Teaching with OER
Diversity and Inclusion
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Explain how your cultural and class-based perspectives can affect your course content, for better or worse.
- Provide two examples of activities to encourage inclusivity in your course.
Adaptability and affordability are two major aspects of what makes an open educational resource attractive to students, but there is another facet that should be considered when you are developing or adapting an OER for your course: perspective. In particular, you should ask yourself how the perspectives being represented in your OER might affect the inclusivity of your course environment.
As Quill West argues in her blog post on diversity and inclusion in open education:
“As important as access is to students and to institutions, it is a starting place for leveraging other benefits of OER, and I hope that our conversations about [open education] go beyond access, because saving money on materials doesn’t address bigger issues in student persistence and completion.”[1]
In this chapter, we will discuss some of the opportunities and drawbacks of using OER to promote inclusivity in your courses.[2]
Diversity and Inclusion
Merriam-Webster defines diversity as “the inclusion of different types of people (such as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization.”[3] Diversity is often perceived as an organizational goal or ethical preference: for OER, including diverse perspectives is vital.
Diversity in open education can be achieved by including a variety of sociological perspectives in your open content. Doing this ensures that your students can identify with and relate to your course material. Critical here is ensuring that other cultures are presented accurately in your materials, and not according to stereotypes or perceptions based on the standards of your own culture.[4]
Whether intentional or not, ethnocentrism — “a tendency to view alien groups or cultures from the perspective of one’s own” — can creep into the content and presentation of your course materials, and it is something all authors should be aware of. This doesn’t mean you must create course content that accurately portrays and includes all cultures and perspectives; however, you should be respectful toward other people and be aware of your biases as they arise.[5]
One way you can accomplish this is by explicitly acknowledging the perspectives that are included in your content and those which are not. How has your social and cultural background reflected on the work you’ve created? What authors are being cited and acknowledged in your work, and why? Acknowledging that your perspective is limited while including other perspectives in your work can be an incredibly rewarding experience. Some benefits of including diverse perspectives in your course content include:
- Engaging more students because they recognize themselves or their life experiences in your course content
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