O.E.R. - A Galaxy of Possibility

Elvis Bakaitis

At CityTech, a senior college at the City University of New York, the promise of low-cost, openly-licensed educational materials through Open Educational Resources (O.E.R.), offers a galaxy of possibility. CityTech students represent a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds, as well as other metrics of diversity, such as immigration status, languages spoken at home, and race/ethnicity. Student surveys conducted by the University indicate the demographic breakdown of the undergraduate student population as follows: 34% Hispanic, 28% African-American, 21% Asian, and 11% white, with 31% born outside of the United States (representing 143 countries). More than half of students “report household income less than $30,000/year,” a number which may include multiple family members (CityTech, 2019).

When we talk about O.E.R. as a useful pedagogical tool, at CUNY (and specifically, at CityTech) it also has an immediately practical impact - offering crucial financial relief to students who cannot easily afford the required course materials. Perhaps due to the obvious existing needs of their students, participants in the O.E.R. Faculty Fellowship already employ many creative techniques to help address these issues, bringing in alternative texts and course materials, hoping to improve classroom engagement and lower the cost of an undergraduate education in New York City.

In this compilation, we hoped to feature a range of faculty voices and teaching experiences - helping to define the impact of open resources within and outside of the classroom. Nora Almedia shares a dynamic teaching model in which students “stage site-specific public performances,” amid the literally open and public spaces of Downtown Brooklyn, such as City Hall, the Supreme Court building, Atlantic Terminal Mall, and Brooklyn Bridge Park. This kind of direct action merges social justice with library instruction, students taking the lead in fine-tuning activism to their own lives - in response to contemporary issues such as housing inequality, air pollution, transit hikes, New York City Housing Authority, and more. Similarly, Christopher Swift finds that O.E.R. has transformed his Theater History course, making it both more participatory and easier for students to find and access the course materials.

Open Educational Resources push beyond the boundaries of traditional learning practices, offering a set of new considerations (and licensing restrictions) that can spur additional creativity. Jesse Rice-Evans offers a critical and unique perspective, through the lens of Open Access Pedagogy. Her inquiry takes aim at the “inclusive” nature of open resources, asking that disabled students and educators continue to be intentionally centered, ensuring an inclusive rhetoric and practice of “open.”

How does the use of open resources vary by discipline? Carol Thomas and Emma Kontzamanis speak to the role of O.E.R. in Nursing Case Management, and the process of their own growing “openness” to the new model, in partnership with support from librarians and during the Fellowship program. Their compelling statement - “in an ideal market, information is perfect” - opens the door to further inquiry as to the role of open resources in the wider commercialized industry of higher education.

Teaching open resources brings its own set of unique challenges, introducing faculty to a potentially new paradigm - a shift to looking at who creates and publishes the content they have been using in their courses, and where interventions can usefully be made. In their essay Creating Community among Faculty O.E.R. Fellows: COVID-19 Edition, Joanna Thompson, Joshua Peach, and Cailean Cooney address the need to create a supportive environment, and a (physical or virtual) space that can hold the questions and possible resistance that come up when engaging faculty in these conversations. The section of Additional Resources may be useful for those looking to start a similar program for faculty instruction at their campus, with many examples of how to build out resources on an O.E.R. course site.

Through this collection of faculty reflections, we aim to present a multi-layered view of a complex topic - O.E.R. are interdisciplinary, on the rise, and raising questions across the scholarly landscape. How do we start the conversation, also forging pathways with faculty and  students that bring a true “openness” to Open Educational Resources? We hope these essays serve as a source of inspiration - and conjure the creativity, vitality, and rigor of the CityTech Faculty Fellowship, where pedagogy is student-centered, and the possibilities are endless.

References

CityTech Fact Sheet. (2109). City Tech - New York City College of Technology. https://www.citytech.cuny.edu/about-us/docs/facts.pdf

Elvis Bakaitis is currently the Head of Reference at The Graduate Center’s Mina Rees Library, where they coordinate the Open Knowledge Fellowship.