4
Recruit members
When establishing an open working group, a key point of consideration is who could or should be involved. Depending on your institutional context and the purpose of your open working group, an initial recruitment strategy is to reach out to key stakeholders who might influence or impact decision-making about creating, adapting, or adopting open educational resources (OER) on campus. Key allies and potential stakeholders on campus may include the following:
- Librarians
- Teaching and learning centre staff
- Student society representatives
- Faculty champions
- Bookstore staff
- Technology professionals
- Administrators
| Stakeholder | Key Role(s) in Supporting OER Initiatives |
|---|---|
| Librarians |
|
| Teaching and Learning Centre Staff |
|
| Student Society Representatives |
|
| Faculty Champions |
|
| Bookstore Staff |
|
| Technology Professionals |
|
| Administrators |
|
When establishing a group, roles and responsibilities for members may vary—some may be doers, some may be advocates, and some may provide support. Formal groups working towards accomplishing a specific goal or task may have clearly defined roles and responsibilities for members from the outset. In comparison, more informal groups may initially have more fluid roles and responsibilities as members’ time and interest permit.
Partner with other institutions
You may want to consider expanding your open working group to include open working groups from other institutions. These relationships can help foster knowledge transfer and staff exchanges, and you may want to work together to develop workshops for online webinars, build subject-specific OER guides, and write grant applications. British Columbia has a number of examples of cross-institution open partnerships. For Open Access Week 2018, open working groups from several institutions collaborated to plan the Open but not Free: Invisible Labour in Open Scholarship panel. Another example would be the B.C. Open Education Librarians (BCOEL) community of practice.
