The OpenEd 2021 session “Developing an Open Educational Resource Repository for The Public Sector with an Inclusive Lens” by Ksenia Cheinman, Manager of Research at the Canada School of Public Service exposed me to OERs in government. I appreciate how Cheinman started with a brief discussion of the connections between land, stewardship, gifts, reciprocity, and OER and equity. The explanation of how open knowledge is a gift that calls for reciprocity was thought-provoking and convincing. Cheinman spoke about reasons for the Canadian Government to share resources. However, with thousands of public service professionals, there is a need for a platform for sharing. Therefore, they developed a way to share and create. Interestingly, six reasons for not sharing came up: the work is not perfect, how will others use it, can I take it down, quality of learning, accessibility & format, and copyright and licensing. Cheinman then spoke about questions we should ask ourselves during the design stage, most focusing on credit and accessibility. For graphics, Cheinman mentioned that they have a subscription to an image platform and keep inclusion and diversity in mind. For text, Cheinman mentioned that they opted for sentence case instead of title case for heading because it is easier to read. I didn’t know this! In French, they tried to use both feminine and masculine references for adjectives, for example. For metadata, they used frameworks that focused on equity and accessibility. For functionality, they used an accessible usability scale (AUS) using Fable and accessibility reports. Cheinman then explained their work to consider who will use the collection. They focused on six objectives: accessibility, sharable, professional content, redefine learning, indigenous content, and francophone content. The materials have the goal of being used for training and supporting career change for all learners and being shareable through formats that allow adaptation. When it came to the marketing of these resources, they tried to connect to communities with similar goals. Their marketing efforts also wanted to celebrate the contributions. Even before launching the platform, they blogged and published in Medium about their efforts to plan for accessible and open content. By partnering with others, they obtained support on accessibility reviews, image reviews, licensing advice, and metadata draft reviews. While it does seem from some quotes that contributors were skeptical about who would read and reuse their work, they also were excited about the project. I certainly thought the effort to plan for appropriate content with a vision for sharing and equity is impressive. I had not thought about the opportunities for OER for the public sector. This session opened my eyes to the possibility of collaborating and sharing meaningful information.
