Many librarians and others who support OER initiatives do not have “Open Education” explicitly mentioned in their job descriptions. This situation can make it difficult to figure out how our day-to-day duties and our OER-related work complement each other. Furthermore, trying to explain this dichotomy to others can be frustrating and alienating! In this month’s blog post, we’re sharing some materials you can use to describe, outline, and present your OER-related duties in a clear way, by leveraging actual OER job descriptions.
What might help?
Having examples to pull from when describing our work is one way we can get a better idea of how duties related to OER might be categorized, explained, and included in our jobs more generally. But it’s not easy to go out and ask others to send you a copy of their job description. Luckily, we don’t have to do that!
Amanda Larson, Affordable Learning Instructional Consultant for Ohio State University, published an article in 2020 exploring the landscape of OER-related jobs being posted online. At the time, OER positions were just starting to normalize in the higher education landscape, and she wanted to figure out what types of work were included in these positions.
The Findings
After reviewing a set of job descriptions which reference OER, Larson’s study found that there were a few major categories that most positions including support for OER fell into:
- Scholarly Communication: copyright, licensing, fair use, open access, repositories, legislation, policies
- Publishing: program development, publishing, social media management, sustainability planning
- Instructional Design: pedagogy, assessment, learning management systems, instructional design
- Open Education: OER, open pedagogy, affordability, staying up to date with trends in open education
- Web Development: programming languages, Library Guide management, accessibility, webpage maintenance
- Outreach: event planning, workshops, Open Education Week
- General Librarianship: liaison work, instruction, reference desk, supervision
- Other
The specific focus of the job postings differed based on the needs of the institution hiring, with some jobs leaning more into instructional support and others leaning more into outreach. As Larson shares in the article, this breadth “gives a sense that the work has not yet really coalesced into a standard scope of work” (p. 43). And while there are more focused Open Education Librarian and Open Pedagogy Librarian positions out today, there are still a wide variety in types of positions that support OER initiatives.
What Can we Learn from This?
I suppose what the most positive takeaway from Larson’s study is that there is no single “right way” to support open education. It depends on your context!
- You might work in Course Reserves and you want to highlight alternate, open access materials for your instructors.
- You might be a subject librarian and you do OER outreach on the side.
- You might be a faculty member or an instructional designer who wants to share information about OER or open pedagogy at your institution.
- Or maybe you are one of the few who have open education work explicitly written into your job description.
Whatever your circumstances, you fit in the wider OER community! There are other people in similar circumstances to you, even if it might not feel like it all the time.
Accessing the Collection
While the original research only covered jobs posted up to 2019, Amanda’s work has continued over time, and you can access it in Google Drive:
How to Use these Materials
Perhaps you want to add a line to your job description that outlines your contributions toward supporting open education at your institution. Perhaps you want to find an example for describing your work in your CV more accurately. Perhaps you want to advocate for hiring a new OER-related position at your institution, and you need an example job posting. Or maybe you just want to get an idea of what you could do or be in the future. Whatever the reason, this set of position descriptions might be useful for your needs!
Let’s look at some examples based on the hypothetical people in the “What can we learn from this?” section above:
- If you work in Course Reserves and you want to highlight alternate, open access materials for your instructors…
- You might appreciate how the duties in the position of Textbook Affordability Librarian from Clackamas Community College is described: “Collaborate with faculty in the discovery, adoption, creation, and assessment of open and affordable course content that meet program and course learning outcomes.”
- If you’re a subject librarian and you do OER outreach on the side…
- You might like the way that positions like TAMIU’s Emerging Technologies Librarian fold OER support into other job duties without making it the primary focus.
- If you’re a faculty member or an instructional designer who wants to share information about OER or open pedagogy at your institution…
- Having examples to point to of non-librarian OER positions (like KPU’s Open Education Strategist) might help others understand how open education work can span across the university, informally and formally.
- If you are one of the few who have open education work explicitly written into your job description…
- Having access to a set of job descriptions can help you think through what advancement might look like in your career, and/or what kinds of work you might be able to explore as you delve deeper into the open education landscape.
No matter where you are in your OER journey, I hope the research and the collection of position descriptions shared here will be useful to you as you explore ways you and others can support open education!
References
Larson, A. (2020). “Open education librarianship: A position description analysis of the newly emerging role in academic libraries.” The International Journal of Open Educational Resources 3(1). https://ijoer.scholasticahq.com/article/25044