2.5: Roles & Responsibilities
Teams come in many combinations, but all begin with…you! Regardless of whether you are the project leader or volunteer on a small task, your contribution and participation in the project is invaluable.
During our time supporting different kinds of OER projects, we’ve seen teams take on a number of forms. The list below is our attempt at categorising these roles. It should give you an idea of the types of work required to publish an OER and who may be responsible for completing these tasks.
Keep in mind that the roles and responsibilities outlined may not necessarily always be assigned to one person, and that crossover can happen. It’s also not likely that every project will have (or need) teams large enough to account for all these roles, so use this list as a guide to decide what is most applicable to your project’s needs. Please also note that this list is not comprehensive – it’s very likely that this will grow as we hear from you or other teams! So if you see any positions missing from here, please let us know in the Rebus Community Forum. Keep reading to get a better sense of the kinds of positions you can have on your team, how responsibilities can be distributed, and how these might apply to your own project. Use our Roles and Responsibilities template to guide your identification of gaps, establishing of roles, and assigning of tasks within your team.
Considerations when assigning roles & responsibilities
With a solid project plan, good intentions, clearly articulated responsibilities, and a set of helpful strategies you can form collaborative alliances which will hopefully support your OER projects as needed. Before we introduce some key roles and associated responsibilities, there a few things to consider:
- How will you delineate workload and ensure expectations are clearly communicated?
- What are some initial strategies you would like to use to help build productive working relationships between the members of your team?
- How can you make the roles and expectations for (new) team members clear?
- What methods will you use to communicate effectively?
- How will you address setbacks in the process?
- What methods will you use to keep your team engaged throughout the project?
- Are there any accessibility needs for your team members to effectively collaborate?
- This stage is a good point to reflect back to your project goals and target audience:
- Will your audience feel seen and respected through the content?
- Are there current barriers to accessing the content that needs to be addressed?
All team members carry a shared responsibility to:
- Being nice, compassionate, and a good team player
- Promoting the project widely wherever possible
- Supporting fellow team members in their work
- Meeting their commitments, so that it does not fall upon someone else to complete
These basic standards apply to everyone, and everyone in a team is responsible for committing to them, and holding their fellow teammates a