Meeting Immediate Needs Through OER Advocacy During a Pandemic

The transition to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced faculty members with the challenge of providing required course content in an online format. In an effort to support faculty members working on transitioning their classroom courses to a remote learning environment, Library Services continued its advocacy efforts through professional development programs. Offering numerous workshops during a week in March, librarians were able to demonstrate how to locate, evaluate, and adopt OER. In addition to searching for OER, librarians discussed how to use tools like Faculty Select (Ebsco) to use existing library eBooks to make the transition to remote learning easier while using this opportunity to discuss the difference between subscription resources and open content. These efforts have proven successful as faculty member adoption of OER content has increased.