Open Education 2017

In 2012, Washington passed legislation directing the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to create a library of OER and promote awareness and adoption. Over the past five years, the K-12 OER Project has evolved in response to stakeholder needs, experiencing many successes and challenges to share with the OER community.

Successful strategies

- Evaluating OER quality led to an OER Library reviewed using the same procedure as traditional materials and generated a cadre of teacher OER advocates.

- Grants to groups implementing OER provided legitimacy to the work and encouraged districts to look closely at OER options as viable choices.

- On the policy front, work with the Washington State School Directors' Association created model Instructional Material Adoption policy that recognized OER as an option for core instructional material consideration. In addition, OSPI adopted an agency wide Copyright and Open Licensing Policy that acts as a model for school districts.

- Joining the #GoOpen initiative provided access to a large community of OER champions across the US willing to share critical expertise and resources

Challenges

- Many school boards struggle with the adoption of adaptable resources that could impact fidelity of implementation district wide.

- Addressing misconceptions about what OER is and is not remains an issue.

- Encouraging a culture of document sharing beyond the district LMS can be difficult -- OER shines light on copyright issues that have been ignored when resources are kept in-house

Washington has advocated district consideration of OER. This message has been amplified by a similar push from the U.S. Department of Education. Having a dedicated program at the state level is critical to provide ongoing guidance about the inclusion of OER as an important part of the instructional materials ecosystem. However, to scale the work partners and collaborators are needed at the district, state, and national level.