Collecting Success Story Narratives

[Nick Shockey]

Hi everyone,

I think it would be useful for all of us to start collecting, sharing, and publicizing success stories in a systematic way that will put a compelling narrative wrapper around the statistical / research case we'll be building for OER (e.g. amount of money saved, improving learning outcomes, etc).  Student stories are absolutely a part of that, but I think we should also be collecting stories from instructors, administrators, potentially even parents and others.  It would be useful to have success story narratives for each target constituency to open conversations and set the hook, then use the hard data to close the deal and demonstrate that the success stories aren't exceptions but rather are representative of what's possible with OER.

These could be as simple as blog posts or as involved as podcasts or video interviews.  Ultimately, I think videos will have the most impact, but that's something we could work toward over time as we identify the most compelling stories.

Does anyone have stories to get us started?  For our part, we're working on a video interview with Jack Andraka and Francis Collins, the Director of the NIH, which is Open Access focused but still illustrates the power of Open on education and research.  The Smithsonian Magazine published a good piece on Jack's story here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Jack-Andraka-the-Teen-Prodigy-of-Pancreatic-Cancer-179996151.html.

Cheers,

Nick

[David Porter]

Great idea, Nick.  In our role at BCcampus we're trying to collect stories from faculty members and institutions, our primary clients.  Here are a few:

Open at Royal Roads University

http://www.bccampus.ca/walking-the-talk-open-resources-at-rru/

Open government, open data

http://www.bccampus.ca/5-questions-with-david-wrate-on-open-data-and-higher-education/

How faculty can advocate for open textbooks

http://www.bccampus.ca/how-faculty-can-advocate-for-open-textbooks/