 Welcome to my new video. This week I'm going to address the opportunities and challenges of embracing equity in open education. But first I'll define what equity means. Today equity is often perceived as a counterpoint to equality. Equality aims to treat everyone the same regardless of their individual strengths or weaknesses. Equity on the other hand aims to support and empower those who are in need. So how exactly does this apply to open education? Many students in K-12 education in the US today are attending classes with vastly outdated materials and their educators are having to use personal funds to supplement class budgets. Open education offers a possible solution to this problem, or part of the problem at least. Open educational resources, or OER, are openly licensed and freely available to access online. Because of this, instructors are able to offer students in low income areas different more current learning materials by utilizing OER in the classroom. But that's not the only benefit that OER offers. Another way that open education supports students is by encouraging engagement with course resources. Whether it's interactive simulations like those offered by FETSIMS or openly licensed lesson plans, teachers have many options for adopting OER. For colleges and high schools, many open textbooks offer interactive quizzes and annotation features so students can engage with their materials in new ways and improve their learning. Having diverse resources to use in the classroom in content, language, and format can be incredibly powerful for enhancing the learning experiences of students. Suzanne Wachim, OER coordinator for Butte College, has stated that providing students with options for learning the material engages them in the learning process. By providing these resources as self-study materials, educators don't have to compromise when it comes to accommodating their students' unique learning needs. That's one of many ways we can work toward equity in education, giving students all the tools they need to succeed, curated, and provided for them to use as they need. But there are challenges to pursuing equity through open education as well. Often, it's harder to implement these resources well in school districts that need them the most, and some have argued that using OER only enhances the lack of equity in U.S. schools by showing that educators in better funded schools are given the resources they need to implement OER well. So let's explore some of these issues. First, let's address the most obvious problem. Although not completely, OER are largely online resources, and not every student in the U.S. has access to the internet or even a personal computer at home. The FCC's 2016 Broadband Progress Report states that 39% of rural residents lack a high-speed fixed broadband service. From personal experience, I'd say the problem is more widespread than that, if you count households with no personal computers in the home, whether they could technically get broadband or not. Another issue arises when you consider the low availability of technology in many K-12 schools and the lack of available rental laptops for students in poorer colleges. You might say, but students have technology all the time now, we're always seeing those articles about students with iPads in the classroom, right? But not every classroom has a computer for every student or a keyboard with all its keys, and because of this, these classrooms can't take full advantage of the available resources regardless of their cost. And technical limitations aren't the only issue here. There are many cases where OER has made a big difference for student learning, but these cases can only happen where educators are given the time and money to make the materials work for them, or when educators put in the time themselves whether they can afford to or not. Open education can be transformative, but it is not a quick, patch-and-you're-done type of job. It takes work to integrate open practices into the classroom, and that work needs to be understood and accounted for by administrators and advocates alike. Before I end this video, I need to make a quick point. Some of these challenges can be overcome. There are challenges to implementing OER well, but what's important is that we recognize the opportunities as well as the challenges that come with each of our teaching environments and actively work to support educators who are doing the best they can for their students. Thanks for watching my video. Please share the video if you'd like to spread the word about the opportunities and challenges of supporting open education for student equity, and leave a comment if you'd like to join in the conversation.