Open Educational Resources in Technical and Professional Communication: Identifying, Overcoming, and Removing Barriers to Creation, Adoption, and Sustainability

In response to rising textbook costs in higher education, open educational resources (OER) have been long established a social justice and equity-oriented alternative to commercial publisher textbooks. In recent years, technical and professional communication (TPC) has become increasingly interested in the use of OER, particularly in the introductory service course. However, despite this increasing interest, the scholarship on OER in TPC is extremely limited and the range of its benefits to the field have been largely unexplored. TPC’s scholarly turn toward social justice opened doors to a vast array of scholarly research interests, but it has extended very minimally to our pedagogy and curriculum, and it has not made a connection with OER’s social justice roots. Therefore, this dissertation study presents an entry into a scholarly research agenda focused on feasibility and exploration of OER work in TPC. Through three phases of data collection including an anonymous survey of TPC undergraduate program administrators, subsequent interviews with six volunteers from the surveys, and a content analysis of institutional policies and procedures for each of the six interviewees’ institutions, this dissertation study explored barriers to OER creation, adoption, and sustainability in technical and professional communication programs and identified strategies for overcoming, minimizing, and eliminating some of those barriers to make OER work more feasible in our programs. Findings for the study conclude with answers to three research questions. First, I identified barriers to OER in TPC programs including differing definitions and understandings of OER among program administrators, lack of financial and personnel support for OER work, lack of recognition for OER work (particularly in tenure and promotion), misunderstandings of copyright and intellectual property policies, and varying levels of strict textbook adoption policies. Second, I identified strategies for overcoming some of the barriers to OER work previously presented, including taking small steps toward OER adoption across multiple semesters, implementing faculty learning communities to foster collaboration and open minds to OER work, practicing faculty coaching to support advocacy to institutional leadership, and small-scale funding to vet OER materials for departmental use. Finally, strategies for minimizing and eliminating barriers to OER work in TPC program were identified, including developing guidelines for OER in tenure and promotion materials, pursuing grant funding to support OER work, developing shared resources to reduce workload placed on faculty, and starting coalitions for OER in TPC organizations.