OER Discovery Research: Librarian and Faculty Curation Personas
Overview
This content is an adaptation of slides from the OpenEd 2021 presentation by ISKME, VIVA, and LOUIS titled: "OER Discovery Research: Librarian and Faculty Curation Personas". The slides are based on research conducted by ISKME with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), grant number LG-246327-OLS-20.
Project Background & Research Questions
ISKME, in collaboration with LOUIS Libraries, OhioLINK, VIVA, DigiTex, PALNI and PALCI, have partnered to develop a research-based metadata framework that enables more efficient discovery of course-aligned OER across states and consortia in order to impact:
- Reduced time for faculty in identifying and adapting relevant OER to meet student learning needs and course requirements
- Reduced time for library staff in curating OER, which frees up time to support faculty
- Increased efficiency in translating descriptive data about resources from one state to another
- Gorwth in course-relevant collections, as partnering consortia ingest curated content from other states
Research Questions
Phase 1 of the project entailed end-user research with faculty and library staff OER users in order to understand their search and discovery practies, painpoints, and needs, toward the development of OER curation personas that could inform the design of the solution. Key research questoins included:
- What are the tasks and decision-making processes faculty and library staff use when selecting, evaluating, and assembling both individual OER and collections of OER?
- What extensions to existing metadata are needed to accommodate their decision making?
- What painpoints do they encounter in the OER curation process?
Research Approach — Developing OER Curation Personas
Recruit... | Conduct... | Analyze... | Translate... |
35 faculty and library staff with OER curation experience across the six partnering consortia (VIVA, LOUIS, OhioLINK, DigiTex, PALNI, PALCI) | 90-minute interviews to assess their OER curation process, and the utility of different metadata in that process | the interview data to develop OER curation personas and user stories for both faculty and library staff curators. | the findings into implications for the design of an OER exchange network across academic library consortia, institutions, and states. |
Persona 1: Kendra, Textbook Replacer (Faculty)
If you're going to take away my commercial text, I need a replacement with the same features.
Faculty Textbook Replacer image from U.S. National Archives, Public Domain Archive
I get that education is important, and I support my community college's mandate that we shift toward using OER. But finding quality open materials isn't always easy.
What's 'quality'? For me, it's the resemblance to a commercial textbook. The presentation has to be professional. There has to be a natural progression of the content—an internal consistency. It has to have text banks and ancillaries like a commercial textbook. And it has to come packaged as one thing.
I don't have time to cobble together bits and pieces and adjust them to that they integrate. That's not workable—especially when we're parachuting-in an adjunct at the last minute. I need a single resources I can use to replace a commercial text, and sometimes it's not easy to find.
Once I select my OER, I want to import everything into a course manual/companion so that I can post it into my LMS to prevent students from getting derailed by external links and clicks.Metadata that are important for me in discovering OER include the table of contents, the material type and format, whether ancillaries are included, as well as user evaluations, information about the accessibility of the materials, and who the provider or original author is.
Persona 2: Kevin, A La Carte Curator (Faculty)
I take pride in customizing my courses each year with new and topical resources that bring out the best in me as a teacher, and in my students as learners.
Faculty À La Carte Curator image is free for reuse from Unsplash.
I’ve never liked commercial textbooks much. Teaching from the same dense book year after year is not a recipe for student engagement—or my own. I’m always looking for new OER; not just when I’m planning my courses, but all year long.
It’s fun for me to go down the rabbit hole—finding things I haven’t seen before and getting ideas. Librarians have helped me become a better searcher, but probably there’s more for me to learn. I want the OER movement to transform teaching—not just by making more stuff available, but by creating a kind of interactivity that didn’t exist before.
Once I select my OER, I want to save and organize items so that I can integrate them later. I then want to sequence items from a breadth of sources and resource types so that I can create a custom course in my LMS for my specific needs.
Metadata that are important for me in discovering OER include the material type and format, the license type and whether it's remixable, as well as user evaluations and information about the accessibility of the materials.
Persona 3: Mira, OER Reference Librarian
I enjoy searching for OER to meet individual faculty needs, but it could be less complicated.
OER Reference Librarian image is free for reuse from Unsplash
I’m managing and troubleshooting electronic resources like databases and eBooks on our myriad platforms. A good part of my work relates to OER, and faculty reach out to me for support with searches, which sometimes means guiding them through a search and other times means doing the search for them.
I am an evangelist for OER, and a competent curator, but even for me the process can be complicated. As the OER movement evolves, I’d like to see a process that is more efficient and simple—both for me and for the faculty—whose buy-in we need for the movement to really grow.
Metadata that are important for me in discovering OER include the table of contents, the material type and format, the date that the resource was last updated, as well as user evaluations and who it was vetted by, information about the accessibility of the materials, and who the provider or original author is.
Persona 4: Jacques, Collections Maintenance Librarian
I focus on curating for breadth and supporting faculty discovery of OER in my OER collections.
Collections Maintenance Librarian image is available under Public Domain
I work to build out our existing collections of OER so that I cover the greatest breadth of subject matter possible, and organize materials so it's easy for faculty to identify what they need. I typically curate from collections that I know and that have indicators of quality, like faculty reviews.
I often find that there is a lack of adequate controlled language for subjects in the higher education space, and that there’s an overall inconsistency in metadata across repositories, which slows me down. Because I think about discoverability, I’m concerned about the lack of metadata to handle the varied types of resources that faculty search for, and that OER aren’t embedded into the discovery systems they use.
Big picture, I’d like to be able to efficiently leverage the curation work of others (e.g., through collections-level metadata), and to also to share the curation work I’ve done to benefit the wider OER community.
Metadata that are important for me in discovering OER collections include the material type and format, the subject/topics covered, license type, date last updated, as well as who the provider or original author is, and who the content has been vetted by.
Persona 5: Eva, Course Redesign Support Librarian
If other states and consortia are also aligning OER to their courses, why can't I leverage that?
Course Redesign Support Librarian image is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
I support the curation of OER for textbook replacement and course redesign—either as part of individual faculty projects or as part of broader initiatives for mapping OER to state-level course requirements.
Sometimes I cherry pick materials in gap areas, and other times I curate with a lens toward mapping OER I find to as many courses as possible within a discipline. I really need a way to increase my success in finding hard-to curate-for, upper level courses, including enhanced metadata to help in aligning materials outside of my area of expertise. I also want more detailed metadata that can help faculty discover the materials they need (e.g., accessibility metadata, more nuanced material type metadata, etc.).
I really wish I could more easily leverage and contribute to the curation work of other consortia, for example through a master record where participating libraries can access shared metadata, and add to it, as well as download and integrate it into their local records.
Metadata that are important for me in discovering OER include the material type and format, the subject/topics covered, the accessibility of the resource, the date last updated, as well as user evaluations, who the provider or original author is, and who the content has been vetted by.
Persona Profile Highlights
| Motivations | Goals | Painpoints | |
| Kendra, Faculty Textbook Replacer |
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| Kevin, Faculty A La Carte Curator |
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| Mira, OER Reference Librarian |
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| Jacques, Collections Maintenance Librarian |
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| Eva, Course Redesign Support Librarian |
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Commonalities Across Personas
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