Articles

The Creation of an OER to Establish and Maintain a Writers’ Community at a Regional Public College

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Abstract

This article explores the creation of an Open Education Resource by the Writing in the Disciplines (WID) committee at Farmingdale State College (FSC). After COVID-19 shut down in-person activities on campus for one year and made in-person activities in general more difficult thereafter, the WID committee faced a challenge: how do we re-establish the connections made before 2020?

Processes started as an idea to promote writing on campus. But as the project took shape, stakeholders from across the university emerged and participated, including faculty, students, and even the college president. This article posits that Open Educational Resources can serve as community-building/re-building projects that bring scholars and students from disparate disciplines together. Drawing upon Etienne Wenger’s (1999) research on “modes of belonging,” it considers the ways that cross-disciplinary OERs contribute to the maintenance of community connections within institutions. Processes is a home-grown effort, but as an Open Educational Resource it is accessible to many, and students, faculty, and administrators on and off campus can use it for their own purposes. Sharing their experiences editing this collection, the authors encourage the development of similar projects.

Keywords: Open Education Resources, WAC/WID, community, writing, public college

How to Cite:

Iverson, C. & Ehrenfeld, D., (2023) “The Creation of an OER to Establish and Maintain a Writers’ Community at a Regional Public College”, Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education 2(1), 185-200. doi: https://doi.org/10.13001/joerhe.v2i1.7863

Rights: © 2023 Christopher Iverson and Dan Ehrenfeld. Published under a CC-BY 4.0 license.