As with most of our peers, a social justice mission is at the heart of textbook affordability efforts at Ohio State. Open educational resources not only help to reduce student spending, but they also increase equity, inclusion, access and diversity of voices in course materials and learning experiences. In June 2020, The Affordable Learning Exchange (ALX) Team at Ohio State decided to leverage the strength of our existing textbook affordability program to encourage faculty to not only evaluate their course materials for cost-saving opportunities, but to expand their scope to encourage deep conversation and reflection for students related to issues facing Black Americans and other marginalized groups in America today. We launched a new Racial Justice Grant pilot, limited to former ALX affordability grant winners, with a goal of expanding to include this grant as a permanent part of our program starting in Spring 2021. Funding for this pilot was provided to nine faculty across four Ohio State campuses to incorporate assignments and resources related to racial justice in Autumn 2020. Our presentation will include the “how, what and why” from both the administrative perspective (how we found grant participants, gained support from leadership and quickly launched this pilot), and the faculty perspective (why this matters, student response and how topics were woven into a Human Biology course). This new and exciting work ties in well with this year's conference theme, “Reimagining Open Education” as the ALX team and our faculty partners work to broaden the scope of our work beyond simple textbook affordability. Speakers for this presentation will include grant winner Dr. Adrienne Hopson, Biology and Education Senior Instructor, as well ALX team members Ashley Miller (program administrator) and Amanda Postle (project manager).
Learning Outcomes:
Attendees at this session can expect to leave this presentation with the following:
Concrete examples of how affordability advocates can incorporate racial justice work into their mission.
How to gain support from leadership, department chairs and faculty partners to further this important work.
How to create a structure of support (including administrators and students) for faculty who incorporate racial justice topics into their classrooms.
UPDATED 11.17.2020For documentation from this session and our grant awards, please visit:
go.osu.edu/rjgrantresources
