Tonight we watched the Open Ed 2021 session “Equity Through OER: A Blueprint and Rubric” presented by Ann Fiddler, Open Education Library at the City University of New York, Reta Chaffee, Director of Educational Technology at Granite State College, and Robert Awkward, Assistant Commissioner for Academic Effectiveness at the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education. Fiddler began by explaining the history of DOERS3 that launched in the fall of 2018. The idea was to collaborate among three systems (USMD, SUNY, CUNY) and focus on sustaining OER, achieving equity, and working toward “student success at scale.” The slide included a bullet point about collaborating with other networks including RLOE! DOERS3 has 25 systems/initiatives with 688 colleges/universities, and over six million students. Fiddler mentioned saving over 60 million dollars in textbook costs. DOERS3 has a research workgroup, a capacity-building workgroup, and an equity workgroup. The idea of the OER Equity Blueprint was to “define, unpack, and explain multiple dimensions of equity and foreground role of OER in closing equity gaps.” Awkward acknowledged the work of Sarah Lambert and others on equity as helping set a direction for the workgroup. Thus, they wrote core values for the blueprint. The key components of the blueprint are: theoretical and research foundation, equity through OER rubrics, and case studies. The tool they developed for evaluating and improving equity in OER has three steps: assess the scale of adoption, identify stakeholders, and take action. The rubric then has several options for the scale of adoption: not present, beginning, emerging, and established. The stakeholder categories and dimensions include students, practitioners, and leadership. The sample of the rubric that Awkward shared was for practitioners and had the scale and the criterion “2.1 Instruction and Pedagogy.” Awkward stated emphatically that the tool is meant to “determine where you are” and then “where you are trying to get to and what do we have to do to get there.” The next example that Awkward explained was leadership & accountability. Chaffee spoke about the rubric highlighting “quality and equity are intertwined: doing OER with an equity lens is doing OER well.” Chaffee also shared case studies: projects on DOERS3.org that feature the work that advances equity. The examples shared were Affordable Learning Georgia, BC Campus, and the Ohio State University. Case study submission is possible if the institution follows the submission guidelines. This does seem like a very useful tool that could be a valuable resource for RLOE participants.
