Introductions MA
This year, Charlene and I are leading Georgia State’s participation in the Open Stax Institutional Partnership program. In short, this means we have a year of intense focus on Open Educational Resources. In particular, we are emphasizing how open resources can contribute to the university’s goals of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and other aspects of social justice. In this presentation, we will outline ways faculty can participate in using open resources to meet these goals, and we will give specific examples.
Defining OPEN MA
For the purposes of this presentation, we’d like to present the concept of “open” as the act of dismantling barriers to information, technology, and learning materials. Open Access resources are one way to accomplish this. By publishing works as open-access, authors maintain their normal copyrights while allowing others free access to their content, usually online. Examples include open access journals, most YouTube videos, and some other educational materials published on the web. These are free for everyone to use, eliminating financial barriers to access. However, these materials typically retain their full copyright; so for example, you can legally link to the resource, but you cannot copy and modify or distribute copies to your students.
Open Educational Resources and Open Pedagogy: MA
However, practicing OPENNESS can be expanded by not only making a work openly accessible, but also by publishing it as an open educational resource (also called an OER). OERs are free to use, but the copyright holder has also given blanket permission via an open license to use the resource in ways not normally allowed by copyright. Depending on the license, you can copy, modify, distribute, and retain copies of the work. This allows you to go beyond mere cost savings to address other aspects of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
Now that we have touched upon “open access” and “open educational resources,” it’s easy to understand the practice of openness; however, to fully engage in open pedagogy, one can use OER to develop learning experiences which allow students the opportunity to practice openness as well – by sharing their unique lived experiences through the production and sharing of information. Open pedagogy helps students practice strategically locating, thoroughly evaluating, and ethically producing high-quality content – skills necessary for navigating the current information landscape and contributing to an open society.
How to Open Your Instruction to OER CHARLENE
You may be wondering how get started with OER. Librarians are available to guide you through what we call “The Four Actionable A’s.”
Adoption CHARLENE
The first A stands for “adopting,” or using an existing OER in your course. For example, instead of using a $200 text, you could use OpenStax textbook that is free online or low cost in print. OpenStax textbooks are also available from the first day of class, without waiting on financial aid.
A 2018 study of 20,000 UGA students found that fewer students withdrew from courses in which required readings were OERs, and they also achieved higher final grades, overall. However, the use of OERs had a more pronounced effect on students receiving a Pell Grant, as well as part-time students. This study is just one example of how ADOPTING an OER may help students overcome barriers to academic success.
Adaptation CHARLENE
Let’s move onto the next A: “Adapting,” or modifying an existing OER to facilitate your specific course learning objectives and meet the unique needs of your students. Adapting includes adding or subtracting material, remixing material, or changing the format of the original.
A 2020 article published in Library Trends details the story of Kathryn Pawelko, who was teaching a University of Idaho course that served children of migrant and seasonal workers. Many were first-generation college students who were English language learners.
The instructor found that much of the department-required course text was irrelevant to her students, and sometimes even racist. She wanted to use materials that were culturally relevant, free, and which would meet the course’s language learning goals. As a solution, Pawelko located more relevant videos on Youtube and added bilingual translations. This is an example of how instructors can adapt an OER for student success.
Another form of adapting is to change formats to meet the needs of the students, including accessibility needs. Legally, a copyrighted work can be adapted to another format – for example, Braille or an audio book, for one student. But that adaptation cannot be shared; it must be repeated if another student has the same need. But openly licensed work that allows modifications can be adapted and shared, so if you make an audio adaption, other students with visual challenges can use the book. What’s more, students without visual challenges can use the book to listen while commuting or exercising—it's a win-win situation, thanks to open licensing.
Authoring CHARLENE
The third A is "authoring.” This can be as straight forward as writing a textbook or ancillary material, and publishing it with an open license.
For example, Jonathan Elmore and Jenni Halpin of Savannah State University were teaching from a standard textbook in their courses on Early English Literature. However, they were dissatisfied with “the exclusion, erasure, and misrepresentation of the African Diaspora in Britain.”
So, Elmore and Halpin added some more diverse readings and created a supplement that is available on the GALILEO Open Learning Materials site. This supplement contains additional reading for historical context, interviews with literary scholars, and brief biographies of selected Black authors in early Britain.
Assign CHARLENE
Our final A is “assign,” by which we are referring to assignments where students use and create open resources to facilitate and express their learning. This is often called “open pedagogy” or” OER-enabled pedagogy.” These types of assignments tend to be more engaging for students, as publication of work is seen as more practical or realistic than simply submitting an assignment to the professor.
An example of an open pedagogy assignment is a GSU project called “Series Leamos” by Professor Victoria Rodrigo, in which her Spanish language students create illustrated books in Spanish and publish them to an open website. The students work in teams to write, illustrate, and produce audio recordings of their work. The purpose of this assignment is to give students leisure reading material at their beginning Spanish language level, but which would be at a content level that would interest college students.
One story, My Purple Island, shares challenges experienced by a neurodiverse student who tends to obsess over the color purple. In another story, the Little Hero, a small black cat goes to the University for Smart Cats, only to find that the other cats have preconceived notions of black cats representing bad luck. These types of assignments let students express themselves, which expands representation in course material and helps students learn from one another.
Conclusion Mary Ann
In conclusion, we challenge you to think about ways you could employ open resources to increase diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and representation in your work, whether you are adopting, adapting, authoring, or assigning. The first step for you to do is contact a librarian! Librarians can help you locate open materials, help you understand copyright and licensing, and help your students with open pedagogy projects. And of course there's Affordable Learning Georgia - They have grants to help support OER projects as well as training and resources available. Librarians can be valuable members of ALG grant teams.
