This post was contributed by Jennifer Lantrip, Health Sciences Student Success Librarian, Pacific University; and Sue Kunda, retired Scholarly Communication Librarian, Western Oregon University.
This blog post explains the link between higher education and K-12 OER use and describes Open Oregon Educational Resources’ participation in preparing future teachers to be open educators who utilize equity practices to create relevant and engaging learning experiences for their student populations.
Preservice Faculty Course Redesign
Open Oregon Educational Resources received a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that provides funding for Oregon community college and university instructors who teach courses for preservice teachers to redesign their courses, using open educational resources with an equity lens. The goal of the course redesign is to prepare future K12 teachers to be open educators who can leverage open practices to customize their curriculum and better represent and support the students in the classroom while aligning with Oregon standards.
The first year of the program (2024-25) focuses on recruiting preservice faculty and supporting them with their course redesigns while the second year (2025-26) focuses on supporting faculty as they pilot their course redesigns and adapt as needed. Preservice faculty support during the first year for their OER course redesign included three main pieces:
- OER suggestions for their courses
- A summer convening to prepare them to start their course redesigns
- Support throughout the year, including the Open Oregon Educational Resources Google Group, a reference list of resources and opportunities for 1-on-1 course redesign support.
K-12 vs Higher Ed OER Environments
The K-12 OER environment has some commonalities with that of higher education, but there are also important distinctions between the two. In 2020-2021, a workgroup from the Statewide OER Steering Committee convened to explore how K12 and higher education in Oregon can collaborate on OER. This workgroup created an “explainer” to help OER champions in higher education and K12 better understand each other and explore areas for collaboration. The document can be found via K-12 and Higher Ed OER Connections.
The “explainer” points out that both higher education and K-12 institutions in Oregon are highly committed to issues of equity, and instructors at all levels value the ability to customize their course materials as they see fit.
The K-12 OER environment differs from that of higher education, though, in one significant way. Individual higher education instructors generally choose their course materials (often a textbook) based on what they believe best suits the needs of their students. Course materials for K-12 classrooms, however, are generally selected at the district level and individual teachers have little say in the materials they use for their courses. Therefore, in the K-12 environment, when OER are used in the classroom, they are often ancillary or supporting materials. They are not the primary adopted text, as they are in higher education.
Project Updates
Kim Read, Education Consultant, EvolvEd Consulting, will travel with Marie A. LeJeune, Mandy Olsen, and Micah Walker, education faculty at Western Oregon University, to present at the 2025 Association of Teacher Educators Conference in New Orleans. Their session is titled Developing Open Educators Through Teacher Educator Coursework.
In addition, two themes have emerged that we can follow up on in the second year of the project:
- There appears to be strong support for a single, scaffolded OER for preservice faculty that teaches about using OER for equity. Currently, multiple resources can provide this information, but it would be useful to have everything in a single resource.
- K-12 teachers need support when undertaking this work. OER course redesign takes a lot of time and energy and teachers deserve to receive adequate compensation and time away from the classroom to complete the work. State funding for purchasing commercial textbooks from large textbook publishers could be reallocated to pay local teachers to adapt, create, and share OER.
