Appendix A: The OER Contributions Matrix
Amanda Coolidge; Andrew McKinney; and Deepak Shenoy
A critical part of sustaining Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education is recognizing the contributions by instructors who create and improve them as part of their professional work. In order to aid this effort, Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success (DOERS3) has developed an adaptable advisory model to help guide faculty as they attempt to include their OER work in their tenure and promotion portfolios. This model is in no way exhaustive and will likely be most useful as either a way for faculty to start thinking about how to best fit their OER work into their local T&P guidelines or as an OER adapted to those local concerns. Although this document in its current form was created with individual faculty in mind, we encourage T&P committees themselves to adapt and edit this document to use as guidance for their faculty.
We are aware that each T&P process is based on one’s local institution and its guidelines. Although individual institutions or departments may differ from this matrix in its categories, we have found that most variations of tenure and promotion guidelines can be adapted to teaching, research, and service.
While few institutions have recognized open educational practices as deliverables toward tenure and promotion, faculty, in documenting their OER work in their portfolios, should characterize their work using these terms to aid their colleagues in understanding their contribution.
For each contribution, we have suggested whether the contribution could apply to those three categories, and in some cases, we have marked multiple categories–which is most relevant will depend upon the context. In addition, the matrix includes examples of how faculty might think strategically about where their open education contributions would be valued most and how best to frame those contributions.
In 2023, the OER Contributions Matrix was translated into French by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries’ Open Education Working Group task group on francophone OER, to encourage francophone and bilingual universities in Canada to start the conversation about making OER count for tenure and promotion.
To download a copy of the matrix, please visit the DOERS3 website.
| Adopt | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contribution | Evidence | Research | Teaching | Service |
| Use OER in a class or classess | Survey and gather data on how the use of an OER in class affected student learning. A similar study was conducted in British Columbia as in the United States via the Open Education Research Group. | Yes | ||
| Use Open Access research article | Provide eviden of the Open Access journal articles that were used in course outline | Yes | ||
| Adapt | ||||
| Contribution | Evidence | Research | Teaching | Service |
| Revise others’ OER to be more relevant to student needs. | Survey students in class to learn more about the impact the revised materials have had on their learning. A similar study was conducted in British Columbia. | Yes | Yes | |
| Revise or remix OER to be in alignment with course learning outcomes | Provide evidence on what was revised or remixed to best suit the course learning outcomes. Survey students in class to learn about the impact the revised materials had on their learning. | Yes | ||
| Create | ||||
| Contribution | Evidence | Research | Teaching | Service |
| Make new OER | When creating OER make it available to peers for their review. Document their reviews and include in your dossier. The follwing is a common rubric used to review open textbooks. | Yes | Yes | |
| Improve Learning | ||||
| Contribution | Evidence | Research | Teaching | Service |
| Improve student outcomes | To best understand the impovement of student outcomes, increased student engagement, innovation, and reduction in cost – survey students in your course. Review the survey and questions included in “A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcoes of post-secondary students“. | Yes | ||
| Innovation | Yes | |||
| Increasing student engagement | Yes | |||
| Reduce material costs to students | Yes | |||
| Community | ||||
| Contribution | Evidence | Research | Teaching | Service |
| Mentoring others in OER | Provide recommendation letters from mentorships and via the mentee | Yes | ||
| OER leadership (change culture, policy change, lead an initiative) | Provide a list of committees and specific actions you took related to OER and committee work. For tasks led, describe the initiative, provide evidence of change, and seek references and recommendation on the work completed. | Yes | ||
| Disseminate knowledge about OER | Provide list of workshops, webinars, presentations related to OER and OE advocacy. | Yes | ||
| Peer review existing OER | Provide citations of the reviews conducted. | Yes | Yes | |
| Research | ||||
| Contribution | Evidence | Research | Teaching | Service |
| Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) about OER | Provide citations and links to work completed related to SOTL and OER. | Yes | Yes | |
| Conference presentations | Provide citations, links, recordings, and slides of the work done to disseminate OER knowledge. | Yes | Yes | |
| Grant writing | Provide excerpts from grant proposals, including budgetary asks and narrative as to how the grant will benefit the department and/or institution. | Yes | Yes | |
The primary authors of this document are Amanda Coolidge, Andrew McKinney, and Deepak Shenoy. This document is licensed by DOERS3 under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.
