This week for the Open Ed Policy and Leadership course, the assignment is: “In your final blog post, you will contribute 750-1000 words that express your views on the policy and leadership challenges of launching a social justice approach in complex educational contexts. Draw on examples from your experience and support your writing with examples from the course content (readings, videos, forums etc.) In addition to the written component of this final assignment, you are asked to provide an accompanying graphic, infographic, image, or other media that represents the associated complexities of social justice approaches.

Full disclaimer: as I begin writing this post, I am completely at sea about what kind of graphic I will offer to supplement this piece. I like visuals to supplement my own learning, but am horrible at conceptualizing and creating them to supplement my own work. So, let me begin my writing first, as that is definitely where I feel most comfortable.

When I think about this question of the policy and leadership challenges of launching social justice initiatives, and here I am thinking specifically of Open Education initiatives, in an educational context (which are all complex and hierarchical even when they pretend to be otherwise), I wonder first: what do we mean by leadership, and second: do we really need policy specific to Open Education to ensure equity?

When we think of leadership at a post-secondary institution, we typically think of presidents, vice-presidents, and deans. But in my experience, the people leading Open Education are often students and faculty (Williams and Werth place students as the main leaders), as well as librarians and people in teaching and learning centres (like me). As also noted by Ossiannilsson, et. al., the experiences students have had over the last three years since COVID shut down institutions has seen a rise in OER adoption and an increased demand amongst students to have both more flexible learning opportunities and lower cost course resources. But at the same time, we need to engage more with students and their student societies to support their understanding of and advocacy for OER.

The challenge with this kind of “leading from the middle (or bottom)” is how to engage with the people who actually make decisions and policy. No matter how consultative admin purports to be when creating policy, there are generally very few voices at the table when final policy decisions are made. For example, at my institution, Open Textbooks have become a measure in our new strategic plan, and policy makers have been contacting me asking for information on how many Open Textbooks are being used because they don’t know…no one in admin knows. I count myself lucky that at least someone told them I have been doing this work and that they didn’t just hire someone to find out what I already know, a scenario that is all too common in post-secondary (hiring people to do work that is already being done).

Regarding policy, do we really need one around Open Education? Will having said policy address issues of social justice? Policy can be limiting, and I think the perspective at my institution is that we don’t need policies for everything, but need to recognize how existing policy supports initiatives. I tend to agree, although sometimes the lines are blurry. What I would not like to see is an Open Education policy that limits – Open Education cannot be limited meaning there are too many considerations to put into a policy that is only revised every ten years. Much better to be clear about how existing policies support Open Education, policies such as EDI, Code of Conduct, and Acceptable Technology Use, as well as some of the teaching and learning policies, such as Program Quality Assurance and Evaluation of Student Learning.

When people lead from the bottom, it can be a lonely journey. When people lead top-down, there can be resistance. What we need is a common understanding of Open Education and how it can support students through the entire spectrum of leadership. That means having conversations and being open to listen and accept that moving into the Open, while challenging, can be liberating. But that also means supporting those who are ready to do the work now – and I mean support not just by leaders, but also by peers who may be attached to traditional textbooks and fearful of being forced to let go of that comfort. I don’t want to be critical, but I have worked with faculty who struggle to integrate OER into their teaching because they are told by their peers that they are “not allowed to”. But at the same time, we need to be encouraging, not forcing people to move into the open before they are ready. In other words, we need to think of the equity and inclusion piece of Open not only as it applies to students, but also as it applies to instructors.

I found it challenging to come up with a graphic to represent some of the ideas I wrote about but thought something simple to begin with that could be fleshed out in time could suffice. Here we see a simple image, with Leading Open Education in the middle, as central to post secondary education (in my ideal world). Leading Open Education comes from above and below, if we take the hierarchical model of post-secondary as a given (which I do). From the top we have presidents, vice-presidents, deans and associate deans, and people who develop policy. From below we have faculty and students, as well as librarians and teaching and learning centre support.

I leave this post asking: who else needs to be leading Open Education, and from what direction(s)?

References

Ossiannilsson, E., Zhang, X., Wetzler, J., Gusmão, C., Aydin, C. H., Jhangiani, R., Glapa-Grossklag, J., Makoe, M., & Harichandan, D. (2020). From Open Educational Resources to Open Educational Practices. Distances et médiations des savoirs. Distance and Mediation of Knowledge (31). https://doi.org/10.4000/dms.5393

Williams, K., & Werth, E. (2021). A Case Study in Mitigating COVID-19 Inequities through Free Textbook Implementation in the U.S. (1). https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.650