Don't just engage with OERs or other open education strategies to enhance student outcomes. Consider leveraging your efforts to create an impact narrative that highlights your learning and teaching excellence, showcases your professional identity, and explains your approach to decision makers who may not know you, but value effort, results, reflection and action.

The advice on this page is aimed at furthering career objectives for those involved with an OER or other type of open education project initiative. 

Before commencing an OER or other type of open education project, consider how you can use this work to support your career, such as in an academic promotion application. Upfront planning will help you structure the project and gather evidence required to craft a successful narrative. Find out more with Aligning Open Education Programs with Academic Reward and Recognition.

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Check out an example from Latrobe of how OER projects can be used as supporting evidence for academic promotion applications.

OER authors and those participating in other open education initiatives may consider running a SoLT (scholarship of learning and teaching) research project investigating the impact of the intervention. Such work could lead to career positives such as publication of journal articles, conference attendance and contribution to an academic promotion narrative. Find out more:

• The Role of Research by Adrian Stagg
• Scholarship of Learning and Teaching Guide
• SoLT Research Resources JCU Sharepoint

A good impact narrative will provide context for your evidence and go beyond numbers. The basic steps for crafting a narrative are:

1. Brainstorm ideas
2. Craft claims
3. Refine for your audience.

Work through QUT's Telling your great story of impact modules (see tabs at the top of the screen) and develop your great narrative. This resource is aimed at teachers but offers transferable advice for any discipline. 

Metrics and other evidence can provide evidence of value and impact for professional activities. Start by tracking and collecting evidence to back up your narrative:

• Develop a system to store evidence related to your learning and teaching activities.
• Document and track any events related to your learning and teaching activities (e.g., the aim, who attended, evaluation, outcomes).
• Harvest metrics related to your learning and teaching activities (e.g., Cognos, student surveys, JCU Open eBook engagement metrics).

JCU Open eBooks provide authors with rich engagement metrics to support professional activities:

• JCU Open eBook Full Data Dashboard is available to JCU staff 
• JCU Library Open Education Program Engagement Reports (example) are emailed to authors on a monthly basis.