Category: Open Education

Authoring and editing Wikipedia articles as a social justice and open educational practice

Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has grown, evolved and been widely studied. Zachary McDowell and Matthew Vetter focus on information literacy and Wikipedia-based pedagogy in “Wikipedia as Open Educational Practice: Experiential Learning, Critical Information Literacy, and Social Justice,” an article published open access in Social Media & Society. Specifically, they use the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education as a metacognition and metaliteracy tool to examine social justice in the pedagogical practice of teaching with Wikipedia.

The authors interlace the six common stages of learning to contribute to Wikipedia – Learning to evaluate the article; Selecting an article to contribute to; Researching the topic; Annotating and summarizing the research; Drafting the article; Editing and responding to feedback – with the six frames of information literacy – Authority Is Constructed and Contextual; Information Creation as a Process; Information Has Value; Research as Inquiry; Scholarship as Conversation; Searching as Strategic Exploration. Through the process of contributing to Wikipedia, some of what students learn concerns:

  • becoming authoritative voices themselves and the associated responsibilities;
  • that information has value as a commodity, a means of influence and a way of making sense of the world;
  • copyright, intellectual property, plagiarism and licensing;
  • what Wikipedia’s neutral point of view (NPOV) policy means for representing a range of secondary sources without prioritizing one over another;
  • how information is constructed from other sources; and
  • how to participate in diversifying the world’s information landscape.

Wikipedia authoring and editing teaches people to engage critically with social, political and economic issues, and the skills learned empower people from minority groups to create authoritative sources to counter misinformation that has been directed at them. Authors from Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities have an opportunity to meaningfully engage with audiences and to address gaps in information about topics of interest to them. While working with Wikipedia has a learning curve and gatekeeping issues of its own, McDowell and Vetter encourage investigators, students and educators to find mentors or newbies, depending on their alignment, to support each other to “…utilize Wikipedia to engage, learn, and promote these broad issues of social justice. One edit at a time.”

Creating open scholarship by teaching and learning with open scholarship, in community

The authors of “Toward a culture of open scholarship: the role of pedagogical communities” note that as the open scholarship movement gains momentum, its goals of social justice, research quality and inclusive research culture are further advanced by training scholars in the practices of study preregistration, data sharing, replication studies and open access publishing. They argue that “open scholarship is incomplete without open educational practices.”

Integrating these practices throughout higher education curriculum is better achieved with pedagogical communities. They name several –  Open Scholarship Knowledge Base (OSKB), Principles and Practices of Open Research (PaPOR TraIL), Reproducibility for Everyone (R4E) – among others, but they elaborate on the Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT). FORRT includes 12 initiatives to date, including a glossary of open scholarship terms, summaries of open and reproducible science literature, and lesson plans. These pedagogical communities foster participation and collaboration, thus driving a grass roots movement for open scholarship to generate knowledge as a public good for all of humanity.

Inclusive access to college textbooks: is it the right choice?

Inclusive access, or automated textbook billing, has become a popular sales model for textbook publishers to provide course materials to students. Pitched by publishers as a way to save students money on skyrocketing textbook prices, the inclusive access model may not be entirely positive. The new InclusiveAccess.org initiative was developed by open education resource organizations, Creative Commons, SPARC, student PIRGs and others to provide facts about automated textbook billing programs and their consequences. The site has sections for administrators, students, faculty and policymakers and addresses myths vs. facts, frequently asked questions and resources for further action.

Helping faculty use their open education work to gain tenure or promotion

Time is a limited resource and the uptake of open scholarship in academia is dependent on recognition of the efforts invested in it. Open Education in Promotion, Tenure, and Faculty Development was produced through the Iowa OER project to help faculty present their work with open educational resources in ways that will be recognized for promotion and tenure (P&T). P&T criteria generally include assessment of teaching, research and service. This resource provides a rubric of OER activities and the evidence that matches the P&T criterion. It also outlines a rationale and strategy for gaining recognition of OER work in P&T requirements, advocacy that has been well done by the UMass Amherst Libraries OER Team. In fact the UMass Amherst Provost Annual Promotion and Tenure Memo is cited as one of three policies that addresses OERs for P&T. The rubric presented in this paper can help faculty make their cases.