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Nataly Blas, Jonah Dees, Theresa Huff, Jessea Young, and Karna Younger

Loyola Marymount University

Program

Growing Your

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How do you market OER

or your OER program?

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About

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Growing Your OER Program: A Toolkit

Funded by the 2025 Michelson OER SPARK Grant

Create current, customizable, high-quality, graphical templates localized to California, and that emphasize

the uniqueness of its higher-ed institutions and student populations.

OER Advocacy Toolkit

Grow OER Awareness
Show Gratitude for OER

Faculty OER Promotion Toolkit

Promote Faculty-created OER
Gain Tenure and Promotion

Project Goals

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Formed working group
Conducted literature review/landscape analysis
Hired a student graphic designer
Gathered feedback from SCELC librarians, LMU Students, and LMU faculty
Creating marketing assets and toolkit

Project Activities

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Swetta Abeyta, Saint Mary’s College of California

Nataly Blas, Loyola Marymount University

Theresa Huff, Loyola Marymount University

John Jackson, Loyola Marymount University

Jessea Young, Loyola Marymount University

Karna Younger, Loyola Marymount University

Jonah Dees, LMU Student Designer

Working Group

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CREATION

PROCESS

Graphic Design

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Target Audience: Who are you designing for?

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Heavy line weight

Hand drawn style

Framed Vector

Logos Vintage Colors

Color Blocking

Illustrated feel

Main Inspirations:

National Park Graphics

1970's/ 80's Park Graphics

Bold / Textured Text

Educational Graphics

Vintage Car Logos

Patagonia Design

North Face Design

Destination Postcards

IDEATION

INSPIRATION

IMAGINATION

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Blood Orange

Forest

Leaf Green

Eggshell

Sunset

Sea Side

Baskerville - A commonly used font in educational and text focused design

Establishing

A Typeface

& COLOR Palette

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CREATING

THE ASSETS

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PHOTOS

& BaCK-

GROUND

Choosing Photos that

are representative of the

three California regions

Copyright free / CC0

Public Domain

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OER IN

ACTION

Illustrations

PHotos

Logo

Type

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Challenges:

Editable Files

Font Licenses

Insights:

Vectors!

Simple = Better

Make in Adobe

Assemble in Canva

Canva

Pros:

More Control

Better Design

Industry Standard

Illustrator

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Good

LUck

ON FINALS

Library Open

7am -2am

Study Snacks on Floor 1

To This

Font: Libre Baskerville

FONT:

INTRO RUST

Tool Box

Go from This

Keep it simple

Keep it clean

Three colors max

Two fonts max

Reference already

Made designs

Informational Hierarchy

ADVICE

FOR USERS

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Adaptation

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The Toolkit

Growing and OER movement on your campus or even just getting your OER work recognized for T and P is a heavy life, and most of us are not marketing experts or graphic designers. The toolkit seeks to offer answers for this work regardless of who you are. It can be used by campus libraries, staff, individual faculty or faculty teams, and students, too.

We chose to build the toolkit in Pressbooks, a digital publishing platform, for a couple of reasons. First, it has a great interface both for creating and for reading, and you can easily ensure things are accessible for users. Second, it allows for embedding of things like videos or interactivity, which kept the things we needed to share handy to our users without feeling cluttered. Third, PB allows us to openly license this toolkit, and that's central to our purpose.

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Examples, ideas, inspirations, tips, and guidance

3

Marketing guidance based on user’s goals

2

1

Table of Contents

Three parts:

OER Advocacy Toolkit
Faculty OER Promotion Toolkit
Assets

Karna

The toolkit consists of three parts, which you can see in its TOC. There are two toolkits, the OER Advocacy Toolkit (#1) and the Faculty OER Promotion Toolkit (#2). These parts have chapters that offer marketing guidance based on a particular user's goals. In the OER Advocacy Toolkit, users can choose to get guidance on how to grow OER Awareness on their campus or they might want guidance on how to show Gratitude for OER. In the Faculty OER Promotion Toolkit, faculty might want marketing guidance on how to Promote their OER or how to Gain Tenure and Promotion. All of the marketing guides also give suggestions for assets you might use in your marketing campaign or to promote or seek promotion.

The third part (#3) is the Assets. These are individual chapter highlighting each of the different marketing and promotional tools. Each asset page offers examples of the asset, ideas for use, inspirations, tips, and guidance. So, let's take a look at one of these Asset pages.

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Canva template link

7

Guidance for using the template

6

5

Tips for success

Real-world inspirations

4

Ideas for different users

3

2

Why these assets are useful

Examples to flip through

1

sample asset page

Karna

This is the Postcards asset page. At the top, there is an interactive H5P slide deck full of examples of OER postcards - like a mini lookbook. Next, (#2), there is a short "Why" section that introduces why you might want to use a postcard in your OER marketing work. #3 offers an idea list for using postcards. Here, we have a list for students in ways they might use an OER postcard - like sending a short note of thanks to their professor for choosing an OER textbook. Then, there are ideas for OER advocates such as creating a gratitude campaign on the campus during Open Ed Week. Further down the page, #4, we offer interactive drop down menus of real-world inspirations where other institutions, organizations, or individuals have used postcards in a unique way. Next, #5, we offer tips for using postcards such as keeping your message short and clear, etc. Last, we come to the guidance section which offers both a video walkthrough and step-by-step directions for how to adapt the postcard templates of Jonah's in Canva with a direct template link to Canva.

Each of the asset pages offers these 7 pieces.

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Customize to Your Institution & Goals

Modify colors
Alter text
Add logos
Own it

How to Adapt

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Logos
Colors
Fonts
Photos
Graphics

Canva Brand Kit

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Control messaging
Change colors for accessibility or institutional branding

Three colors max

Make it Your Own

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Highlight an OER
Add QR code to OER / program website
Brand with your institutional logo

Make it Your Own

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Gain Tenure & Promotion

Documentation templates
CV and dossier guidance
Proof of peer review
Sample letter of recommendation
Faculty testimonials
Certificates

OER Promotion

Postcards
Stickers and magnets
Buttons
Posters
Zoom backgrounds
Slide decks
Flyers/Tabletop displays
Textbook stickers
Social media templates
Email templates
Testimonials

Toolkit Materials

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Slide Deck

Bookmark

Textbook Sticker

Faculty Promo Sampler

Social Media Post

Flyer

Zoom Background

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What marketing or promotional materials would be most useful to your institution?

(1-2 words)

Tell Us

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THANK YOU!

Scan the code to get updates on the launch of the Growing Your OER Program Toolkit.