The Open EDST project aims to involve our graduate students, many of whom are currently or will be instructors or TAs for our undergraduate courses, in an initiative to: 1) build awareness of departmental open educational practices and materials through a wiki-based directory of OER created by EDST students and faculty, and, 2) interview EDST students and faculty about their use of, interest in, or critiques of open pedagogy, open access publication, and open educational resources, to be distributed online as a podcast series in 2020-2021.
As we move more of our courses online as part of UBC’s pandemic response, members of the Department of Educational Studies (EDST) are creating new open educational resources (OER), searching for existing OER to incorporate into their courses, asking critical questions about open pedagogy, and becoming more aware of open access research dissemination practices. Amid this move to online instruction, as the pandemic continues to disrupt global society and inequality is intensified, there is greater need for educational resources that offer anti-racist, decolonizing, and community-based perspectives, which are focal areas of research and teaching in EDST. As we are also working and learning from home, we are isolated from the types of collegial interactions that facilitate pedagogical and collective discussions within the department. This OER Rapid Innovation Grant will enable EDST to participate in OER awareness activities and critically reflect on the promises and limitations of “open” pedagogies during the 2020-2021 academic year.
