Creation
From Blank Pages to Completion: Navigating the Process and Resolving the Challenges of Creating a New OER for University Students
Deakin University
Dr Sarah Steen
Overview
How do you console an upset colleague? How do you assist a colleague who is struggling with work-life balance? How do you negotiate a salary? How do you mediate a dysfunctional work-related relationship between colleagues? These typical workplace situations require learned skills that can take time to master.
So, how do you create an interactive learning environment that motivates and inspires learners to develop and enhance their skills spanning navigating difficult conversations, negotiation, and mediation? It was a question that sparked an idea and led to the creation of an OER: Workplace Role-Play Scenarios: Practice Navigating Difficult Conversations, Negotiation and Mediation. Fifteen role-plays were created, inspired by real-life situations, and drawn on experience from industry-relevant stakeholders, to develop workplace scenarios that were realistic, giving learners an authentic learning experience.
However, the creation of the OER was not without its challenges, as pursuing the OER idea required navigating an unfamiliar process that took persistence and resulted in many key lessons learned along the way. Challenges such as how do you create a high-quality user-friendly resource that will be applicable, inclusive, and work for different cohorts of learners to enable the OER to reach its full potential of being utilised, shared, and modified when users have different needs and curriculum requirements? How do you collaborate with others to create the OER? What are the licencing guidelines? How do you navigate the software to create the OER? How long does the process take from an idea to published OER? How do you then integrate and adopt the OER into your subject?
This chapter, through the lived experience of an enthusiastic educator, takes you on a journey of how to pursue an idea into a completed OER, navigating the process and recounting the author’s personal experience of overcoming the challenges. The chapter aims to inspire educators to embrace open practices that promote inclusivity and equity in education and is a must-read for anyone wanting to convert an idea into a newly created OER.
Using this case study
A passionate educator’s journey starting with the pursuit of an idea to the completion of the OER: Workplace Role-Play Scenarios: Practice Navigating Difficult Conversations, Negotiation and Mediation.
This case study is useful for teaching academics seeking to convert an idea into a newly created OER.
After reading this chapter, educators will:
Key stakeholders – “Your support lifeline”
The journey from idea to completion was a challenging yet rewarding one. At the beginning, I was entering an unknown territory and knew I needed to embrace the learning curve I was about to embark on. I had never heard of an OER before, did not know what it was and re