Our interdisciplinary team from Metropolitan State University’s Master of Social Work (MSW) program—two faculty members, an instructional designer, a graduate assistant, and a librarian—leveraged the MSU Denver state OER grant to join the Rebus program, which mentors teams through open educational resource (OER) development. Guided by a shared vision to make the MSW a “Z‑degree,” we produced two OER materials:
- A curated book of case studies that captures real‑world social‑work scenarios and accompanying pedagogical notes.
- A comprehensive textbook on social‑work practice, integrating theory, methods, and ethical considerations.
Our experience illustrates a replicable pathway for other disciplines seeking to expand open scholarly ecosystems. Key takeaways include:
- Social‑science‑specific workflows that streamline content creation while preserving disciplinary rigor
- AI‑enhanced authoring, balanced with human editing, where generative tools assisted literature synthesis and formatting, yet remained under expert human oversight.
- Faculty voice preservation, in which our discipline experts’ voices and lenses of practice color the work, yet colleagues with a range of perspectives can easily adapt the materials.
The session will walk participants through: project goals, team roles, the Rebus framework, a detailed timeline, our blended AI‑human workflow, and practical lessons learned. Attendees will leave equipped to design OER collections that support accessibility, foster collaborative scholarship, and empower educators across the social sciences. dr
