CCCOER’s Open for Anti-Racism program supports faculty from California Community Colleges who wish to leverage Open Education to make their teaching anti-racist. Our first cohort is running from January to June 2021. Participants began with a four-week, facilitated online course to learn about Anti-Racist Pedagogy, Open Educational Resources, and Open Pedagogy, and the connections between these. During Spring 2021, participants utilize OER or open pedagogy to make their teaching, in a live class, explicitly anti-racist.
An interview with Joy Shoemate, one of the course developers and facilitators, was recently conducted by project co-leader, James Glapa-Grossklag.
Tell us about the course. What are the major topics? How is it structured?
The Open for Anti-Racism (OFAR) course is a four-week, facilitated online course developed for California Community College faculty participants. The purpose of the course is to better understand antiracism, then explore how OER and Open Pedagogy can be leveraged to make participants’ courses antiracist. The course is divided into four modules which cover the major topics of the course, plus an orientation module. The course culminates with participants creating an action plan where they identify actionable change they will implement in their courses this Spring 2021.
How did you approach creating the course? Did you need to research more about some topics than others?
It has been nothing short of a pleasure developing and facilitating the course with Dr. Kim Grewe, Instructional Designer at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA). She and I both had more experience with and comfort surrounding OER and Open Pedagogy, so we made it a point to spend a great deal of time researching and discussing how we wanted to build the module on antiracism. Antiracism is central to the course, so we approached the content with humility and a commitment to honor the work of experts in the field.
We had a goal of immediately trying to build a sense of community with participants because there is a great deal of vulnerability required to lean in to the discomfort surrounding difficult discussions around race and racism. As facilitators, we were excited to learn from participants and knew each of them were bringing in a wealth of knowledge. We were intentional about exploring concepts from a theoretical and practical standpoint, and scaffolding content so as to support faculty participants with the development of their action plans.
Did you discover some resources that make you really excited?
Yes! There are so many wonderful resources I discovered while building the course. The Anti-Racist Discussion Pedagogy guide by Dr. Selfa Chew, Dr. Akil Houston, and Dr. Alisa Cooper; Becoming an Anti-Racist Educator by Wheaton College Massachusetts; White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo; any and everything by Ibram X. Kendi; Open Pedagogy and Social Justice by Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani…I could keep going!
I must add, it has been exceptional having Dr. Alisa Cooper serve on the Advisory Board for this project. We referenced her incredible work on the Anti-Racist Discussion Pedagogy in the course, so it was special to have a colleague whom I respect so deeply provide feedback on the course and support faculty participants in a mentor capacity.
What are key things you hope participants will take away?
I hope participants are inspired by the possibilities of leveraging OER and Open Pedagogy to build antiracist courses. I’m excited to see the creative ideas participants come up with. It’s not necessarily the case that OER reflects the racist structures of society less than commercial materials, but with OER, you can make things better!
Why were you interested in developing and facilitating this course?
I was interested in developing and facilitating this course because this type of training is so very necessary and I haven’t seen anything like it. It challenged me to think critically about how we may dismantle racism in our coursework and to imagine OER and open pedagogy as the vehicles to do so. After we finish the initial offering and make some updates, we look forward to releasing the course – it’s openly licensed of course!
Joy Shoemate is the Director of Online Education at College of the Canyons. She supports OER development on campus and implements training on online teaching and learning. Joy completed the Online Network of Educator’s (@ONE) Peer Online Course Review training to support faculty with online course design that is equitable and supports student success. Most recently, she led a project to develop three Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) pathways in Career Technical Education programs. Joy also serves as a Co-Advisor of the college’s African American/Black Student Alliance, with a mission to support students’ sense of belonging, building of community, and self-efficacy.
