Using Diffusion of Innovations Theory to Modify Library OER Interventions During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction

The high cost of commercial textbooks has been well documented (Jenkins et al, 2020). Open educational resources (OER) have been defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as “teaching, learning and research materials that make use of appropriate tools, such as open licensing, to permit their free reuse, continuous improvement and repurposing by others for educational purposes” (Miao et al., 2019, p. 9). Use of OER can improve student access to meaningful learning experiences, facilitate innovative teaching and learning practices (Soper et al., 2018), and support academic freedom (Cuillier, 2018). Although faculty awareness of OER is increasing (Larson, 2020; Seaman & Seaman, 2018), faculty continue to perceive barriers to their use which prevent widespread adoption (Walsh, 2020). Belikov and Bodily (2016) suggested these barriers might be eliminated if faculty were provided more information about OER, if faculty could more easily discover OER, and if faculty had clarity regarding the “difference between digital resources and OER” (p. 235).

As institutions of higher education see the value of OER in reducing the burden of costly course materials, they have turned to academic libraries to create and support initiatives through which they collaborate with faculty to encourage the creation and use of OER (Larson, 2020; Lashley et al., 2017). Academic libraries are seen as a good fit for the support of OER initiatives as they are generally already positioned as faculty partners, librarians have the requisite skills needed to discover and evaluate OER as information sources, and because many academic libraries have existing scholarly communications Open Access programs (Hess et al., 2016). The Oklahoma State University (OSU) Library is among the academic libraries that have taken a leadership role in developing initiatives through which faculty are supported in adopting, modifying, and creating OER (Essmiller et al., 2020)

To help alleviate the impact of costly commercial resources on university students, the OSU Library identified exploration and support of OER as a priority in its strategic plan (Essmiller et al., 2020). A private, one-time donation supported faculty creation of a limited number of OER textbooks, but once the funding was exhausted, the Library found itself struggling to transition to a consistent, sustainable OER program. The OSU Library hired a full-time OER Librarian, who used the findings of a human performance technology analysis (Van Tiem et al., 2012) to select interventions for inclusion in the Libraries long-term support of OER (Essmiller et al., 2020). These interventions included Library facilitated instruction about OER, provision of incentives and instructional design support to assist faculty in locating and adapting effective OER, and the development of and monthly meetings with a campus-wide OER working group. When OSU abruptly switched mid-Spring 2020 to emergency remote teaching in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Library was faced with the need to modify interventions designed for face-to-face interaction in order to engage and support faculty and instructors in online spaces. This paper describes challenges faced as the Library continued to provide services related to faculty and instructor use of OER to the OSU community. The lens of Diffusions of Innovations Theory (Rogers, 2003) is applied to describe how the Library made meaning of and anticipated challenges and to share how the Library designed and implemented modified interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an OER Librarian’s use of Diffusion of Innovations Theory to make meaning of and anticipate challenges the Library faced in spring 2020 associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenges described relate in particular to continued efforts in support of the OSU Library’s OER initiatives. The following sections will provide an overview of Diffusion of Innovations Theory, share definitions, characteristics, and potential benefits of OER, and present a description of how the COVID-19 Pandemic came to impact the Oklahoma State University Library.