Laying the Groundwork: OER for Social Justice

Animated landscape of mountainous terrain and two Joshua Trees with OER acronym above "Knowledge Grows Anywhere."
For more OER marketing materials, see Growing Your OER Program: A Marketing and Advocacy Toolkit.

The Joshua Tree has a park dedicated to its beauty for good reason. To thrive in its barren landscape, the plant has a deep root system extending up to 30 feet underground to store moisture as well as shallow, spaghetti-like roots that spread widely to absorb desert rain. To reproduce, the tree blooms and the yucca moth feeds its young by pollinating the tree. But the adaptive wonder also can sprout new trees from its roots and branches.[1] The symbol of the Mojave Desert is able to adapt to its surroundings to grow and create.

Open education likewise continues to grow through the inventive creation of authors like you. In this section, we will provide you with the basics of the OERFSJ program: OER definitions, key social justice concepts, copyright and open licensing basics, and your itinerary for the program. This foundation will serve as your root system, grounding you to ensure you have the nourishment needed to adopt, create, and grow.

Section Chapters

  1. National Park Service. “Joshua Trees.” Joshua Tree National Park. U.S. Department of the Interior. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.nps.gov/jotr/learn/nature/jtrees.htm. ↵

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Open Voices, Just Choices: OER for Social Justice Faculty Handbook Copyright © 2025 by Theresa Huff and Karna Younger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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