Equal Access: Teaching World History in Community College Survey Courses using Open Education Resources (OER)

AHA Session 79
World History Association 1
Friday, January 7, 2022: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Galerie 6 (New Orleans Marriott, 2nd Floor)
Chair:
Nathan Sleeter, George Mason University
Panel:
Monica Ketchum, Arizona Western College
D. Jack Norton, Normandale Community College
Tom Rushford, Northern Virginia Community College
Merry Wiesner-Hanks, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Session Abstract

Open Education Resources (OERs) can make higher education more equitable for students in an era of ever rising costs, particularly if they provide instructors with high-quality peer-reviewed teaching resources. Issues of equity are especially salient in community colleges, which provide introductory survey courses to an increasingly diverse student body. As part of a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the team behind the World History Commons OER, housed at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and the New Media at George Mason University, are collaborating on a project with community college faculty to determine how OERs can best be incorporated into survey courses. While OERs have great potential to benefit both instructors and students, instructors face challenges that may make them hesitant to adopt OERs, including the fact that they often teach many sections, sometimes at more than one institution. In this session, experienced community college faculty will lead a discussion on how this project has adapted the World History Commons OER to the particular needs of community college instructors and students. For example, while recognizing that traditional textbooks are attractive to instructors, especially beginning instructors, due to their efficient organization of the curriculum into weekly units, this workshop will discuss ways to move away from this "coverage" mindset towards explorations, deeper dives, and historical thinking. Other topics might include how to make OERs like World History Commons work effectively with the variety of Learning Management Systems (LMS) used at different community colleges. The session will outline the approaches developed during this ACLS project and also invite ideas from all attendees for how to serve the needs of community college instructors with OERs.
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