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Antiracist OER: Creating Linguistically and Culturally Affirming Educational Materials

Stephanie Ojeda Ponce, MA

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The Thunderbird logo was re-designed by members of the local Nooksak tribal community.

Antiracist OER: Creating Linguistically and Culturally Affirming Educational Materials © 2021 by Stephanie Ojeda Ponce is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

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Agenda

I have a plan for us today! However, this plan is fluid and adaptable.

  • Land and Labor Acknowledgement
  • Part 1: Setting Intentions & Sharing Knowledge
  • Part 2: Defining, Imagining, and Contextualizing Antiracist OER
  • Part 3: Identifying and Analyzing OER and Antiracist OER

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Ways to Participate in this Virtual Workshop:

  • Be one of my two co-hosts:
  • Listen, think, wonder, take notes
  • Vocally ask a question, contribute a comment, or read out loud a question for the presenter you see in the chat
    • I won’t look at the chat during the workshop.
  • Converse with colleagues in the chat
  • Use the Zoom reactions
  • Help with notes & share resources: note slides, Jamboard

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Part 1: Setting Intentions & Sharing Knowledge

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Land Acknowledgment

Español: Reconozco que Highline College fue construido en territorio colonizado, originalmente protegido por la gente indigena Puyallup, Muckleshoot, Coast Salish, y Duwamish. Reconocemos estos tribus, y toda le gente indigena impactada por colonization y opresion. Dentro de nosotros tenemos la capacidad de aprender la historia de los tribus, de aprender de nuestra raíces indigenas, y de respetar y apoyar indignided con nuestras acciones.

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English: We recognize that Highline College was constructed on colonized territory, originally protected by the indigenous people of the Puyallup, Muckleshoot, Coast Salish, and Duwamish. We recognize these tribes, and all indigenous peoples impacted by colonization and oppression. Within us, we have the capacity to learn the history of the tribes, to learn of our own indigenous roots, and to respect and support indigeneity with our actions.

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Find out whose land you’ve lived on using the Native-land Digital Map.

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In the chat: Whose land are you on? How do you go beyond acknowledgment, to action?

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Setting Intention

Let’s pause to think about what we’ve experienced, the knowledge we’re bringing, and the expectations we have for today. On your own, take 3 minutes to reflect on these questions. Literally or mentally note what parts of this you want to share in the breakout room:

  1. How do your own experiences as a student, and identities as a human show up in the way you interact with students?
  2. What is your understanding of what it means to practice antiracism in higher education?
  3. What is your goal for this moment or for this workshop?

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Sharing Knowledge: Breakout Room Instructions

Join a breakout room of your choice. With your group:

  • Name, pronouns, work area
  • Let each participant share their response for question 1, repeat with questions 2 - 3. Try to be mindful of sharing time evenly.

How to Self Select a Breakout Room:

  1. Click Breakout Rooms in your meeting controls. This will display the list of open breakout rooms created by the host.
  2. Join
    1. Windows: Hover your pointer over the number to the right of breakout room you wish to join, click Join, then confirm by clicking Join.
    2. Apple: Tap the Breakout Room you wish to participant in and then tap Join.
  3. WUT?: Unmute your mic. Tell me your name and desired group and I’ll invite you to join.

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Part 2: Defining, Imagining, and Contextualizing Antiracist OER

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What is antiracist OER?

Antiracist OER (ArOER) is a phrase I’m adopting to refer to open-access course materials that are intentionally antiracist. Antiracist OER are culturally and linguistically affirming, and intentionally relevant to the local student population. Antiracist OER is a framework and strategic vision.

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What informs the idea of Antiracist OER?

These are some of the reading and concepts that are most present for me as I do this work:

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“Why this Curriculum” Questions

Dr. Xyan Neider. Abolitionist Classroom Assessment: Promoting Academic Honesty. Lecture. June 4th, 2021.

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Antiracist OER Aligns with Highline’s Values

Highline’s Core Themes

Equity-minded Competencies

Inclusive Pedagogy

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Centering students in OER requires combining multiple pedagogical approaches and practices. Using data and community knowledge, we can improve the way course content is presented.

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Creating, remixing, and adopting Antiracist OER aligns with institutional goals.

  • Highline’s Core Themes

Core Theme 1. Improve access, close equity gaps, reduce barriers

Core Theme 2: Increase educational success, close equity gaps, reduce inequities

Core Theme 3: Inclusive working and learning environment

“PRIORITY AREA 4: Highline College continually builds institutional capacity to implement guided pathways as a strategy for increasing student completions and closing equity gaps.” My argument is that targeting course materials for revision toward inclusive and anti-racist practices creates is a strategic method that can increase student use and engagement of course materials AND allows students to access past concepts they need to review, or future concepts they want to start learning.

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Antiracist OER Aligns with Equity Goals

  • Equity Minded Competencies: Developed by USC’s Center for Urban Education: 1) being race-conscious in a critical way, as opposed to color-blind; 2) being cognizant of how racism is produced through everyday practices; and 3) having the courage to make racism visible and discussable
  • Inclusive Pedagogy: Highline’s Learning and Teaching Center (LTC) explains that: “Inclusive pedagogy is a pedagogy. It’s about making changes in the classroom to provide each student what they need to be successful. The course activities, assessments, assignments and even content used can help promote students’ sense of belonging and self-efficacy (Alfasi, 2003). Inclusion comes from building relationship with students and knowing who they are. An inclusive pedagogy is one that is relevant to the lives and aspirations of students.”
  • Universal Design for Learning (UDL): UDL, an approach grounded in accessibility, creates more opportunities for all students to access, understand, and think critically about course concepts.

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Antiracist OER Creates Opportunities

Intentionally combining equity-minded best practices throughout our institutional practices, we can decrease adoption barriers and increase the quality of OER. Using open educational practices such as sharing courses, creating educational content for sharing (shoutout Library Research Modules), adopting OER textbooks, and more, can be strategies for serving our students and ourselves better.

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For faculty, OER can:

  • result in more students completing the reading
  • help reduce our workloads
  • lead to education materials that are more directly relevant to activities and assessments
  • allow more space for collaboration, courageous conversations, and joy

For students, OER can:

  • help reduce college expenses
  • reduce barriers to accessing and understanding curriculum
  • create more opportunities for student self efficacy and agency
  • result in deeper learning and higher course success rates

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How tho?

OER and other cost-free course materials have obvious financial benefits. Using and creating OER that is inclusive (at minimum, at best anti-racist), follows UDL practices, is linguistically affirming, and contextualized promotes opportunities for student agency and academic success.

  • Locally relevant texts draw on the knowledge of existing students
  • Mindfully curated content that directly impacts the student population in our own classrooms increases comprehension
  • Culturally and linguistically affirming texts value multiple knowledges
  • Globalized course materials improve relevance and usability by persons of various cultures, languages, and world views
  • Departmental and programmatic collaboration allows alignment of mission, competencies, and curriculum
  • Course outcomes and other institutional measures can take years to revise, course materials and assignments can be adapted in real time

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What might Antiracist OER be Like?

Values student knowledge, culture, language, communities, and identities

Affirming

Presents concepts students need to learn and master

Outcomes-based

Multiple ways of accessing content are possible

UDL

Relevant to the multiple intersecting identities in our classrooms

Locally Diverse (Inoue 2015)

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How can faculty opt-in to Antiracist OER?

  • Adopt, remix, and/or create inclusive and affirming course materials relevant to our student population
  • Collaborate with faculty, staff, and/or students to write OER
    • An student created a video and guide for my Zoom co-hosting assignment
  • Get Money via Teaching & Learning Excellence grant,or similar to create OER
  • Share your educational resources on Canvas Commons
  • Reflect on the efficacy of the educational resources in your assessment tool reports, column advancement, tenure > IOWA OER created Open Education in Promotion, Tenure, & Faculty Development to provide some models for writing about OER in tenure related reports.
  • Create content in consultation with students, staff, and faculty of other identities and expertise to collaborate, compensate them
  • Analyze patterns in available data like our accreditation documents …..

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Part 3: Identifying and Analyzing OER and Antiracist OER

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Course Materials/Texts Challenges

Like traditional texts, voices, faces, language, and ideas represented in course texts, perform and uphold existing institutional hierarchies. In order to better engage and serve students, course materials such as readings, texts, and instructional videos should engage and be relevant, especially to students from communities historically excluded from institutional focus and success.

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In the breakout rooms, discuss and use the Jamboard to write your comments. You can also stay in the main room and just write stuff on the jamboard.

  1. What barriers to OER adoption or use have you or your students experienced?
  2. Who uses and understands the course materials (texts) you are using?
  3. What student identities, ways of languaging, and/or knowledge are excluded from course materials you’ve used?
  4. How can course materials be more inclusive, affirming, accessible, and engaging for your students?

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Examples of Educational Materials

Above: “Why Lakes and Rivers Should Have the Same Rights as Humans,” Dec. 2019. The TED Talk provides captions and transcripts in 15 languages.

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Above: Sioux Treaty Lands and Surrounding Areas map. The North Dakota Studies website has maps and images of written treaties for educational use. Federal government data is all public domain.

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Analyzing Educational Materials with an Antiracist Lens (lite)

  • Who are the content creators, institutional supports, and publishers of the OER materials?
  • What languages are the resources written in? Are transcripts, audio, captions, etc. available in multiple languages?
  • What identities are represented in the resources and images? What tone or vibe is used and what culture, class, etc. are implied or directly present in the resources?
  • What identities are represented, valued, have power, or preference?
  • Is there a critical analysis of any “standard” or “neutral” identities and ideas?
  • Do the materials ignore or diminish the value of global perspectives?
  • Is the content available in modalities that would be appealing, engaging, and affirming to students from populations that the Highline MFR identifies as underrepresented? What about identities so left out they aren’t even on the MFR?
  • What ways can an educator contextualize traditionalist course materials to improve relevance to our student populations?

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Practice Analyzing OER Texts

Take about 5 minutes to skim one of the books below. Consider how this is relevant to the identities of students in our/your institution and classes. Who is represented? Who has power? What language is dominant? Who/what is valued? Are there antiracist or equity minded elements?

Option 1: Advanced ELL Book

Writing for Change: An Advanced ELL Resource by Inés Poblet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Option 2: State History

Washington State History (Transitional Learning) by Whatcom Community College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Option 3: First-year Composition

Writing in College by Amy Guptill is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Option 4: Introductory Biology

Mt Hood Community College Biology 101 by Lisa Bartee and Christine Anderson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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Where can I find OERs?

OER Explanation and Repositories

The two resources below can help you access lots of OER. The amount of OER material available can be overwhelming. Review your intention, research prep, or ask for search with a partner or team.

  • Open Washington: links to multiple resources for OER which are organized by resource type (such as whole courses, textbooks, images, etc.)
  • Canvas Commons: Courses, modules, and assignments ready to import directly into your own Canvas shell

Remixing

OER doesn’t have to mean one open textbook, it also refers to other curricular content or instructional tools that you might implement. While OER and reference experts focus on openly licensed work, there are multiple virtual materials that can be used with institutional login and under fair use practices.

Some places to identify materials are:

  • Highline’s databases
  • Ted Talks
  • Public domain data centers
  • YouTube

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Reflecting before Searching for ArOER

  • What do I search for?

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Search by Course

Search by Concept

Consider course names and numbers used nationally and globally

Examples: English 101, first-year composition, writing, English

Course Outcomes language, assessment type, skill and level

Examples: citation, paragraph, outline, Puente, undergraduate ethnography

What topics do your students struggle with most?

What student identities, communities, or needs do you need improve course materials for?

What learning and searching could you possibly do with students?

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Final Questions

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For Reflection and Discussion:

  • What openly licensed or fair-use texts and materials have you used that you think could create an atmosphere of inclusion in your classroom?
  • What ways have you been courageous by making racism within the course outcomes, assessments, field, and course materials visible and discussable?
  • What support would you need to be able to move forward with adopting an open text?
  • What support or resources do you need to adopt inclusive texts?
  • Do you want to capture data about the impacts of these changes in your midterm evaluations, end-of-quarter evaluations, or assessment tool?

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Questions I have for you About this Workshop:

  • Do you want to talk about ways we can build an antiracist OER framework?
  • Do you have input about this workshop?
  • Will you read the article?
  • Do you think it’s ready for open licensing?

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OER Resources

Find out More about OER:

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Find out More about Accessibility: