OER Needs Analysis
by Megan Simmons 1 month, 1 week agoPlease share by replying below how you plan to evaluate your community's needs to inform the design of your Capstone Project. Are there any specific steps and guiding questions for OER Needs Analysis that are you going to utilize for your Capstone Project planning?
Our primary OER need is set by legislation with our dual credit courses. I conducted a student survey last week and got an amazing response rate. Our deans are asking faculty about OER plans (yes, no, and possible) so that our OER committee knows where to focus our development efforts.
My goal for the capstone project is to develop a Texas Core Open Pedagogy course, similar to the Texas Core Elements course, to provide a deep dive into topics related to open pedagogy. A needs assessment could take the form of a survey for our faculty to better inform what they most want to know about open pedagogy. Faculty who have engaged with open pedagogy previously may be good stakeholders to incorporate into this process to ensure we are asking the right questions and analyzing the data effectively.
1. Review existing data and reports
2. Faculty survey
I appreciated Anastasia's point about how having a very specific and focused research question can help guide the rest of the needs analysis, the selection of project stakeholders, etc. Right now I feel like I have 2 or 3 separate projects that I need to whittle down to one, then refine into something more targeted.
I liked hearing from Gabby about the varying perspectives from campus-specific ("just a lowyly OER librarian"), all the way up to national and North American organizations examining and supporting OER on a much broader level and everything in between, and how projects on each of these levels can inform work on the others.
In short, I'm not sure yet how exactly I'll evaluate my community's needs, but I feel like today's presentations gave me some good nudges in the right direction!
The question I began to consider immediately is determining the type of data collection approaches to take. I appreciate the flexibility offered in methods that can be used to take on the needs assessment.
I am still thinking about the focus of my capstone. Question 1 is especially important:
Step 1: Identifying the community that will be served by the Needs Assessment and the stakeholders who will be involved in the assessment process.
The question challenges me to look at the wide number of stakeholders that can be impacted by OER, both locally and across the state and perhaps beyond. Primary stakeholders will be immediately impacted so that is an important group to consider. Within that group, students will use the OER, while faculty often hold the power to decide whether to use an OER text. This provides a lot of food for thought.
This is a fantastic question – I am working with a few colleagues to develop a survey that mirrors national and regional surveys around open education – and I think the results from this survey would be incredibly informative and provide more information about the best ways to move Open Education forward on my campus and for my capstone. I’m also considering qualitative feedback as a way to be more responsive to the immediate needs of our users. I’m open to feedback about the best way to go about this process!