During the 2025/2026 academic year, the Iowa Open Education Action Team ran our fourth annual OER Community of Practice program, bringing together instructors across the state to share their interest in open education.

This year, we facilitated two cohorts across the fields of Environmental Science and Education, including instructors from Central College, Dordt University, Iowa State University, Kirkwood Community College, Northeast Iowa Community College, and Scott Community College. From October through June, these teams of instructors met monthly to learn about and discuss OER, sharing their own experiences and questions. Local OER experts facilitated the discussions to respond to questions and provide resources, as needed.

Building Competencies

The program for the Communities of Practice followed a flexible curriculum based on the OER Modules on our website. Each month, participants completed readings and optional assignments to build a strong understanding of open education basics before diving into deeper discussions about topics such as implementing open educational practices in the classroom or developing custom open educational resources (OER).

Like in previous years, we had participants complete a pre-test and post-test about their proficiency across open education topics to assess their growth during the program. These general topic areas include: open educational resources, Creative Commons licenses, open pedagogy, the disciplinary relevance of OER, and how to create or revise a course to implement OER. Participants scored their understanding of these concepts from 1 (No knowledge) to 4 (Advanced knowledge).

The findings this year were found growth across each category, with noted improvement in the participants’ self-reported confidence in implementing OER in their own courses.

This growing confidence is reflected in the participants’ own words, as relayed in their feedback surveys after the conclusion of the program. As one participant noted:

“I am very new to OERs and although I still have a lot to learn, I feel this was an opportunity for me to engage with other faculty members and see the possibilities that are out there. I feel it gave me the confidence to move to OERs for my online courses moving forward- I already have one course almost completed and a second one ready to start! I am excited to see all of the creative ideas that the world of OER will lend to.”

This feeling was echoed by other participants, who noted that the most valuable parts of participating in the program were “learning from the other participants,” “making connections and networking,” “hearing other professors’ questions, needs, concerns, and ideas,” and “learning from professionals teaching at other institutions who bring new ideas and approaches.”

Project Development

At the end of the program, participants were asked to work on an independent project of their choice, something that reflects what they have learned during their time in the program. This could be something small (e.g., identifying a potential OER to adopt in a future semester) or a larger project, if the participant wished.

Some participants created whole OER throughout their time in the program. For example, Kathleen VanTol (Dordt University) developed JONAH: A Positive Behavior Strategy in Manifold. Kathleen noted in her description of this project:

“This OER focuses on practical, evidence-based strategies for supporting student behavior through positive and proactive classroom practices. Through this work, I learned a great deal about designing content for online learning environments, including best practices for formatting digital content, integrating pictures, videos, and other visuals to increase engagement, and incorporating accessibility features to ensure the materials are accessible to a wide range of learners.”

Notably, the participants in the Environmental Science cohort this year worked together on their final projects by participating in a “book sprint,” an accelerated writing retreat where they came together to adapt and develop new materials that could be leveraged across the instructors’ courses. As one of the participants, Paul Weihe (Central College) described the project:

“We have formed a working group to modify existing Environmental Science OER, adding materials to better serve our students. We have an evolving list of specific, engaging features we will develop: text, figures, problems/activities, etc. Ideally the product will have broad appeal (beyond one geographic region) and sufficient depth and breadth to be adopted by instructors of several related classes. An upcoming “book sprint” at ISU allows face-to-face collaboration, furthering the remote work already completed.”

A longer blog post from the cohort about their experience participating in the book sprint will be shared when their adapted OER is completed and ready to share.

Constructive Feedback and Future Directions

While the final projects and general feedback on the program was positive this year, we did receive some constructive feedback from this year’s cohort, notably around the duality of experiences for those who are wholly new to open education and those who are already active in the field, with one cohort member noting “It was just overwhelming listening to experienced faculty” and another asking “I’d like to see more challenging content or ideas for those who already understand OER.”

With this feedback in mind, we are considering reframing the program for fall 2026 to have experience level groups (e.g. Beginner and Advanced) rather than grouping participants by discipline alone. We hope this will also support those instructors who have been interested in participating in the Community of Practice program but haven’t had their discipline represented in the past four years.