OFAR: Progress, Challenges, and What’s Next
Published February 23, 2026
Extract
Laura Dunn shares exciting plans ahead for Open for Antiracism (OFAR), which has, since 2020, helped 250 faculty and 3,500 students at 116 California community colleges bring race-aware, equity-focused teaching into their classrooms using open educational practices. OFAR was created to address systemic injustice. It gives students a voice as co-creators of knowledge, questions traditional academic power structures, and builds inclusive learning environments. Data show that student engagement and faculty confidence in antiracist teaching have grown. Even with ongoing national challenges in achievement and funding, OFAR’s reach is still growing. In its seventh year, OFAR will introduce an open-access OFAR Toolkit in 2027 to help more institutions use proven, equity-focused practices in different educational settings.
OEG Voices 094: Laura Dunn and Jamie Thomas
Published December 19, 2025
Description
As a perfect last episode of the 2025 OEGlobal Voices podcast, we are delighted to share an inside look at the workings and impact of the Open For Anti-Racism program (OFAR) You will hear in the voices of Laura Dunn and Jamie Thomas how this has succeeded as a collaborative effort to increase the integrations of open educational practices and pedagogy for faculty to make their classes ever more accessible and responsive to the learning needs of students in community colleges across the state of California.
OFAR, a project led by CCCOER (and OEGlobal), not only includes professional development through course materials facilitated by expert coaches, but also a process where each participant develops an Action Plan that is carried out in courses they teach the following semester. OFAR truly is the kind of professional development that goes far beyond resources and training, but supporting changes in pedagogical strategy. And this is accomplished through a distributed cohort model.
Listen closely in the conversation how Laura and Jamie both refer to “students”, not only the learners ultimately in community colleges courses, but often they refer to the “students” as the faculty participants themselves. You will understand why there has been interest in this program from other educators in the US plus Canada as well. And you will hear of the future plans to publish and share an OFAR “Toolkit”.
Listen to podcast or read the transcript
Open for antiracism: supporting educators to use open education for antiracist teaching
Published October 2022, Journal for Multicultural Education, Emerald
Authors
Una T. Daly Open Education Global, Inc., Concord, Massachusetts, USA
James Glapa-Grossklag College of the Canyons, Santa Clarita, California, USA
Alyssa Nguyen and Ireri Valenzuela The Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges, San Rafael, California, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The Open for Antiracism program supports faculty to change their teaching practices to be antiracist through the affordances of open educational resources (OER) and open pedagogy. This study aims to raise questions about how professional development impacts student outcomes, and how faculty perceive the utility of OER and open pedagogy to support antiracist teaching and learning.
Design/methodology/approach – An evaluation plan examined how faculty participants perceived the effectiveness of OER and open pedagogy to make their classes antiracist. Students compared their experiences in treated classes with those in other classes. Participating faculty completed pre- and post surveys and a subset sat for interviews.
Findings – Faculty participants felt prepared to implement antiracist practices using OER and open pedagogy. Eighty-seven percent reported they were highly likely to recommend the program and 80% plan to continue using open pedagogy. Eighty percent of students reported they were more active or engaged than in other classes and that they examined biases of the discipline.
Originality/value – This study raises the question of how antiracist teaching approaches impact student outcomes over a longer term. Further, how can changes to teaching strategies impact institutions? Do teams of instructors offer support in ways that lead to a greater voice within an institution? This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license.
Open for Antiracism Faculty Training Program Shows Promising Results – SPARC
Published October 6, 2022
A new program that teaches community college faculty how to use open practices to create a more inclusive learning environment is producing positive results.
The Open for Antiracism program — known as OFAR — is beginning its third year of training faculty members in California on Open Educational Resources (OER), open pedagogy and anti-racist teaching practices.
With funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, leaders from the Community College Consortium for Open Education Resources (CCCOER) at Open Education Global and College of the Canyons created a year-long online program. It includes a 6-week course, followed by technical support as participants weave what they learned into their classrooms.