While many active advocates for and practitioners of open educational practices have come out of Arizona, there has been historically no true organized statewide initiative. So a few of us decided that it was about time. This presentation will share our strategy of harnessing two open education initiatives, the Open Textbooks for Rural Arizona consortium and the OERizona Network, to establish a cohesive framework representing all public institutions of higher education statewide. By judiciously utilizing grants, we're fostering collaboration towards a shared open educational vision, supporting professional development, launching a community email, hosting a materials repository, and exploring opportunities for future growth and funding. Our approach showcases the power of collective effort in advancing accessible, high-quality learning resources across a diverse state which has no 'official' statewide initiative.
Attendees of this session will be able to:- Identify best practices for formalizing an inter-institutional network for open education
- Describe strategies for securing institutional buy-in in circumstances of resource limitations
