OpenEd20

Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption in higher education institutions has grown exponentially in the last ten years. While a great deal of focus is on the benefits of OER to students (affordability and access) and faculty (agency and freedom), less attention is given to those doing the work to implement and manage these projects. Across many institutional OER programs, the person leading and managing these initiatives tend to be women and librarians who do not necessarily have this role as their sole responsibility. It relies on the passion and energy of the librarian OER champion to grow the initiative and yet, their efforts are largely hidden and sometimes invisible. As a result, burnout ensues alongside feelings of being undervalued and unsupported for the hard work that they do.

As women of color (WOC) leading open education programs in our institutions, this interactive discussion will provide a space where other WOC could share their experiences, stories, and narratives that for the most part, have remained hidden and unheard. While the open education community espouses openness, diversity, equity, and inclusion, #WOCinOER are still underrepresented in leadership and in the community writ large. Our hope is that our stories bring about change rooted in solidarity through our shared experiences as #WOCinOER.

Participants will crowdsource and share ideas for creating a manifesto of what #WOCinOER want to see in a truly inclusive, equitable, and transformative open education:
- What is it like to navigate spaces steeped in whiteness and racism?
- How do we increase participation and amplify voices of #WOCinOER?
- What would an inclusive, equitable, empowering, and affirming environment look like for women of color (WOC) leading open education initiatives?

Learning Outcomes:
1. Share and/or actively listen to counterstories around OER work as/from women of color.
2. Share and contextualize their own lived experience as WOC in OER with other participants within the dominant narrative.
3. Question existing OER infrastructure and strategize for an inclusive and transformative open education community.

The session Jamboard will be available through the end of day Friday and will be hosted on the Michigan State University institutional repository: http://bit.ly/WOCinOER

Although equity is often identified as the major motivation for open course development, affordability of content is just one of the many decision points that need to be considered when expanding access. Community colleges have long been adopters of open materials for affordability reasons, however, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives at many institutions are just now examining how we can use open practices to build equity for our community college students. In 2017 CCCOER launched our EDI Blog series, which led to the establishment of our EDI Committee in 2020. Our goals include examining issues of EDI within our organization, our field, and promoting work from our member institutions that advances EDI through openness. We know that openness isn’t equity, but many colleges are leveraging conversations about equity and access as a starting point in order for their open classes to better meet EDI goals. Join us for this interactive discussion about how we can rebuild open courses to be more equitable and create open development processes that truly support equity for underserved students.

Learning Outcomes:
Participants will:
Discuss principles of equity-minded decision making to transform open courses.
Explore and affirm our commitment to centralizing EDI in enhancing open course design & development.