IHE SHU Accessibility in OER Implementation Guide
Overview
In June of 2023, a select team from Siena Heights University participated in a free Accessible OER Academy for Institutions of Higher Education hosted by ISKME and CAST.
Participants in the academy were provided with this OER to engage in a Landscape Analysis to uncover key structures and supports to help guide our work to support Accessibility in OER.
Our team is using this document as a place to share ideas with others and our own community as we progress as an institution toward increased adoption and incorporation of OER internally and support best-practices in accessibility for all
Landscape Analysis for Accessibility in OER in Local Context
Part Five: Clarifying questions for Faculty learning and engagement:
- What Professional Learning (PL) structures have the best participation rates for our educators?
- What PL structures have the best "production" rates for our educators?
- What incentive do we have to offer people for participating in learning and engagement?
- Who are the educators that would be most creative with accessibility and OER?
- Who are the educators that would benefit the most from accessibility and OER?
Part Six: Final Probing questions:
- What is our current goal for Accessibility in OER and why is that our goal?
- Who have we not yet included while thinking about this work?
- What barriers remain when considering this work?
- What would genuine change look like for our organization for this work?
Part One: Initial Thoughts
What is your team's initial goal for this series?
We have considered developing a few different options as OER:
- Interactive SHU Bloom’s Taxonomy Guide
- SHU Netiquette Document
- Support (stipends) faculty who implement OER in classrooms
- Develop training/checklist for accessible and practical OER adoption in the classroom
Part Two: Introductory probing questions:
- What does accessibility look like in our organization? How do we measure accessibility?
- What does OER look like in our organization? How do we measure access to OER?
We think of both accessibility and OER as cornerstones to ensuring that we reach our underrepresented students more easily and allow us to differentiate our offerings for different cultures and perspectives. All of this supports our focus on ethics at our institution.
Part Three: Clarifying questions for accessibility:
- What is the organizational structure that supports accessibility?
- Who generates most of the accessibility structures/conversation in our organization?
- Where do most educators get support with accessibility?
- What content areas might have the largest gaps in access to accessibility?
As of 2023, we have a one-person office on campus for our Office of Accessibility. The structure is primarily focused on providing student accommodations and support, but the director is very passionate about empowering other faculty and staff on campus, and we have many in our campus community who take informal steps to support accessibility in their classrooms.
We have a formal evaluation process for online classes, and one element of that evaluation is assessing accessibility of online course design. There is room for growth, but we have taken small steps towards formalization. We have also worked with the Office of Accessibility to support development of an accessibility training course for faculty and to coordinate mandatory enrollment in that course for all instructors at the graduate and undergraduate level for our institution. This process still needs some additional structures to be put in place (long term tracking, continuous development for future faculty, etc.), but again, it is a small step in the right direction.
Part Four: Clarifying questions for OER:
- What is our organizational structure that supports curricular resources?
- What is our organizational structure that supports OER?
- Who generates most of the curricular resources in our organization?
- Where do most educators get support with curricular resources?
- What content areas might have the largest gaps in access to curricular resources/OER?
Curricular support comes primarily from the Offices of Academic Affairs, especially within the department a program is housed in. We have several faculty-run committees designed to support curricular development, including the Assessment Advisory Committee, Curriculum Committee, and Online Learning Advisory Committee. We also recently hired an Instructional Designer, though we have had several staff members with instructional design experience on staff for some time.
Curriculum development is in the hands of faculty with the support of the areas previously mentioned. The hope is that educators will be able and willing to utilize these committees as places to brainstorm and iteratively improve the work that they bring to their classroom with the support of their peers.
We have minimal support for access to OERs at the moment. Cursory searches often quickly yield general resources for survey courses, but as learning moves towards more specialized work - niche subject matter or higher-level learning as one might experience in graduate level courses, for instance - finding robust OERs becomes increasingly difficult.
Team Focus
Identifying and Describing a Problem of Practice
The following questions should help your team ensure that you are focusing your collaboration.
- What is your Team’s specific goal for this series? You may consider using AEM Quality Indicators for Creating Accessible Materials to help add to or narrow your work.
We want to create an OER Training/Workshop & Checklist
- What other partners might support this work?
Librarian, Instructional Designer, IT/Canvas Administrator, OLAC, SHU Global/Online Instructors, Office of Accessibility, Director of DEI, MICU, Grant/Finance Support, VPAA, Partner Institutions
- What is your desired timeframe for this work?
FA '24 Implementation for Phase I
- How will you include diverse voices and experiences in this work?
We will rely on assistance from our office of DEI as well as seeking feedback from a diverse range of colleagues and possibly students as well
- Please create a Focus Question that explains your goal and provides specific topics that you would like feedback on. This is what you will share in your breakout groups for feedback.
What incentive models do you recommend for faculty?
- What feedback did you receive from another team during the May 25th Implementation Session?
Others recommended implementing stipends for faculty taking the training session. We discussed potential benefits to developing awards/recognitions for faculty as well.
Next Steps
Please feel free to share your thoughts in this space, team. This is your document, too!
Angela shared this great resource:
Next Steps
- What was your redefined goal for this series?
We did not redefine the goal as much as we refined it through our discussions. We still hope to create an OER Training/Workshop & Checklist.
- What does your team want to celebrate?
Any small milestone towards accessibility is good to celebrate. The commitment of our team for the past six weeks to this academy is one of those milestones. We came up with reasonable goals for the institution, which is something we were struggling with. That is a big step forward.
- What did your team accomplish? If you have links to resources, please include them here.
We completed the establishment of reasonable goals and a timeline for implementation of our future plan. We identified support systems/key stakeholders in section 2 of this resource. We know what our plans are to keep this project moving!
- What are your team’s next steps?
Next, we will need to coordinate sessions with the strategic stakeholders within and external to our institution (librarian, ID, etc.) and delegate some tasks to ensure that we can keep this project moving wish others to help support the initiative at the institution and carry the torch. We'll develop a robust strategic plan for this project with milestones to completion which will ensure that it is provided with a health support beyond the four members of the institution who participated in this OER Academy.
- What do we want from CAST/ISKME/AEM Center moving forward?
The CAST AEM Center has a robust set of resources which we can rely on to help support our initiatives. We hope that we will have future opportunities to collaborate with excellent partners outside of our institution to strengthen all that we do in the OER sphere.