The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) is a large university of nearly 42,00
The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) is a large university of nearly 42,000 students.[1] Their OER production program has already successfully produced a number of open resources. The following case study can be seen as representative of a more established OER program in a state with relatively healthy institutional support for the open education movement.
Structure
The OER program at University of Texas at Arlington was a result of a top-down decision to increase the scope of scholarship from UTA staff and students. The UTA scholarly communication department is far larger than normal for a university library, with near one-third of the library personnel working under that umbrella. The OER publishing program is a smaller subsect of the scholarly communications department, led by Director of Publishing Jody Bailey. Open Education Librarian Michelle Reed is in charge of UTA’s OER publishing efforts, and facilitates production with faculty authors on campus.
Funding
The program is focused on both adaptation and creation. In the beginning of the program, interested authors were more excited about the prospect of creation. According to Reed, “We couldn’t really get as much traction as we wanted to with [adaptation], particularly related to our grant program. We decided to really needed to focus on understanding what kind of infrastructure our faculty needed to support their creation – their desire to create.”[2] UTA formed a grant program, funded by the library, called UTA CARES: University of Texas at Arlington Coalition for Affordable Resources in Education for Students. This grant program offers funding to authors who write or adapt a text for the classroom that is less costly than existing options. The program has developed to offer larger awards for faculty authors who choose to create new OER content. The library currently funds 100% of OER efforts through this program.
Administration
Reed’s role primarily involves educating faculty who are interested in creating OER about facets of open textbooks including intellectual property rights, accessibility measures, and software. For example, onboarding training for a faculty member may involve being run through what types of different Creative Commons licenses exist, or how to use Pressbooks. The library itself serves more as a facilitator than as a publisher. However, as Reed states, open education was a natural fit with what libraries have always done. Their interdisciplinary nature within the context of a college or university helps facilitate a growing program as well.”[3]
Community Relations
The OER program has established credibility by forming relationships with supportive UTA faculty. Reed mentions that one focus of the program is finding and connecting with early adopters on the UTA campus by identifying common motivators for engagement:[4]
Sometimes that’s a message of empowerment of faculty. We have some faculty members who’ve really responded to that and want to take control of the