Kingsborough Community College (KCC) has open spaces for the discussion and exploration of Open Education (OE) and Open Education Resources (OER). The open spaces are available for faculty to engage in open values, practices, and resources and are an important way to promote collaboration and create a culture of openness and trust as KCC continues to support open access for information and the sharing of resources with the City University’s Academic Commons platform where faculty may create and share Creative Commons (CC) licensed works with each other. The CC Educator Certificate course will inform my advocacy efforts in supporting existing open spaces at KCC while advocating expansion to the CC Global Network.  

In fact, it was only through the CC Educator Certificate course that I became aware of CC as a global movement. I would advocate for KCC faculty, who are already involved with open spaces in OE and OER to sign up for membership in the CC US Chapter and then I would advocate for KCC to apply to sign up as an Institutional Member. I would make sure that the KCC community understood that CC is not just a set of legally binding licenses, aligned with existing Copyright Law, but also a global movement that uses these licenses to allow us to share and collaborate in a way that is free and open not just each other but a global network with the long-term goal of joining the CC USA Chapter. In addition, before taking the CC Educator Certificate course, I had never heard of Collections nor license compatibility for Collections and Remixes nor I had I ever heard of Open Education Renewable Assignments (OERA); I had no idea what they were nor, to my knowledge, were they being discussed in our open spaces. 

I believe the first step in my advocacy efforts would be in becoming more actively involved in the OE and OER open spaces through the Kingsborough Center for Teaching and Learning (KCTL) and the Kingsborough Center for e-Learning (KCeL) and relate the knowledge I have acquired about the history of CC and how it grew its focus on advocacy, infrastructure, and capacity building in support of open access to information and resources in support of sharing and collaboration globally. My advocacy talking points will be inspired and informed by the CC Educator Certificate course’s unit assignments (What is Creative Commons?, Basics of Copyright Law, Anatomy of a CC License, and Using CC Licenses and CC-Licensed Works).

From there, I will advocate for the inclusion of an open space to discuss and explore OERA that we could then evolve into an open framework for collaborative design of renewable assignments. The biggest challenge in my advocacy efforts will be in managing my time especially with tough teaching loads so I will explore reassigned time with my department. I also endeavor to embrace the open spaces at KCC and to support faculty who may have doubts about themselves or feel unsupported in their exploration of OE, OER, and OERA and to make them feel supported and free to collaborate, innovate, and share with, not just the KCC community but the global community.

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