Through the lens of educational equity: Equitable teaching and learning with Open Educational Resources (OER)

In this blog, I want to examine how OER helps to ensure a more equitable learning environment. First, let's define what they are. Open education resources (OER) are any type of digital educational material that are in the public domain and available for use freely and legally. The user generally has the right to copy, modify, enhance or change the materials and they can be used free of charge by anyone. A teacher quoted in a University of Mississippi research thesis on teacher attitudes to OER nails it when they say: “Free works. Plus, it is the way of the world. We use our phones to search anything and everything (without regards to copyright laws).” (Forgette, 2020, p.36).

The benefits of OER

There are myriad benefits to OER for instructional use for learners of all ages. Not least because they are widely and universally available, and the cost of sharing them is practically non-existent. (However that doesn’t mean there aren’t any costs in producing them–more on that later). By their very nature, they can be modified to fit different student needs, and they can also help promote self-directed learning when used asynchronously. One of the most attractive, and perhaps most significant benefits of OER is the savings they can make to districts, schools, parents and students, which opens up opportunities to think more creatively about budgets. Leveraging OER empowers states and districts to facilitate localized needs and address resource disparities. Finally, OER have the benefit of reaching all students regardless of their location, critical for long-distance learners or remote teaching.?

Clearly, OER are a valuable resource. My particular focus on OER is how policy makers can rethink how to share, collaborate and access instructional materials to meet the needs of a 21st century classroom. I also want to delve into what we really mean by equity and how the benefits of OER can add up to equity for all. Equity is one of Hāpara’s Five Principles that have informed our work every day in more than 40 countries including millions of US and Canadian learners and teachers.

First, I want to broaden the understanding of the definition of equity to include not only student equity but fair access to resources, using funds differently and in a more equitable way differentiating instruction, and including teachers on the journey with professional learning tailored to their individual needs. (By the way, for a great article on the difference between equality and equity read this article by Dr. Pedro Noguera).

Now, let’s turn our attention to equitable and fair access to resources. While the 2021 National Education Technology Plan acknowledges the further work needed to ensure equity of access to technology itself, it also highlights the importance of access for all to transformative digital learning experiences enabled by technology. There is an opportunity here to think creatively about spending, as state purchasing strategies currently centered around curriculum-based textbooks simply can’t facilitate transformative digital learning. In fact, it becomes much harder to offer equitable learning for all, as printed resources are not personalizable and differentiated, and with only a few exceptions, don’t support choice and voice for students.?

A shift in infrastructure and different purchasing strategies is needed to create state-wide OER repositories which support sharing amongst districts and schools. And the financial savings to schools and school districts are astounding. A Hāpara school district of 5,000 students reports its annual savings will be more than $1,000,000 per year.?

So, how do we include teachers in this equitable journey? Too often teachers can feel OER are a curse...as well as a blessing. A blessing because of the wide variety of teaching resources they offer, yet a curse because of the time needed to find the content they need, check it for quality and align it to a curriculum. A solution is to integrate OER into professional learning, and carve out paid time for teachers to contribute to them, making sure the content is learning standards aligned. In this, there are opportunities for mutual mentorship, and for teachers to feel part of a creative and valued community, where they don’t have to find solutions on their own.? Hāpara has seen hundreds of teachers and their districts work together to build many thousands of hours of learning content vetted by professionals at reasonable cost and high efficacy. A global movement of thousands of districts benefiting from the collective work of equitable support for modern learners.?

Now, let’s circle back to my point that OER, while free at the point of access, are not in fact “free.” OER are by no means a free alternative to learning resources–they need financial investment to set up, evaluate, maintain, and curate. Investment in continuous improvement is essential. An example of this in action is the fast-growing Alberta Collaboration for Learning, a group of districts and K-12 educators who have built a comprehensive library of curriculum based content and full year courses in both synchronous and asynchronous formats. From 2019-2021, more than 140 professionals (teachers, editors, copy editors, proofreaders, instructional designers, curriculum specialists and online learning professionals) created a full suite of vetted year-long K-12 Alberta online courses at nominal cost (~$1,250 per full year course) and ongoing annual savings (~$3,750 per 25 student class amounting to ~$675 per student per year). The Collaboration continues to grow, providing valuable and essential resources for the modern day classroom at previously unheard of savings, higher academic efficacy, and learner equity. The entire collection of Alberta curriculum is accessible to Alberta schools from the Hāpara Suite, saving school districts hundreds of dollars per student. In 2021, Hāpara began supporting similar initiatives in a number of US states and Canadian provinces. If you want to know more or are interested in joining, reach out to Roger Nakamura at Hāpara.?

Eight ways to get started with Hāpara?

1. Adopt Student Dashboard Digital Backpack in your school district. Cost effective and easy to implement, learners that use Student Dashboard Digital Backpack are able to organize their learning workflow (homework, assignments, notifications, classwork, group work) and access a library of district selected and teacher personalized OER resources within only a few days.
2. Talk to us and ask about the most cost effective and impactful approaches to K-12 full curriculum collections. Using Hāpara, many school districts have developed full curriculum year-long courses in all K-12 core subject areas in less than six months with only a handful of professional staff: administration, librarians and teachers from your team who vet content and create personalized district collections.?
3. Pursue partnerships within the Hāpara network of more than 4,000 school districts in your state, province, nation or globally.
4. Identify areas of high need and impact such as select content areas, grade levels, student populations, and pedagogical approaches.
5. Engage in careful and effective curriculum alignment processes supported by Hāpara’s content evaluation and vetting specialists and resources.
6. Access and rely on Hāpara’s deep professional learning resources on subject areas such as copyright, open licensing and digital licensing permissions, curation of resources, adapting resources created by other educators, teaching through technology, and differentiating instruction within easy to use instructional management tools.
7. Join a global community of Hāpara educators in the Hāpara Community for support, training and collaboration.
8. Be willing to share within the Hāpara community. Currently more than 400,000 hours of shared instruction from K-12 have already been shared for your district to review and teachers to access.

OK, sounds great, but how much is this going to save me?

This is where Hāpara gets very proud! From an average of $7.50 per student/year, districts are able to replace their entire textbook purchasing and provide teachers with complete year curriculums for all subjects online. Talk to us to find out how .

In closing, it’s important to recognize the job of equity is never finished. Hāpara’s guiding principle is that every child deserves equal access to a great education, and we provide tools and support that make classrooms more equitable and help them get better everyday. But of course, we can’t do it alone. An objective as ambitious as this one necessitates systemic change and investment -- a paradigm shift even. Hāpara is glad to be part of that change as we have been for millions worldwide. We will advocate for your students and teachers every day on this journey together towards equity.?

Works cited

Forgette, Christie, "Teacher Perceptions of Open Educational Resources in K-12 Mississippi Classrooms" (2020). Honors Theses. 1309. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1309