Nurturing a DEIA Mindset for Your OER

Doing the Work: Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

If you’ve felt uncomfortable at any point during this DEIA module: Congratulations! You’re out of your comfort zone, and as an OER author, that’s exactly where you need to be to engage with topics about inequality. From acting out on our implicit biases to avoiding uncomfortable conversations, we’ve all played a role in upholding inequality. When authoring educational materials, it is important to continually challenge our own biases and assumptions and centralize historically marginalized voices to revise educational materials. Unpacking histories of oppression when writing for DEIA can be uncomfortable work. In this chapter, we’ll build upon the theories we’ve discussed, such as Sarah Lambert’s social-justice-aligned definition of OER, to talk about how your own identities and positionality may impact your OER content.

Positionality: Seeing Yourself in the ‘Big Picture’

It’s no secret that we live in a society where certain identities receive more privilege and access to services than others. Identity is a complex concept with many dimensions that are visible and invisible as well as fixed and transitory. Centuries of discrimination have contributed to the structural inequalities we see today.

Whether intentional or unintentional, once we recognize these actions, it’s critical that we do the inner work to actively shift our behaviors and mindsets. As previously discussed, you have to be willing to internally challenge your own biases before you can step into the work of writing with an equity lens. This starts with understanding your positionality as an author, and taking time to think deeply about how your own biases may impact your writing. Take a moment to read and reflect on the activity box below to get a sense of your positionality as an author:

Equitable OER Strategies

Now that you have a sense of yourself in relation to your OER, let’s pan out to intentionally reflect on and implement strategies for creating an equitable OER. As an author, you’re taking on the responsibility of creating content that will shape classroom conversation and highlight the experiences of communities that are often dismissed in higher education. Writing an OER through an equity lens in consideration for DEIA is labor-intensive work. It is a process and requires a commitment to ongoing review and revision.

Select the plus signs (+) below for some strategies for inclusion to revisit throughout your creation process.

DEIA-Centered Learning Objectives

Thinking about the impact of your OER’s word choice begins with your OER learning objectives and continues as a mindful practice throughout content creation, from the objectives to content. Though we will fully explore designing learning objectives in Writing Measurable, Student-Centered Objectives, let’s reflect on how you can root DEIA and social justice in your course to help your students flourish.