Open Educational Resources (OERs) are an important tool for social justice because they can prioritise the needs of their audience above those of commercial publishers. In so doing, OERs can amplify the voices of diverse communities excluded from traditional academic literature, and provide affordable access to knowledge and learning. International Open Access Week 2024 is this week: 21-27 October. To celebrate their theme ‘Community over Commercialisation’, this blog post will explore ways to cultivate equity in OERs.
A matter of perspective
You’ve probably encountered some version of the well-known triptych in Figure 1. Three people are trying to watch sport over a fence. One person is tall, the next medium height, and the final person is short. The first image panel symbolises ‘Equality’; each person is given the same size box to stand on to help them see over the fence, but that’s not enough height for the short person to get a good view of the game. In the second image panel, ‘Equity’, although the boxes are distributed unequally, the tall person can still watch the sport and the short person can now see over the fence. Finally, in the third image, there’s no fence at all, and each person can watch the sport comfortably without extra accommodations. This is ‘Liberation’.
Yet as individuals, we can only ever truly view a situation from our own perspective. In reality, like the person watching sport in Figure 2, we can only see the scene from one position.
Decentring ourselves in our learning design
The impact of this is that while we might intend to approach designing learning experiences with accessibility, inclusivity and diversity in mind, there will inevitably be dimensions of the human experience that we miss, or misrepresent. To uplift voices rather than speak on behalf of others, we need to attempt to overcome this limitation. Effective approaches to this involve empathising with our audience and decentring ourselves in our learning and teaching practices.
Empathy is ‘relating to’ rather than ‘knowing about’ a learner. Cultivating empathy helps education professionals predict a learner’s cognitive and affective reactions to learning material and simulate a learner’s temporal and emotional journey through a course. Importantly, it requires acknowledging and respecting the different and unique experiences of others.
A challenge of cultivating an empathetic approach to learning design is that in our attempt to be equitable, we measure equity against the dominant cultural, structural and institutional norms of whiteness, Eurocentrism and neoliberalism in Australian higher education. How then can we work towards centring the values, practices and cultural traditions learners enrich our classrooms with?
Strategies for designing socially-just OERs
Here are some suggested strategies for decentring yourself and creating more equitable OERs – and they’re also great for learning and teaching practices more generally.
1. Contextualise and acknowledge
Including information about the context and development of your OER displays your commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. Two approaches to this are:
- An accessibility statement: this provides a detailed overview of the accessibility features in your OER and contact information in case users have problems.
- A positionality statement: this demonstrates transparency around what values, commitments, privileges and experiences have shaped your work.
Example: the open textbook Designing Learning Experiences for Inclusivity and Diversity: Advice for Learning Designers, edited by UTS colleagues Dr Keith Heggart and Dr Mais Fatayer, has pages dedicated to Acknowledgement of Country and Accessibility Information. The information details the steps they have taken to ensure the accessibility of their resource and methods to provide feedback.
2. Seek feedback
Input from others is crucial when designing with inclusivity, and the simplest way to achieve this is to seek feedback on your OER. Consider the elements of the work you’d like feedback on, whether you’d like it during or after authoring, or both, iterative feedback, and the tool people should use to provide it (e.g. a contact form).
Example: when creating open textbook Accounting and Accountability, the primary editor UTS Associate Professor Amanda White invited and used informal feedback from students both during the writing process and after the first draft of the book. She outlined her experience at UTS Open Education Week 2023: Are open textbooks the way of the future?
3. Develop personas
A persona is an authentic representation of a person or group that can give insight into learner needs. Personas can create a rich picture of the target audience and, especially when developed in collaboration, can help prevent self-referential design and practices. Using Personas – Accessibility Toolkit 2nd Edition makes some suggestions for developing personas.
Example: open textbook Enabling and Optimising Recovery from COVID-19 by Deakin University colleagues Danielle Hitch, Genevieve Pepin, Kelli Nicola-Richmond and Valerie Watchorn used personas that were co-authored by people with Long COVID. These personas helped the authors create a more representative OER and are also the basis for the reflective learning activities in the book.
4. Co-create and collaborate
Inviting professionals and students to contribute directly to your OER can build inclusivity and diversity into the design. When collaborating with students, ensure accountability and the balance of labour for the OER remains with you, and that students benefit directly from the collaboration (e.g. by being paid).
Example: the UTS LX Collection Integrating sustainability into your subjects, which includes five OERs that outline practical materials and teaching activities you can adapt on sustainability concepts and the Sustainable Development Goals, was created in consultation with a group of professionals across UTS, including learning designers, academics and sustainability experts.
Do you have any other examples of these strategies, or other strategies you’ve tried? Please drop them in the comments! And of course, your feedback on this blog post is very welcome.