Document Type
Blog
Publication Date
12-29-2020
Abstract
The philosophy of Open Educational Resources (OER), at its core, seeks to facilitate student access to equitable education through the open sharing of learning materials. Discourse around OER has historically foregrounded how the circulation of open materials reduces costs for students and increases accountability for textbook publishers to make their copyrighted materials more affordable. Recently, more educators and institutions have recognized OER initiatives as being coeval with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as increasing the affordability of higher education can reduce barriers for marginalized student populations. However, interrogation of the ways in which OER can potentially reproduce or perpetuate the inequitable educational structure they seek to dismantle remains largely sparse. While the affordability of OER can increase accessibility for marginalized learners, implementing OER in the classroom that are heavily colonized and center a white patriarchal epistemology does nothing to increase or foster equity for marginalized learners. It merely gives marginalized students increased access to an educational environment that continues to systemically devalue them.