How the Pandemic Transformed Us: The Process and Practices of a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility-Focused OER Project for Teaching and Learning Spanish

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light the growing inequities that prevent students from participating fully in the learning mission of our colleges and universities. The rapid transition to remote instruction in March 2020 prompted many faculty to adopt new tools and pedagogies to facilitate learning and teaching online. Results of a survey of faculty in higher education found that “Moving online forced faculty to modify their courses: one-quarter of faculty said the Fall 2020 version of their course was considerably different than the version taught before” (Seaman and Seaman 2021, 3). Concerned about barriers to equitable access to learning for our students, some faculty in our language department explored low-cost online materials and Open Educational Resources (OER) during the pandemic year of online instruction. Over the years our interest in low- and no-cost educational materials had initially come from concerns about rising textbook costs as well as a growing dissatisfaction with the content of commercial textbooks. During the pandemic these issues became even more critical and sparked the desire for a more concerted and coordinated effort among faculty. Faculty in our language department quickly realized the potential of OER—educational materials offered freely and openly and under an open license—as a tool for social justice in higher education.1 Using transformative learning theory (Katz 2019; Mezirow 1997; Mezirow 2000) as a framework to understand faculty OER adoption, this article describes the goals, stages, and outcomes of the first year of a multi-year OER project centered on addressing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in eight high-enrollment Spanish courses at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels at the University of Virginia (UVA): five courses in the required world language sequence (SPAN 1010, 1020, 1060, 2010, and 2020), two advanced-level bridge courses for the Spanish major/minor (SPAN 3010 and 3020), and a new Spanish for heritage speakers course (SPAN 3015). In the sections below, we describe the transformative impact of this project at the individual, program, and university levels.

Transformative Learning Theory

Transformative learning theory (Mezirow 1997; Mezirow 2000) is a constructivist theory of learning that posits that deep learning occurs when learners encounter a catalyst that forces them, through critical reflection, to examine and reconstruct their beliefs and knowledge. The stages of transformative learning are the following (Mezirow 2000, 22):

1. A disorienting dilemma.
2. Self-examination with feelings of fear, anger, guilt, or shame.
3. A critical assessment of assumptions.
4. Recognition that one’s discontent and the process of transformation are shared.
5. Exploration of options for new roles, relationships, and actions.
6. Planning a course of action.
7. Acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plans.
8. Provisional trying of new roles.
9. Building competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships.
10. A reintegration into one’s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one’s new perspective.

Stacy Katz (2019) applies transformative learning theory as a framework to examine faculty decisions to adopt, adapt, and create OER for their teaching contexts. OER adoption is not simply about the decision to adopt a tool; it requires a shift in faculty beliefs and values. For Katz, “OER differs from most educational technology innovations, as it has a commitment to social justice principles and equity” (2019, 1).

Stage 1: A Disorienting Dilemma

The pandemic exposed numerous barriers, both new and existing, that prevent students from participating fully in our courses—financial barriers, technology barriers, and health and wellness barriers. In an effort to support students during this difficult time and to alleviate the burden of these barriers, our faculty team turned to low-cost and no-cost online resources as we revised our courses for online instruction.

As historian J. Mark Souther reflected, pandemic remote learning has the potential to be “A Bridge to Better Teaching.” Curriculum ideas and innovation that instructors have put off due to lack of development time or technology resources in past semesters now seem possible in part due to the need for alternative delivery methods and institutional investments in licenses for key applications. (Buckley-Marudas and Rose 2021)

The motivation to adopt OER materials in our courses was prompted initially by the instructional needs of the pandemic and concerns about financial barriers for students. For many years we had felt growing dissatisfaction with the content of commercial textbooks—especially for advanced grammar and writing courses and Spanish for the Profession courses—and a desire on the part of faculty for greater agency over course materials. We found content in traditional textbooks to be outdated, inaccurate, and constraining, and some faculty resorted to creating their own learning content to fill in the gaps. Moving to OER seemed to be a natural outcome of this process and allowed us to work toward DEIA efforts in our program. In the framework of transformative learning (Mezirow 2000), these were the “disorienting dilemmas” that triggered a shift to OER, and the pandemic made these issues even more pressing.

Stages 2 and 3: Self-Examination with Feelings of Fear, Anger, Guilt, or Shame; And Critical Assessment of Assumptions

These disorienting dilemmas also revealed feelings of guilt about requiring students to purchase costly textbooks and frustration about the many factors, such as access to technology and accessibility of course materials, that include or exclude students from engaging fully in the learning process and achieving academic success. The pandemic forced us to reexamine our assumptions about equity in higher education. In exploring OER, each of us confronted our own misconceptions about the quality and educational value of OER as compared to commercially published textbooks as well as misconceptions that our work in OER development does not carry weight in our professional careers in terms of contributions to our field. During the pandemic, our exploration of OER led us to reexamine our beliefs about knowledge creation as we discovered the benefits of Open Pedagogy—student authorship and curation of open resources. Open Pedagogy fosters student agency, motivation, collaboration, technical skills, and open access awareness (Griffiths et al. 2022; Maultsaid 2022; Trust, Maloy, and Edwards 2022), allowing students to be creators of knowledge and not just consumers of it. The pandemic pushed some faculty in our department to reconsider our teaching practices and curricula not just to improve remote learning but to work toward greater educational equity. This self-examination and critical assessment of assumptions, the second and third steps of transformative learning theory, happened individually as faculty revised curricula to support remote instruction during the pandemic and collectively as we worked together on OER projects.

Stage 4: Recognition that One’s Discontent and the Process of Transformation Are Shared

While our interest in OER was prompted by the realities of the pandemic, our project seeks to harness the unique affordances of OER to address our concerns about DEIA in higher education. We each came to explore OER to improve learning in our individual courses, but we came together as a team once we realized that our “discontent and the process of transformation are shared” with others – the fourth step of transformative learning. We formed an OER project team consisting of four faculty in the Department of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, the Assistant Director of Learning Design & Technology, and an OER Librarian from the University Library. All faculty on the project team are non–tenure track and include the Spanish Language Program Director, the Course Coordinator of SPAN 3010/3020, and faculty teaching intermediate and advanced-level Spanish courses; all had some exposure to or background in open education prior to the project. In addition to working on our course OER materials, this collaboration allowed us to work across course levels and to tackle curriculum redesign at the course and program levels. We also came to appreciate the support and work done by the larger OER communities in world language teaching and worldwide. With a shared commitment to DEIA, we came together to learn more about open education, collaborate on our work, and support each other.

Working together toward diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility

Our team came together with shared concerns about the barriers to educational equity that traditional commercial course textbooks present: textbook affordability, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance with assistive technologies and accommodations, lack of representational diversity, and lack of faculty autonomy over content. Research on the impact of OER (for example, Bali, Cronin, and Jhangiani 2020; Clinton-Lisell et al. 2021; Colvard, Watson, and Park 2018; Lambert 2018; Lambert and Fadel 2022; Nusbaum 2020) suggests that it is uniquely suited to address these issues in higher education, and it was this potential that led our team to embark on this project.

Traditional commercial textbooks for world language courses (which include online homework access codes) generally cost students $250–$300, presenting a significant financial barrier to academic success for many students. In a 2020 survey of college students and textbook affordability, 65% of students reported not buying a textbook due to barriers of cost while 21% reported not buying an access code to course materials (Nagle and Vitez 2021). In a 2021 survey of students from forty-one Virginia colleges and universities (Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium, n.d.), 42% reported feeling extremely or moderately worried about meeting their course material costs, and 66% report not buying required textbooks. High textbook cost affects academic progress, opportunity, and success; for example, 38% of Virginia students reported having taken fewer courses, 40% did not register for a specific course, 34% earned a poor grade, and 16% failed due to costs of required materials (Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium, n.d.). Students also reported being unable to meet basic human needs (food, housing, healthcare, transportation, etc.). These factors affect access to educational equity and present significant barriers for academic success and student well-being. Because OER eliminate many financial barriers of access to course materials, the opportunity for academic success increases for all students. Research coming from a large-scale study on the impact of OER reports that “OER improve end-of-course grades and decrease DFW (D, F, and Withdrawal letter grades) rates for all students. They also improve course grades at greater rates and decrease DFW rates at greater rates for Pell recipient students, part-time students, and populations historically underserved by higher education” (Colvard, Watson, and Park 2018, 262).

In addition to cost concerns, many faculty find traditional course materials limiting, out-of-date, or simply inaccurate. Our earliest creation of no-cost learning materials came out of a need to maintain the currency of learning content in our courses, which in commercial textbooks quickly becomes outdated. For example, in our Business Spanish course, the cultural and economic information in our commercial textbook was out-of-date and inaccurate, which led us to create our own course modules using newspaper articles, statistical information from databases, interviews with professionals, short films, and the like and to rely on the textbook for vocabulary only. OER creation allows faculty agency over content tailored for their own student community and the ability to update and revise materials when needed.

Another issue is that course materials may fail to present the rich diversity of the discipline—in content, scholarship, key figures, textbook contributors, and pedagogical methods. Many commercial textbooks for Spanish language learning reinforce stereotypes of Spanish-speaking people and cultures by presenting their cultures as either exotic or oppressed. Many focus more on Spain than Latin America or U.S. Spanish-speaking communities, and include little representation of indigenous people, Asian groups, mixed-race groups, Afro-Latino people, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, or people older than student-age (see, for example, Canale 2016; Gurney and Díaz 2020; Padilla and Vana 2022; Uzum et al. 2021; Weninger and Kiss 2015). The lack of representation of diversity in course materials and textbooks has a negative impact on the sense of belonging and potential academic achievement for students in those or other underrepresented communities (Anya 2011; Anya 2020; Anya and Randolph 2019). For our OER team, an advantage of OER authorship is the ability to design content that accurately represents the diversity and vibrancy of the Spanish-speaking world and also the lived experiences and perspectives of our diverse student community. A diverse curriculum affects the learning of all students by presenting an accurate, complete, and authentic picture of the Spanish-speaking world. Centering experiences of diverse groups can enhance student sense of belonging in college, particularly for students from historically marginalized groups. Sense of belonging affects academic achievement, persistence, and well-being. Research shows that underrepresented racial-ethnic minority and first-generation students report a lower sense of belonging than other groups at 4-year schools (Gopalan and Brady 2019). For faculty interested in inclusive pedagogy and social justice, OER offers an appealing option for content delivery and student engagement.

Another potential barrier that traditional course materials may present is accessibility—course materials may fail to meet ADA compliance, excluding students who need assistive technologies or other accommodations from fully participating in the course. Students learning world languages regularly engage with multimedia materials that include video and audio to develop listening comprehension skills as well as text, images, and other media to develop skills in reading, writing, speaking, cultural competence, and critical thinking. To be accessible to all learners, materials such as these must include captioning, transcription, alt-text, and formats accessible for screen readers. In applying principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to OER creation, faculty can ensure that students with diverse needs are able to access and engage with all course materials in all formats, whether written, video, audio, or image (Scott and Edwards 2019).

The goal of our multi-year project is OER implementation in eight high-enrollment undergraduate Spanish courses to center DEIA: the five courses in the required world language sequence (SPAN 1010, 1020, 1060, 2010, and 2020), two advanced-level bridge courses for the Spanish major/minor (SPAN 3010 and 3020), and a new Spanish course for heritage speakers (SPAN 3015). The projected annual cost savings of this project is $574,468. The projected timeline for our project is as follows:

• Year 1: Faculty Training and Exploration
• Year 2: OER Design and Creation
• Year 3: Pilot and Revision

Stages 5–8: Exploration of Options for New Roles, Relationships, and Actions; Planning a New Course of Action; Acquiring Knowledge and Skills for Implementing One’s Plans; Provisional Trying of New Roles

The first year of our project focused on laying the initial groundwork necessary for this large-scale OER project. Instead of simply diving into OER creation right away, our first year was dedicated to developing expertise in the skills and knowledge essential for the OER work in Year Two and beyond. To be prepared for the work of OER creation, our team worked together during the first year on training, development, and exploration of OER. To attain our Year One goals of OER exploration and professional development, we engaged in three primary activities: (1) learning from experts and establishing collaborations, (2) data collection, and (3) OER curation. Funding from a 2021–2022 Learning Technologies Incubator Grant through the College of Arts & Sciences at UVA supported this work.

Learning from experts and establishing collaborations

Our professional development goal was to develop greater expertise in OER design, creation, and implementation, accessibility, fair use, copyright, licensing, and UDL. In addition to attending conferences and workshops on these topics, our team participated in the AAC&U 2021–2022 Institute on Open Educational Resources, a year-long online engagement program designed to support teams seeking to launch or expand OER on their campus. The Institute consisted of retreats, webinars, and regular team meetings with a faculty mentor from another institution. To better understand the process behind OER project planning and creation, our team also met with OER experts in world language instruction, and we invited guest speakers to give virtual talks on OER and Open Pedagogy to UVA faculty in world languages.

Data collection

Before designing OER textbooks for our Spanish courses, it was important to better understand what features and components our students need and want to support successful language learning. We administered an anonymous online survey to students enrolled in beginning and intermediate level Spanish courses (SPAN 1060, SPAN 2010, SPAN 2020) in Spring 2022 to gather data on students’ experiences and perspectives using traditional commercial textbooks and what content would interest them in a future OER textbook. We included questions on DEIA to better understand the student perspective on how our team could center DEIA in our textbook design. Total survey responses were 452 students, a response rate of approximately 45%: of the total number of respondents, 32% were from SPAN 1060, 44% from SPAN 2010, and 24% from SPAN 2020. Our survey asked students to indicate their interest in meeting in a focus group to engage in further discussion on these topics, and 156 out of 452 students volunteered. We randomly selected a subset of that group and set up in-person focus groups that met in Spring 2022. Twelve students participated in the two focus groups.

In the online survey, students were asked what topics they would most like to learn about in a Spanish textbook, checking “all that apply” from a list of 25 options. Results indicate that students are most interested in the following: pop culture, Spanish in the United States, travel, professions, social justice, the arts, and diversity in the Spanish-speaking world (see Table 1). Another question asked students to select those features of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility important to them in a Spanish textbook, checking “all that apply.” Results indicate that students value representational diversity, diversity in cultural and linguistic content, representational diversity of lived experiences of our students, ADA compliance, focus on learning strategies, and multiple modes of access in an online textbook (see Table 2). In the focus groups, students reported preferring an online resource that is easy to navigate and that has concise grammar explanations, varied practice activities, and additional learning resources.

OER curation and rubric

Through research, conferences, webinars, and meetings with experts, we compiled a lengthy list of existing OER for Spanish courses at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels (see List of OER for Spanish). To evaluate these OER, we designed a rubric based on existing models used to assess DEIA in educational materials (see DEIA in OER Rubric). We further refined the rubric based on the data collected from the student survey and focus groups. We then curated a list of potential materials to consider for adoption/adapting as we move forward into the next stage of OER creation.

Results, year one

We successfully achieved our primary goals of exploring the world of OER and developing greater expertise on OER design, OER implementation, UDL, accessibility, copyright, fair use, and licensing. This first year of our project fostered collaboration and synergies of a cross-institutional team from the College, Learning Design & Technology, and the University Library.

The work we did helped us to better understand the importance of centering DEIA in OER design and of including active student participation throughout all stages of the project. Our work in Year One reflects steps 5–8 of Mezirow’s transformational learning theory.

5. Exploration of options for new roles, relationships, and actions.
6. Planning a course of action.
7. Acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plans.
8. Provisional trying of new roles.

Our collaboration and project teamwork opened up new roles, relationships, and actions while we planned a course of action for our multi-year project and developed the expertise necessary to embark on our project. As we transition into Year Two, we move into trying new roles as OER designers and authors, mentors, and advocates, exploring new collaborative relationships with world language colleagues at UVA and at other institutions, and inviting our students to author their own open materials.

The activities of the first year of our project helped to spark interest in OER among other UVA world language faculty through the OER guest talks we organized and through collaboration with the Institute of World Languages (IWL). We also planned an IWL Faculty Retreat focused on OER and Open Pedagogy in May 2022 for world language faculty at UVA. We hope that this stage of laying the groundwork for our OER work will serve as a model for other colleagues interested in OER creation. In addition to the intra-institutional collaborations established, collaborative work has also developed with colleagues outside of our institution.

Stages 9 and 10: Building Competence and Self-Confidence in New Roles and Relationships; A Reinterpretation into One’s Life on the Basis of Conditions Dictated by One’s New Perspective

Year Two (2022–2023) of our multi-year project will focus on adapting and creating new OER (textbooks) for the Spanish courses targeted and will include small-scale piloting, data collection and analysis, and revision and editing. Applying the framework of transformative learning, Year Two encompasses steps 9 and 10—faculty will build “competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships,” as OER designers and collaborators and reintegrate a new perspective on teaching and learning focused on social justice and inclusive pedagogy. What we learned in Year One will shape how we approach the task of OER creation in Year Two. The work of this stage of the project kicked off in May 2022 with a four-day collaborative faculty work sprint on curriculum design and project planning applying principles of Backward Design (Wiggins, Wiggins, and McTighe 2005) and included other world language faculty at UVA. Work sprints scheduled for summer and winter break will further promote collaborative relationships and support for our projects. A world language OER writing group, meeting weekly throughout the academic year, will provide momentum and motivation for our work. The world language faculty participating in Year Two OER creation, work sprints, and the weekly writing group come from French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish and are recipients of internal grants to support their OER projects at UVA; all are faculty or graduate student instructors.

In our projects, material design and content decisions will be made through the lens of DEIA. To ensure that our OER (textbooks) reflect the diversity of our student community and meet the needs of UVA students, students will be actively involved in consultation and design. The project will center student experience and perspectives by working with a Student Advisory Board throughout all steps of this project. The Student Advisory Board will consist of 3–5 undergraduate students who have taken the targeted Spanish language courses, hired through an application process. Our team will meet regularly with the Board for input, and students will be compensated for their work. This model will allow student users to participate from the outset on the product design so that our textbooks meet the needs and interests of our diverse UVA student community. In addition, these students will gain valuable experience in curricular material design, open education, and DEIA in higher education. Through our use of Open Pedagogy, students in our courses will be involved in the creation of new open materials as part of their coursework. Students will be involved in the evaluation of the new OER textbooks through prototyping, small-scale piloting, focus groups, and surveys.

Challenges

Of course, this work is not without its challenges. While OER has the potential to improve educational equity, it is not a quick and easy solution. Many OER authors point to the time and labor involved in creating high-quality open materials and the lack of adequate compensation and recognition. Faculty work in authoring OER is rarely recognized for promotion and tenure reviews. Once published, there is also the issue of sustainability, updating, ongoing revision, and technical support for OER. Our interest in implementing OER grew from the inequities we witnessed during the pandemic; a concern of ours is the addition of work for faculty who are already stressed, exhausted, and burned out from the pandemic. A question that our community needs to address is how to adequately support faculty engaged in open education. In other words, how can we balance the desire to make education accessible for all students while respecting the needs and limitations of our faculty and recognizing their work? The DOERS3 Collaborative (New England Board of Higher Education 2021) offers a matrix for faculty as they consider how OER work might fit into research, teaching, and service for promotion and tenure. At our own institution, many early OER adopters are non-tenure track faculty, including those faculty on our team. If issues of institutional support, compensation, and recognition are not resolved, there will be little motivation on the part of faculty to engage in OER work.

To address some of these challenges, we have established a strong community of support among the UVA world language faculty currently engaged in OER projects; this support comes in the form of weekly writing groups, team meetings, and work sprints. The UVA Library has also offered significant ongoing support with consultations, regular webinars, resources, grant opportunities, Pressbooks accounts, and the formation of an Open Education Community of Practice. The Learning Design & Technology group in the College of Arts & Sciences provides assistance with technology, project design, consultations, and grants. Funding for OER projects is available through a number of grant opportunities at UVA through the College of Arts & Sciences and UVA Library as well as Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium (VIVA). While an OER project can seem daunting, our team’s work sprints and weekly writing group meetings have helped us to break up the work into smaller, more manageable steps while also maintaining momentum. Unlike commercial print textbooks that are finished products, an OER project will always be a work in progress (Zourou 2016); this acknowledgment helps us establish more realistic goals, project planning, and timelines. We also recognize that faculty need not be the only ones involved in curating and authoring OER. Graduate student instructors and lecturers can be valuable contributors to OER initiatives, broadening their own professional development (Rossomondo 2011; Thoms and Thoms 2014). In addition, the curation and development of open materials can simply be integrated into the normal curricular design work of faculty course teams, programs, or departments (Comas-Quinn and Fitzgerald 2013). In adopting open pedagogy practices, many faculty on our team invite students to curate and create their own open learning materials for inclusion in OER projects (see Mathieu et al. 2019).

Conclusion

The pandemic opened the door for innovation and change in teaching and learning in higher education. “This period marked a massive change in how faculty prepared for and taught their courses, and their level of experience using teaching tools and techniques that were new to them. This exposure resulted in substantial changes in awareness, and often, in their attitudes towards different teaching approaches” (Seaman and Seaman 2021, 9). The realities of the pandemic pushed us to consider how the adoption and creation of OER might improve learning for the immediate needs of remote teaching and reduce students’ learning barriers during the pandemic. But it went further than that—our exploration of OER during the pandemic sparked a significant transformation for our team on multiple levels. First, our teaching practices and beliefs shifted informed by Open Pedagogy, inclusive pedagogy, and social justice in education. Coming together as a team committed to open education and DEIA, our community was transformed by working in new partnerships and collaborations institution-wide. Our Spanish OER (textbook) projects pushed us to reconsider our course-level objectives and program-wide goals and to articulate greater coherence across courses and levels, and our May 2022 work sprint centered on curriculum and program redesign. This project helped us reconsider the roles of faculty and students in knowledge creation and ownership as well as the contributions to and value of our OER work in the profession. As early adopters, our team members are models and advocates for OER expansion on our campus—the beginning perhaps of an institutional transformation.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a 2021–2022 Learning Technologies Incubator Grant through the College of Arts & Sciences at UVA. I would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions and collaborative energy of our OER team: Marina Escámez Ballesta, Hope Fitzgerald, Bethany Mickel, Esther Poveda Moreno, and Paula Sprague. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their suggestions and insightful comments.

About the Author

Emily Scida is Professor, General Faculty, in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Virginia, USA, where she teaches courses in Spanish linguistics and world language pedagogy. From 1999–2022, she was Director of the Spanish Language Program. Her research interests include Open Education, teacher education, ePortfolio pedagogy, online and hybrid instruction, and contemplative pedagogies. She was a participant in the 2021–2022 AAC&U Institute on Open Educational Resources and is project manager of two Spanish OER projects in her department.