The
SPARC Open Education Leadership Program is an intensive professional development program to empower academic professionals with the knowledge, skills, and connections to lead successful open education initiatives that benefit students. The two-semester program blends online, peer-to-peer, and project-based learning to build a comprehensive understanding of the open education space coupled with practical know-how to take action on campus and beyond. Structured as a fellowship, each cohort becomes a vibrant community of practice that is further enhanced by expert instructors and mentorship support.
This lightning talk offers a summary of the outcomes and leadership lessons from the program's
2020-2021 cohort. In this fourth year of the program, SPARC expanded the program beyond librarians to include open education specialists in other related professions such as policy analysts, instructional designers and more. Hailing from diverse institutions across the U.S. and Canada, the class of 20 fellows made for rich conversations about what it takes to engage stakeholders and develop successful open education programs that serve all students, while working to more intentionally center issues of equity and inclusion. Each fellow also published an openly licensed resource of value to the broader open education field as an output of their capstone project, along with a final report articulating lessons learned. Resources range from an
open pedagogy roadmap guide to
how to build a data dashboard to
publishing an open textbook in African traditional religions—all openly available.
The lightning talk will distill the collective wisdom of this year's cohort into a 10 minute chunk, offering the best of their leadership lessons, moments of joy, challenges overcome, and resources that community members can adapt and share in their own open educational practice.
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Reflect on wisdom and lessons learned by participants in an intensive open education leadership program during the pandemic
- Access 20 newly published resources that are applicable in various aspects of open education work
