In this section of Open Voices, Just Choices, you considered the utility of potential OER tools in terms of accessibility and engagement. Let’s take a step back to reflect on how your decisions will support your OER project in the long term. That is, how tools can support the sustainability of your project. Sustainability for OER as “an open educational resource project’s ongoing ability to meet its goals,” as David Wiley (2007, 5) defines it. Building a sustainable project will ensure you are able to manage your OER in balance with work and life. In this chapter we will reflect on how you can build and plan for a sustainable OER.

First stage of Sustainability: Creation

“Producing open educational resources requires human resources, workflow processes, and supporting technology. At a minimum, someone must capture content, digitise [sic] content, check content for intellectual property issues, resolve intellectual property issues, and provide quality assurance of the final product” (Wiley, 2007, 5).

OERFSJ’s three-year period largely covers the first stage of sustainability, creation. At this point in your project, your dedicated team is supported by the OERFSJ grant team. You have documented your learning outcomes and outlined your content to serve as your roadmap for creating content. These tools are intended to help your team stay organized during your initial creation and beyond through future revisions.

Now you are selecting and learning necessary technology to make your OER useable and discoverable for end users, such as students and potential faculty adaptors.

When selecting your tools, you will need to consider their cost — if there is an annual hosting or subscription fee, how much funding will be needed to sustain the tool, and the cost of training and up-keeping the tool through human resources. The consideration of labor will be particularly important as you reflect upon your own tech skills. Most OER platforms are easy to learn and use. If you are wanting to use more advanced tools, you should consider if your team requires experts external to your team to build and maintain your OER.

As we progress, you will consider intellectual property issues associated with remixing and creating OER — fairly using copyrighted materials and ensuring your OER is properly and openly licensed. Finally, you may elect to engage in copyediting and peer-review of your OER.

Second Stage of Sustainability: Implementation and Promotion

Planning for Post-Grant

“For the second part, copies of the finalised [sic] open educational resources must be distributed to end users” (Wiley, 2007, 5-6). This involves using a shareable format, learning technical tools to share work, and to have a location to share work.”

There is always a bottom line. During the initial production stage you have benefited from the funding, staffing, and technical support from OERFSJ. The institutions involved with this project are dedicated to continuing to supporting your project. For instance, LMU’s William H. Hannon Library aims to continue funding for Pressbooks and each institution has an institutional repository to help preserve your work and aid in its discoverability.

Such extrinsic motivators are always helpful, but you also have intrinsic motivations that brought you to this project. “In short,” Wiley bluntly states, “money is not the only incentive sufficient to engage users in open educational resource projects” (Wiley, 2007, 7). Whether it is reducing the cost of education for your students or improving the quality of their learning, you have altruistic reasons for doing this work.

It will be important for you to consider who would be intrinsically motivated to partner in sustaining your OER, and how you can make certain they benefit from contributing to your OER.

Build your community

You have the advantage that you are creating OER with a team of people. All of you are learning how to remix, create, and openly license content. Your OERFSJ team is your immediate support through the stages of sustainability. Many of your are already thinking of how you can expand you team to your greater professional communities. Doing so will introduce more diverse perspectives and content to your OER and, importantly, make it easier for you to maintain and sustain your OER.

Students

Your students may be a bit of a captive audience, but being transparent about your motivations for creating and using OER for the course will help ensure student buy-in, especially if you would like them to contribute to the OER. Timothy Robbins uses “syllabus day” to share his dedication to reducing the cost of education for his students. Passing around copies of costly textbooks, Robbins assures his students that together they can create a better resource, empowering them to contribute to The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature.

Remember, though, you don’t have to do it all and everything can’t happen all at once. Consider how you can scale implementing your OER into your classroom. Maybe you use your OER for a semester or two and then you can consider how to scaffold students into your course? Your students may want to build their professional portfolios by publishing their work in the OER. Or you are able to hire student-workers who can help generate content to keep the OER content fresh and relevant?

Faculty

Your faculty peers may also be potential partners in sustainability. Initially you are likely recruiting faculty within your department to use your OER when teaching its associated course. You may network with faculty in your discipline who are interested in adopting the OER. Amenable faculty may want to contribute sections to expand disciplinary sub-fields or theoretical approaches. You can decide if you want to organize a coalition of contributing faculty authors, such as with The American Yawp. Or some faculty may further the legacy of your OER by remixing it to create their own, independent version. These are some of the ways additional faculty can help you continually improve your OER and further its use.