Teaching with Open Educational Resources (OER): Advantages for International Students and Faculty

 By  Miryam Nacimento 

Introduction

How can teaching with Open Educational Resources (OER) help international students and instructors break down cultural barriers? This essay attempts to answer this question by exploring how OERs can empower students and instructors with different cultural and scholarly backgrounds. In the first part, I conceptualize OER focusing on the 5R’s of Open Educational Resources (revise, remix, redistribute, retain, and reuse content). I highlight how these features can enable international instructors and students to work collaboratively and create course content that fits their own educational needs while shaping the public knowledge commons. Next, I propose three concrete strategies for promoting cultural diversity through OER, focusing on how instructors can personalize and contextualize course content to respond to their academic interests and students’ cultural backgrounds. Moreover, I examine how teaching with OER can also respond to questions of citational justice and unequal publishing opportunities for scholars from the Global South. Overall, this essay emphasizes the potential of OER for building a more democratic and participatory teaching and learning environment for international students and faculty. 

OER and Cross-Cultural Teaching and Learning

Part of the Open Education Movement, Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that range from textbooks and streaming videos to tests, syllabi, and software that have been released in the public domain or under an open intellectual property license. Open licenses like Creative Commons enable creators to reserve some rights over their work by determining how it should be used, permitting fully open content usage, or implementing specific restrictions. Crucially, educational institutions do not have to pay any fee for accessing these learning materials. They are free of charge for general users, making OERs key tools for expanding access to knowledge in higher education. Indeed, recent statistics show that the price of copyright-protected college textbooks has risen 67% between 2008 and 2018 (Echevarria and Bowman 2021). Steep prices are not only making students opt to skip buying books, but they may also be a contributing factor for students who drop out of college. Moreover, many digital options are also subject to expensive subscription fees and impose access limitations. In this context, OERs have the potential to counter the restrictions of traditional publishing, which reserves all rights to the creator by putting barriers in sharing and modifying their work. By following a philosophy of equity and social justice, OERs can challenge the increasing commercialization of higher education and dismantle highly corporatized power structures by prioritizing access to knowledge over profit. 

While making knowledge affordable and reaching the masses are crucial dimensions of openly-licensed learning resources, they can do much more as they are also meant to foster student-centered learning and expand or deepen the meaning of equity and democratization of education. It is important to remember that OERs are freely sharable learning materials that grant users five kinds of permissions known as 5Rs: Retain, Reuse, Redistribute, Revise, and Remix (Wiley n.d.). Retain refers to users’ ability to download and keep copies of the resource. Reuse points to the capacity to publicly reutilize the original or revised copy of the resource (either on a website or in class). Redistribute alludes to the possibility of sharing copies of these materials with others, and Revise refers to the ability to edit, modify or adapt its content, for instance, by translating it into another language. Finally, by remixing OERs, users can combine an original copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new. In sum, by using OERs, faculty, instructors, and students can utilize and customize educational content with minimal limitations, thereby participating in the construction of the public knowledge commons. Given their affordances and adaptation functions, OERs prove to be a powerful mechanism to promote deeper student engagement by allowing faculty to create educational materials that fit student interests, acknowledge the cultural contexts of learning, and directly address learning objectives. This function becomes particularly relevant for international students and faculty who need to develop additional skills and knowledge to navigate the American educational system. 

Over the last few decades, there has been an intensification and acceleration of international student mobility. International students and scholars increasingly come to the United States to continue their studies or work as professors at different universities. Academic mobility is part of a broader trend towards educational internationalization worldwide, which is reflected in international student recruitment, academic exchanges, and international research collaborations. At the CUNY Graduate Center, there are more than one thousand international students (more than a quarter of the total enrollment), most of whom are also international instructors that teach at other CUNY campuses. As a result, universities show a highly diversified educational landscape with increasingly internationalized classrooms where students with different cultural backgrounds, native languages, and varieties of English meet. While this new reality can enrich both teaching and learning, it also poses new pedagogical challenges as the recruitment of international students and scholars in U.S. universities does not immediately secure an internationalization of curriculum or the promotion of and respect for cultural differences. As authors have argued, international educational mobility can even reproduce and perpetuate global inequalities in the sphere of knowledge production by favoring Anglophone kinds of literature, as well as forms of teaching and learning spearheaded in so-called “developed countries” (Ryan 2013). In this context, OERs, and the possibilities they open for content adjustment and student involvement emerge as essential instruments for dealing with the potentially oppressive learning formats that international students, instructors, and faculty might encounter in the American educational system. 

Therefore, I propose to approach OER as a tool for creating situated knowledge that is genuinely relevant for students’ particular social contexts and responsive to their culturally specific learning goals. As Sarah Crissinger puts it: “a learning object with relevant context, an application that is not culture-specific, and the capacity to be truly localized and understood is more important than a learning object that is simply free” (2015). Since instructors can curate and freely share OERs, they can do so to suit international students’ values and educational needs perfectly, instilling an appreciation for the diversity of knowledge in the classroom. At the same time, through OER practices, international instructors and faculty could also incorporate their research into their teaching, disseminating literature, concepts, and theoretical perspectives that are not studied in the United States, thereby promoting a process of knowledge exchange. Furthermore, by using OER, faculty may practice their own teaching and learning methodologies without necessarily following prefigured or standardized pedagogical models characteristic of traditional textbooks. In other words, OER practices can be powerful mechanisms for advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion through the adaptation of educational content and the representation of multiple perspectives and voices. 

Before going into the specifics of how to use OER to encourage cross-cultural learning, it is crucial to be aware of the difficulties and limitations of the task. First, there is the seemingly insurmountable language barrier. Indeed, much of the open educational content is written in English, which has without a doubt become the lingua franca for academic writing and content creation. This reality foregrounds the importance of the translation of academic content that is written in other languages. At the same time, this also begs the question of how to effectively transmit students the educational content coming from different latitudes. Knowledge transmission and translation certainly requires making justice to original values and encouraging an intercultural dialogue in the context of the Anglo-American model of teaching and learning. In other words, I highlight that the use of OER to advance the internationalization of education involves the development of the intercultural skills of students and professors in higher education. 

OER practices for cultural exchange 

In this section, I delve into the practicalities of OERs and internationalization. What concrete OER practices could faculty implement to capitalize on the existing multicultural learning environment in higher education? Or how to operationalize the concept of internationalization by using OERs? Here I propose three different strategies by which instructors can begin incorporating OER into their teaching practice. It is important to emphasize that this approach follows a gradual sequence. In other words, strategies go from a basic utilization of OERs through the application of its more elemental permissions (Retain, Redistribute) to a more complex and creative employment of their functions (Reuse, Revise, and Remix) in the adaptation and creation of new educational content. In this way, as we shall see, the 5Rs of OER factor into the process of developing inclusive and responsive syllabi, texts, and activities. 

Furthermore, I foreground the notion of localization and put it at the core of my proposed strategies. Taking inspiration from different authors who have offered guidance to instructors in the use, adaptation, and design of OERs (Mays 2017; Moore and Butcher 2016; Pullin, Hassin, and Mora, 2007), I define localization as the process of adjusting educational resources that were initially developed for a different context. Localization is much more than a simple translation of educational content. It demands a deep understanding of students’ needs so that educational materials can be situated in their particular culture, norms, and values. Finally, I emphasize the importance of promoting a constant dialogue between students and faculty in implementing OER practices. 

Building inclusive and culturally diverse Zero Textbook cost courses 

In a Zero Textbook cost course, students are not required to purchase a textbook. Instead, instructors assign freely available materials which may or may not be open. Students can either have access to these resources via their campus library, they may have an open license like Creative Commons that authorizes their use, or they may simply be freely available on the internet. Instructors can choose a combination of any of these options in the construction of their Zero Textbook cost courses. If instructors choose to assign OERs, there are different repositories where they will be able to find openly-licensed educational materials like syllabi, textbooks, or worksheets. Some of the most important ones are George Mason Metafinder,  OER Commons , and Open Textbook Library. Instructors could start perusing these websites for the construction of Zero Textbook cost courses. More important, however, is the kind of pedagogical approach they should take in this process. Here I propose two actions that instructors could implement to raise cultural awareness and promote respect for intellectual diversity in the process of construction of their Zero cost syllabi with OERs. 

First, in selecting the reading materials, instructors should conduct a serious evaluation of the existing OERs for the specific discipline they would be teaching, paying attention to the extent to which these materials include a range of voices and show a diversity of arguments, methodologies, and perspectives. Two questions should guide instructors’ inquiry: whose voices and standpoints are represented in the OERs? Are the materials appropriate for an international undergraduate audience? Ideally, students should be exposed to a wide breadth and depth of knowledge through resources that not only represent contemporary scholarly debates but that are also capable of expanding future ones. This kind of teaching practice would require instructors to diversify their syllabus and curriculum by including authors and ideas stemming from regions different from North America in order to go beyond the hegemonic western epistemological tradition. There are a few specific models of this approach in action. For instance, in this essay Claudia Crowie and I analyze open access and open educational resources within Cultural Anthropology (2019). We assess factors such as coverage, representation, and accessibility in these resources. Similarly, in this piece Inés Vañó García examines the opportunities that OER practices open up for challenging the hegemony of textbooks in Spanish language courses which eschew cultural content and emphasize formal and grammatical instruction (2019). Instructors could conduct a similar kind of evaluation when constructing their syllabi. 

Second, instructors could also draw on active learning pedagogies in order to build a culturally diverse and open syllabus. More specifically, instructors could negotiate with the class the inclusion of educational resources as part of the course content. For instance, instructors could create a group work assignment in which students themselves suggest and justify the discussion in class of an additional text for each of the topics considered in the syllabus. This activity would motivate students to do research on the issues they are most interested in as well as promote critical thinking and interactions among them. For this task to be culturally enriching and genuinely productive, instructors would have to clearly define the parameters of the new materials to be included. Preferably, the resources would have to address some kind of ideological, methodological, or representational lacuna existing in the syllabus itself. Thus, by seeking productive collaborations among students and instructors, OERs can facilitate self-reflection and incorporate materials that may not be known for the majority of the class. 

Adapting an Open Textbook with international graduate assistants 

Another way faculty could promote intercultural dialogue in class is by adapting or redesigning an already existing open textbook. This strategy would require different steps. First, professors need to define the objectives and learning goals of the course they will be teaching, always having in mind the demographic characteristic of their student audience. For this purpose, professors could apply surveys about students’ backgrounds and academic interests before beginning the course or rely on university statistics. 

Next, instructors would have to carry out a process of analysis and discernment of the open textbook they will be working with. The following question should guide the process: how well does the textbook’s content acknowledge my students’ social background? Traditional books usually rely on a one-size-fits-all approach to build course content, that is, a standardized form of knowledge production to be exported to any latitude, regardless of the conditions of localities. Far from being a neutral form of content creation, this standard approach usually implies and foregrounds a Western audience. The normative learner or reader is usually a white male from the Global North. That is the case of typical history textbooks, which are full of explanations and theories based solely on experiences stemming from an Anglo-American perspective (for a deeper discussion of this issue, see this text by  Sarah Trembath).

To create a more culturally diverse learning landscape, faculty could customize the content of a given textbook by modifying the narrative and introducing concepts, examples, exercises, or vocabulary used in countries different from the United States or Europe. Moreover, international faculty could incorporate parts of their research in the adapted OER. Likewise, they could translate educational materials originally written in other languages, using OER initiatives from non-Western contexts. (For more information about truly global repositories, look at Javiera Atena’s list). In this way, professors could reduce citational inequality and uneven circulation of knowledge that elevate voices and knowledge produced in the Global North. Finally, there are some actions that professors could take to mitigate the workload of textbook adaptation and preparation. Most importantly, they could involve international graduate assistants and instructors in this process and get access to grant funding to pay them to work together to adapt the textbook. In this way, professors and international instructors could solidify a more horizontal relationship of collaboration by engaging in reflections about the content of the course and its implications for cultural diversity, openness, and equity. 

Creating an Open Textbook with students

Faculty could also involve students in creating an original and culturally responsive OER textbook as part of a class project. In this way, professors could help students develop their writing skills and encourage teamwork, allowing them to become active and critical contributors to the knowledge commons rather than passive receptors information. Depending on the course subject, assignments could vary. For instance, professors could make students conduct research about a particular theory, perspective, artist, or scholar who is neither European nor American and relevant for the course. Students could write a chapter about the selected authors’ work, following guiding questions professors would have to pose at the beginning of the semester. For this purpose, professors could divide the class into groups so that each one has an international student or a student with an international background.  Each group would be in charge of writing and curating a book chapter to be included in the final OER textbook. Student groups would have to compile an introduction with the theory or the author’s background and discuss their most important concepts and contribution to the field. Before students start working on this project, professors first need to introduce what OERs are to students to be informed about the license requirements of the materials they decide to include in the textbook. 

A critical exercise that professors could include as part of this assignment would be to encourage students to dig into literature that is written in different languages by asking them to include at least some non-English references or images produced by non-Western authors. While not all students would be able to read literature in languages different from English, professors could arrange groups so that at least one international student has access to and understanding the non-Western source. That student would assume the role of translating and disseminating it to the rest of the group. To help students build confidence and collaboration among them, professors would have to encourage students to assume different roles and clearly divide tasks in the construction of the chapter. In following this exercise while creating the OER textbook, students would directly experience the implications of the domination of English in scholarly literature. Still, they would also work together to overcome this language barrier.  Since students will be exposed to authors and perspectives probably unknown in US academic spaces, instructors could stimulate a discussion in class around issues of citational justice and unequal publishing opportunities for scholars from the Global South. After compiling all the chapters and finishing the course, professors could work with graduate students or research assistants to verify the facts and the public domain licenses and edit and revise the final product. 

Conclusions

The increased presence of international students and faculty in colleges and universities demands an augmented awareness of the centrality of cultural diversity in higher education. Under this new scenario, instructors and professors need to assess the educational needs of their student audience as well as the suitability of their curriculum and educational materials. Not all knowledge is applicable to all learners in the same way. OERs, with their open and customization features, are a privileged mechanism to encourage cross-cultural knowledge transfer or exchange. By adapting OERs to fit a culturally diverse classroom, these materials can also challenge whose knowledge matters globally, putting pressure on ethnocentric value systems within higher education. This essay has proposed three main strategies that instructors could follow to internationalize educational content effectively. 

It is important to recognize that these practices will require an additional investment of time from faculty. Most professors might not be interested in becoming OER publishers themselves. However, defying ethnocentrism in pedagogy also has the advantage of enriching faculty’s own research and teaching practice and increasing student engagement. In addition, although these activities indeed involve labor, there are also ways to share, compensate, and acknowledge work through grants or collaboration of graduate assistants and students themselves. 

References

Atena, Javiera. 2012 Directory of OER repositories. Retrieved from https://oerqualityproject.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/directory-of-oer-repositories/

Crissinger Sarah, 2015. A critical take on OER practices: interrogating commercialization, colonialism, and content. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/a-critical-take-on-oer-practices-interrogating-commercialization-colonialism-and-content/

Crowie, Claudia and Miryam Nacimento. Literature Review of Open Educational Resources in Cultural Anthropology. Retrieved from https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/read/untitled-84d43a1f-0a80-4404-ad34-448a687f9d49/section/11e0bb76-d9c3-4658-aea3-6e1b2c204e57

Echevarria and Bowman 2021. Why college textbooks are so expensive. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/why-college-textbooks-expensive-textbook-publishing-2018-12

Mays, Elizabeth ed. 2017. A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students. Rebus Community. Retrieved from https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/

Moore and Butcher. 2016. Guide to Developing Open Textbooks. Commonwealth of Learning. Burnaby, British Columbia. Retrieved from http://oasis.col.org/bitstream/handle/11599/2390/2016_Moore-Butcher_Guide-Open-Textbooks.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Pullin, Andrew, Kamal Hassin, and Monica Mora. 2007. Conference report: Open Education 2007. Retrieved from http://timreview.ca/article/59

Ryan, Janette. 2013. Cross-cultural teaching and learning for home and internatibeonal students’ internationalization, pedagogy, and curriculum in higher education. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 

Trembath, Sarah. Textbook Bias. Retrieved from https://subjectguides.library.american.edu/c.php?g=1025915&p=7749991

Vañó García, Inés. 2019. Spanish Teaching Open Education Resources (OER): Opportunities and Challenges. Retrieved from https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/read/337def73-85ba-4e2a-b1d1-4033d825036f/section/fe717bd6-dde1-4175-993b-eaed39c0c78c

Wiley, David. Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from http://opencontent.org/definition/