In spring 2017, AUCA librarians launched a series of events to raise awareness of OER in the university. They reached out to interested faculty members in order to develop the first OER project at the university level, and the library-faculty collaboration team began to pilot the use of openly licensed textbooks for the introductory class in sociology in the 2017 fall semester. The experience of using an open textbook was rated as quite positive by students and faculty members in the end of semester survey. In the 2018 spring semester, the project went beyond the simple adoption of OER and expanded into the creation of open educational content by students.
Although the adopted textbook covered major topics in the discipline and helped students to grasp the main concepts, the cases and examples used in the text were predominantly Western focused and did not always allow students to relate the concepts to their experience. Adapting the textbook to the local context was needed, and the nature of open licenses made this possible. Engaging students in the creation of content that could complement the textbook seemed a reasoned step to follow. Students in the General Sociology for Non-Sociologists class were given the assignment to write about a pressing societal issue in their immediate surroundings as reflected through the lens of common sociological theories. e student papers submitted were then assembled for further use as supplementary course reading material.
At that stage of the project, librarians conducted a session for students to introduce them to the notion of Creative Commons and the ways authors may share and modify creative content through open licenses. The AUCA librarians also helped to compile student work into a handbook that could be further used as open educational content.
The move from OER adopters to contributors expanded the scope of activities the team could embrace as participants of the contemporary knowledge community. Following the themes of openness and contribution, faculty and librarians wanted to explore other ways of engaging students in participatory and collaborative learning experiences. This became one of the goals of the next stage in the faculty-library partnership.
