Classroom Action

The two most useful activities faculty found for enhancing the learning environment for students were: embedding antiracist and social justice content into student assignments and moving away from traditional disposable assignments.

–Faculty end-of-program survey results

OFAR Participant Reflections

At the close of the spring semester, faculty participants reflected on the process of using OER and open pedagogy to make their courses antiracist. In the following videos, participants explain: 

• how they adapted open educational resources or practices into their courses to specifically address antiracism
• how receptive their students have been to the changes
• how they have or plan to share this experience with others on their campuses
• any lessons learned that would be helpful to others embarking on this journey

Students Voices

Students in Dr. Marini Smith’s Introduction to Education class at West Los Angeles College responded to Dena Simmons’ video on “6 Ways to be an Antiracist Educator” from Edutopia.org.  The future educators shared their two most important considerations for becoming an antiracist educator.

In Ryan Hitch’s literature-based critical thinking English course at Norco College, students wrote or edited Wikipedia pages and became purveyors of their own knowledge. The following two pages were 100% built by students (with many people coming later to build on their work). 

• Star Vega (psychologist) – specialized in child and multicultural psychology, first Latina president of the California Psychological Association
• Zeb Powell – first black snowboarder to win gold in XGames history, powerful advocate for more diversity in the sport

Overall, what I learned in this project is that Wikipedia actually has really rigorous standards for what it allows on its website. The whole idea of “anyone can write anything on there” is sort of a myth. Can they? Sure. It’s also going to get taken off quicker than you might imagine by a team of really dedicated reviewers. 
-Ryan Hitch, English Faculty, Norco College

End-of-Year Team Showcases

To celebrate the end of their year-long OFAR journey, college teams were asked to share their overall experience in the OFAR program in a synchronous Zoom session at the end of the year.  They chose what format worked best for them to answer the following questions:

• Summarize your team’s overall approach to implementing changes based on OFAR.
• How receptive, overall, have your students been to your OFAR projects?
• How has your team’s participation in OFAR impacted your institution? 
• What are the next steps for your institution’s antiracist work? 
• What impact do you hope to have on your institution in the future?

OFAR Course Materials

Thanks to their participation in the OFAR program, about a third of faculty interviewees who already considered themselves antiracist said that OFAR was valuable in validating their approach to teaching and the materials they are using in the classroom.

Each participant shared their revised syllabi and antiracist assignment(s) to assist other faculty who are interested in doing this work. These artifacts are openly licensed, organized by course name, and available in the Community College Consortium for OER Group in the OER Commons repository.

See Classroom Actions Highlights from the OFAR 2020-21 cohort