Faculty Panel Needs

Identify a Facilitator

Preferably, this should be someone from the host campus, who can help steer the discussion towards the needs of the people in the room. If a local facilitator is impractical, identify a member of the SOS core team who will be in attendance to lead discussion (Leah, Tony, Bill, Erin, Katie, Anjali, Andrea). In a pinch, the keynote speaker can serve as facilitator (Alexis or Mike).

SOS team in the audience: be prepared to toss out a question to help steer the conversation as needed.

Prep the Space

Make sure there’s enough seating for all invited faculty panelists, and identify and test the sound system when possible.

These panels tend to work best as conversations. While it’s perfectly fine for panelists to bring notes and draw from these notes during conversation, a formal slideshow or other materials generally won’t be necessary.

The facilitator might opt to prepare one slide for an overhead which includes names and titles of faculty panelists.

Agenda

A good recipe for a faculty panel includes the following:

• Facilitator: Brief overview and introduction of panelists
• “Origin Stories”: each panelists gives a ~5 minute story of their experience using OER
• Facilitated Questions: the facilitator opens general discussion with one or two questions of his/her choosing. These can be aimed at specific panelists or open to all.
• General Questions: open the floor to questions from the audience. Generally there are more questions than time to answer them all. If the questions lag, the facilitator can again seed conversation with additional questions of his/her choosing.
• Facilitator: Brief closing remarks

Potential questions for panelists

Please continue to add to this list.

• What particular challenges did you find in your field of discipline as you moved towards OER?
• What interactions have you had with other members of your discipline around OER?
• Who do you look to for support?
• What role have administration, tech support, your library, your bookstore…etc., played for you?
• What recognition or reward related to your OER use has been most meaningful for you?
• What role have students played in your transition to OER?
• What keeps you going?
• If a publisher offered you comparable pricing right now, what would you say?
• How much has your course has changed since you shifted to OER?
• How much time have you invested in this process? Was it worth it?
• What would you tell others who are looking to get started?
• What’s the biggest difference between your previous course and your OER course?

A Google Doc of this information is available here.