then the first half of the total award for each team was distributed. Then we have phase one and phase two and that's because that's how the Rebus textbook success program is structured. In phase one, team members participate in 12 weekly meetings to learn all about OER publishing and that's led by a facilitator with Rebus. At the end of phase one, each team submits a revised project plan that builds on what they already submitted in their application and should incorporate information that they learned in the textbook success program or the TSP. It's meant to be a helpful checkpoint for teams to reflect on their progress and the support they need and to ensure all of that is clearly communicated with me so I can do the best I can to support them. In phase two, those weekly meetings shift to monthly meetings still led by the Rebus facilitator to provide guidance and support as they develop their OER. At the end of phase two, the project teams will distribute or deposit their completed OER to the UH institutional repository and an OER repository. They'll also submit a final report and that's to evaluate their experience in the OER creation program and the TSP so we can assess if it will offer it again or how we might adjust it for the future. And at that point, they'll receive the second half of the awards. That puts completion of these projects at summer 2023, about a year after they begin this work. That end date is flexible as it can certainly take longer than one year. And because this is a newly launched program, we haven't gone through this whole cycle yet and haven't seen how everything plays out, but I can speak to the experience so far. Right now we're at the tail end of phase one. We've had the last of those 12 weekly meetings and the project teams will be submitting their revised project plans in a few weeks from now. You might be interested to hear a little bit about the teams who are participating in the program so I will gladly highlight that for you. We received five applications to the OER creation program and fortunately we were able to award all fives. We have a group developing an open lab manual for physical geology. Be a tech advanced cultural learner is a group developing an open textbook to guide students in culture learning courses with the use of technological tools and skills needed for media related assignments. We have a microbial biotechnology open textbook and instructional design for human resource development. A point that went out as an example of filling a gap in the existing landscape of OER and they all do that, but this one was a really clear example to me. When I first saw their application, I thought, well, I know there's a lot out there on instructional design, right? And that's true, but the existing OER on this topic primarily focus on formal education context and we didn't find any geared towards roles in the human resources field or that covered skills needed for entry level professionals in human resource development. We also have a Native American spirituality and indigenous knowledges open textbook. Now only four of those five groups that we awarded are actually participating in the Rebus textbook success program. And that's because the faculty members developing the physical geology lab manual are those who already participated in the program a few years ago. So they felt that already developed that knowledge around open publishing and felt comfortable moving forward without repeating the curriculum. On the flip side, we were able to include an additional team in the TSP, even though they weren't part of the OER creation program. The French language team is significantly adapting existing OER for use in French language courses. They were awarded in our alternative textbook incentive program, which is now geared towards adoption and adaptation. Knowing the extent of adaptation they were doing, I thought the TSP curriculum could be beneficial for them as well and extended that opportunity. So I want to point out there the importance of flexibility and adjusting to meet the needs of the people and the project. If I stuck strictly to the program requirements that we set out, then the French team wouldn't have had this opportunity and the geology team may have spent a lot of time repeating a curriculum that they had already completed. So this next part, I don't want to call recommendations or necessarily lessons learned. So let's just say that these are some things that are on my mind now at this point. One thing on my mind is pre-selection support. And by that, I mean the level of support that's provided during the application and selection process before the program and curriculum really gets started. For example, each team signed an agreement form that outlined the program requirements and everyone's expected contributions. To make sure this was clearly communicated and understood, I scheduled a meeting with myself and each project team to review it and answer questions. Those meetings were incredibly helpful and I found that additional questions would come up that were even beyond the scope of the agreement itself. Looking back, it may have been helpful to require each team meet with me even earlier in the process, probably before they even submitted their applications. And that would intentionally build in more time for these conversations very early on and find more ways to support them in that early stage. Another thing on my mind is the ever important communication. So here I'm specifically thinking about communicating what we do and what we don't do in supporting OER creation and publishing. This has always been important when I support OER creation, but it's even more important now that we have a specific program around it. UH Libraries is not a publisher and does not have a publishing program. So there are a lot of things that our faculty might think of when they think about publishing their work that are things that we don't provide. Some of the typical publishing services that we don't offer include soliciting contributors, coordinating peer review, editing and proofreading. The meetings to go over the project agreements were incredibly helpful in communicating this. Another thing related to communication as well as capacity is my role in supporting these projects. Of course, I support the projects in my role as OER coordinator, and I'm also attending the textbook success program sessions along with them. However, I'm not their project manager in the sense that I'm not the point person who schedules meetings, sets their deadlines, manages files, all of the project manager type things. An important point that I communicated early and often is that the faculty members would be driving their own progress through this program. I'm here to support them the whole way, but it's up to them to move things forward. I also can't stress enough the incredible value of participating in the Rebus textbook success program. The curriculum and the cohort really enrich the learning process, and I'm sure that will be reflected in the completed OER as well. You saw that our five project teams participating in the TSP come from a range of disciplines, and we were also paired with project teams from another institution, so we're sharing perspectives from multiple disciplines and multiple contexts. The TSP curriculum includes topics such as project scoping, marketing and communications, team building, accessibility and inclusive design and more. The discussions and activities have allowed people to learn from each other in a way that they wouldn't have been able to without this cohort community. I know there are institutions out there who run their own in depth professional development programs about open publishing or other open education related topics. At UH we're just not in a place where we have the capacity to do this right now, which is why we turned to the Rebus textbook success program. And there is a cost associated with that program, which may not be feasible for all. So you might consider other professional development opportunities that you can take advantage of and incorporate into your own OER services, or how you can facilitate learning opportunities and community around OER creation at your institution at a scale that's reasonable for you. I know that's something I'm thinking about as well. For example, if we don't repeat this program, could we or how could we do something similar in house? Lastly, I'm thinking about how this represents and pushes us towards a shift in focus. As I mentioned earlier, our program was founded on textbook affordability and the focus was very much on student savings. For our alternative textbook incentive program, the estimated cost savings for students and the number of students impacted are significant factors in the award selection. And that may privilege larger enrollment courses or those with highly expensive textbooks. What instructors who teach smaller courses or are replacing lower cost textbooks are still doing great work that should be recognized. Of course, savings for students is important, but I'd like to keep pushing us in a direction that recognizes that it's not all about the numbers. We can encourage and support engagement with OER that may not result in the highest cost savings for students or may not be used by hundreds of students at our institution. Some of the projects in this cohort do have higher numbers associated with them and others don't. In this program, the estimated cost savings did not factor into whether or not we accepted a project. Instead, we focused largely on whether there was a demonstrated need for the newly developed OER and the contributions to the student's success goal of our institution's strategic plan. There's so much more I can say. But I think I'm running out of time. So here are a few final thoughts. I feel like we've barely started this process. We're at the end of that 12 week TSP course and we have the whole rest of the year ahead of us. I honestly don't necessarily have a perfect plan all mapped out and we're figuring things out as we go. At this point, my next steps are to make a plan for ensuring communication and support for each project team throughout the rest of the year, especially now that we're moving away from the weekly check-ins facilitated by the TSP. I have to say also that I don't know if I'm doing things right. I definitely don't have all the answers and I don't have this perfectly planned out, at least from this point forward. Like I said before, we don't officially have a publishing program at our library, but here I am trying to support OER publishing and it can be tricky to find the balance between those two things. I see all of this as being kind of mushy and complex and still getting figured out. And I have to remind myself that that's okay. So I'm going to say this to all of you. It's okay for things to be messy and to not really know if you're doing any of this right. And I think it's helpful to hear from each other when we feel that way. And remember that this didn't happen overnight. It took a lot of time to get here and we started in quite a different place. I hope it was helpful to hear about that journey and the changes we made over time that resulted in developing this program to provide more targeted and robust support for OER creation. Thank you all so much and I look forward to hearing your questions.