Academic Librarians as part of Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) are often tasked with driving and leading Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives at their respective institutions. Despite these responsibilities, many do not have the confidence or skills required. An OER staff development programme at a medium-sized University in Singapore served as an intervention to fill a skills gap identified by the Library's strategic planning team. The programme encompassed pilot 1-1 coaching sessions, 2 workshop runs, and a bootcamp for academic librarians. Have the respective training initiatives adequately met the goals of developing liaison librarians' skills and confidence in advocating for OER? This presentation shares participant librarians views on the progamme's effectiveness and investigates how they perceive that the training has helped to build their skills and confidence. Semi-structured interviews reveal that although librarians feel that they have grasped the basic concepts and skills in OER, it appeared that retention and recall over time were limited. Librarians also reported being confident in the basics of OER, although the difficulty of the bootcamp exercises challenged their confidence in applying what they had learnt to practical situations. More encouragingly, learning from peers had emerged as a positive outcome. Through hearing the views of participant librarians themselves, these findings have uncovered what worked and what did not in this inaugural first-run of the OER staff development initiative, and has laid the ground for potential improvements prior to rolling-out subsequent runs for librarians locally or at other institutions moving forward.
By attending this session, attendees will be able to:- Understand the considerations in implementing an OER staff development programme for librarians
- Apply the presenter's findings to similar initiatives at their own institutions
