5
Section Outcomes
In this section you will craft effective messages for the stakeholder groups you identified in your last section.
Introduction
Once you have identified project stakeholders, and have defined their needs and wants, it is time to begin to craft messages that will help to communicate with each stakeholder group. Remember, you don’t always have to craft a message for each stakeholder group, but you should craft messages for the stakeholders who are rated as highly important in your stakeholder analysis. If you have a clear description of your project, and a clear strategy for discussing it with multiple audiences, your message will flow more easily when you are asked about it. Also, if you carefully consider your messages in advance, you are more likely to be prepared to talk to almost anyone about your project.
Step One: Begin by Defining Your Goals
It is necessary to understand the overall project goals, before you can clearly message what you want to achieve with open education. Begin by defining what you want to achieve by introducing OE at your institution. The more clear your goals are, the easier it is for people to engage with your activities. “We are adopting open education in ten of our most enrolled classes in order to save students a collective $1 million in two years,” is much more effective as a message than, “We hope OE will help us to save some money for students.” You can’t always be totally specific, but if you are honest with what you want the outcome to be, and you are clear with yourself and your constituents, you have a better chance of sharing a clear vision of your goals. At early stages your goal might be to generate interest, and develop a project with more specific goals. It might help to have some suggestions for goals or project ideas that will help define what can be done in OE. This list of summaries is a description of OE incentive projects that have happened at many institutions in the US.
Step Two: Choose Your Audience
While the message is often generic, because there is a centralized theme, you should consider each audience – or stakeholder group – before you approach people with your message. It is best to craft different advocacy campaigns for each of your stakeholder groups. When you start to consider arguments for each stakeholder, consider the stakeholder analysis you did in the previous section, and try to consider what will help to support your project for each group. If it helps, consider the tenets of argumentative writing, and be sure to include appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos.
Step Three: Write the Hook
The hook, for any message, is the piece that is going to make the audience want to pay attention. The hook should be short, factual, honest, direct, but compelling. The most obvious hook for students is the cost of textbooks, but that hook might not work for faculty who might consider the cost of textbooks as part of the cost of education. In your hook, try to avoid overtly provocati