OEG20 Strategic Planning: A Guide to Avoiding Pitfalls and Achieving Your Vision
Channel: Open Education Global
Date: 2020-11-16

Why do open education programs with great intentionality stop growing after a period of time and what enables other programs to achieve longevity and continue to be relevant and sustainable over time? This discussion probes into the role of strategic planning in the development, implementation, and measurement of successful OER programs.  

Strategic planning provides an opportunity for organizations and workgroups to engage in self-reflection, examine competitive trends, and plan for future accomplishments. But in order to be effective, there must be agreements, milestones, and metrics for completing the planning and measuring progress.  Simply following the steps outlined in a strategic planning guide may result in lofty but unachievable goals and a mission that doesn’t fully resonate with your key stakeholders including staff, collaborators, and other advisors.  A concrete plan for building consensus on proposed objectives including a competitive analysis of projects is needed.  Without these mechanisms, the insightful data gathered from multiple sources including surveys, polls, and external stakeholder interviews may not be actionable.

The presenters will discuss effective processes used for strategic planning at higher education organizations including non-profit organizations, large systems, and individual colleges.  Case studies will be used to illustrate challenges commonly encountered and the pitfalls to avoid while successfully sustaining and growing your open education program.  

Discussion topics include
When is the right or wrong time to commit to a strategic planning process?
What information do you need to collect to start the process?
What must be in-place at the end of the process? 
How can you engage and get buy-in from key stakeholders? 
How will the resulting plan be used and by whom? 
How do you measure impact and update over time?