Building Structural Equity and Inclusion: Open Educational Resources and Affordable Course Materials

October 22, 2020 from noon to 1:30 pm PST for International Open Access Week 2020, “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.”

An open access virtual workshop for instructors given by UC San Diego Librarians; Allegra Swift, Laura Schwartz, and Dominique Turnbow.

Digital Book by EFF-Graphics / CC BY 3.0 US (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/deed.en)

Building Structural Equity and Inclusion: Open Educational Resources and Affordable Course Materials

An open access virtual workshop for instructors given by UC San Diego Librarians; Allegra Swift, Laura Schwartz, and Dominique Turnbow.

October 22, 2020 from noon to 1:00 pm PST for International Open Access Week 2020, “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.”

While many of the benefits of using openly licensed materials remain constant, their importance is amplified as students are facing decreased bandwidth and access, and increased financial and emotional obstacles due to the pandemic. We will identify the issues of exclusive practices and discuss opportunities to improve our pedagogy to engage students and contribute to a more positive, holistic, and successful academic experience.

Registration link for this free online session. Join us as we explore strategies for ensuring your students can access and engage with the resources you need to support your instruction.

Benefits of Open Educational Resources (OER):

  • Immediate and sustained access. Students, faculty, and researchers are dispersed across the globe. OER do not require VPN or subscription access. Students will have access at the start of their course and well beyond for future reference.
  • Free to use. OER can be read, adapted, modified, and shared at no cost to the reader. Freedom from financial burdens are especially important and appreciated during this time of economic instability.
  • Adaptability. Many instructors are faced with loss of access, for a variety of reasons, to their teaching materials as we’ve had to rapidly shift to online teaching. Quality educational materials can be adapted to fit your needs if they are openly licensed.This workshop is even more important as we anticipate that we will remain in distance learning mode until at least the fall, and want to do all we can to ensure continuity of access and affordability for our students.

Related guides and research:

UC San Diego Library Guides: OER for Faculty and OER for Students

NAACP Advocacy to Promote Use of Open Education Resources Resolution

Equity & Openness : Perspectives from North American colleges and universities

COVID-19 Reflection: How OER contributes to our equitable education system

Everyday Social Justice: Using simple words to talk about equity and oppression

Registration link

Related UC San Diego Library Guides

Related research and information:

We’ll update this post with slides and recording after the event.

COVID19, online teaching, and OER solutions

Source: Johns Hopkins accessed 2020 March 12

Here at UC San Diego the situation is similar to many other universities as we rapidly flip our classrooms from in person to online due to the #COVID19 situation. The library remains open and librarians mobilize to support our faculty, students, staff, and even the larger public with information on the virus (COVID 19 resources: official word by our health sciences librarian), government resources (Coronavirus by our gov docs librarian), and even legal access to resources as courses are moved online to #flattenthecurve.

This is an opportunity for the campus staff, especially EdTech and Centers for Teaching and Learning as they offer strategies for remote instruction, to partner with libraries. Mention of the application of Fair Use (COVID-19, Copyright, & Library Superpowers) or utilizing Open Educational Resources #OER when posting resources online, even on password protected learning management systems (we use CANVAS) is imperative. Librarians are sharing this information and resources through list-serves (SPARC OER) and guides (also, just straight up talk to your librarian for resources).

OER for Faculty – UC San Diego Library Scholarly Communications
Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). Accessed on Wikimedia 2020 March 12.