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]

Definitions

How can we understand diversity, equity, and inclusion in the context of higher education and student success? For more information about what diversity and inclusion mean, you can read UVA’s Diversity and Inclusion Vision Statement.

Diversity

Diversity refers to having a range of people across gender identities, racial backgrounds, geographic locations, socioeconomic backgrounds, ages, ability, sexual orientation, and other characteristics represented and participating in a community. Diversity has to do with whose perspectives are being heard, who gets to make decisions, who gets to meaningfully engage at all levels of the community, and more.

Equity

There are systemic barriers people face based on their gender identity, race, geographic location, class, age, ability, sexual orientation and other factors. Equity recognizes that people need a variety of resources and support to overcome these barriers and succeed. Open textbooks designed with an equity mindset reduce barriers and facilitate a deeper engagement with the course material.

Inclusion

Inclusion is about making a resource, location or event welcoming and inviting, so that people from different backgrounds feel that they belong. Inclusive design means that you’re creating a lot of different ways for people to participate in an experience and make a decision.

Definitions from “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Publishing” from the Open Textbook Publishing Orientation (PUB 101) by the Open Education Network is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in OER

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.^[3]

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.

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
• Sharing content that appeals to instructors in a variety of educational settings
• Creating a more interesting reading and learning experience for your students and learners around the world

For additional recommendations, see Guiding Authors Toward Inclusive Content

If you aren’t certain about how or where to add examples relevant to other cultures, that doesn’t mean your resource will never include these perspectives. Thanks to your OER’s open license, once your resource has been published, instructors from other countries, cultures, and backgrounds might choose to remix your work for their course’s needs. The changes they make might include:

• Translating the book into a different language
• Adjusting the content to meet the local cultural, regional, and geographical interests
• Revising the material for a different learning environment

Another option for making your work more inclusive from the beginning is to consider inviting instructors and professionals in your field to contribute to your OER; however, you should be aware of the ways in which your project’s design may deter or welcome people of other ethnicities, races, and cultural backgrounds.^[4] For example, you may have set up regular meetings for those collaborating on your project at a time that is not feasible for a scholar living in a different time zone. Keep this and other considerations in mind if you would like people from other countries to collaborate on your project.

Impact on Student Success

As we saw in Chapter 1, the use of OER can have a positive effect on academic achievement. A large-scale study looking at the impact of OER in higher education found that courses with OER adoption had higher final grades and lower rates of DFW (D, F, and Withdrawal grades) for all students. The increase in final grades and lower rates of DFW were even more significant for Pell recipient students, part-time students, and populations historically underserved by higher education.^[5]

Representational diversity in course materials has been shown to improve achievement among students from historically marginalized groups. One project studied the effect of gender stereotypic and counter-stereotypic textbook images on male and female students’ science performance; results indicated that female students’ performance was higher after viewing images of female scientists than after viewing stereotypic images.^[6]

Further Reading

• Powell, John A. and Menendian, Stephen. “The Problem of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness and Belonging.” Othering & Belonging 1, no. 1 (2016). http://www.otheringandbelonging.org/the-problem-of-othering/
• Kerschbaum, Stephanie L. “Anecdotal Relations: On Orienting to Disability in the Composition Classroom.” Composition Form 32, no. 1 (2015). http://compositionforum.com/issue/32/anecdotal-relations.php
• Murphy, JoAnna R. “Addressing Ageism in the 21st Century Classroom.” Hybrid Pedagogy. November 3, 2015. http://hybridpedagogy.org/addressing-ageism-in-the-21st-century-classroom/
• White, Erin. “Trans-Inclusive Design.” A List Apart. May 9, 2019. https://alistapart.com/article/trans-inclusive-design/
• Womack, Mark. “Sexist Pronouns.” In A writing handbook. 2016. http://drmarkwomack.com/a-writing-handbook/style/sexist-pronouns/