The Power of Storytelling: Using Narratives to Build An Open Education Movement

Abstract

If you want to strengthen your campus OER movement and build lasting partnerships, start with a story. We often lead with facts and figures to justify the value of Open Education but the real spark for change happens when people hear the stories behind the numbers. This session explores how storytelling can be used as a powerful tool to build momentum, cultivate institutional buy-in, and move OER initiatives from awareness to action. Drawing on the planning and execution of a campus-wide OER Week, this session centers the use of narrative to humanize open education work. We’ll examine how highlighting faculty experiences, student voices, and community-centered wins helped shift perceptions of OER from a budget solution to a transformative educational practice. Whether you’re trying to gain leadership support, inspire hesitant faculty, or empower student advocates, stories put a face to the movement and make the mission resonate.