 Hi everyone. Welcome to our presentation. We are going to talk about strategies for assessing and adapting OER for inclusion. Go to the next slide please. So my name is Rachel Arteaga. I'm a librarian at Duke College and I'm also the discipline lead for the ASCCOERI. And Mondi, do you want to introduce yourself? Yes. My name is Vandeep and I teach biology at Duke College. Duke College is in California, USA. Go ahead and go to the next slide. So our presentation is kind of up in conjunction with the Academic Senate for the California Community Colleges, the Open Educational Resources Initiative, which is their mission is to expand the availability and adoption of OER. So Mondi got a grant through them to work on this project. And then I also worked with them over the summer to continue on some of the resources that were created. So go ahead and go to the next slide. Yeah, so this is a human biology book that I and Suzanne Joaquim, so she couldn't be here for the presentation. But we collaborated to make this first Butte College OER human biology book with the help of ASCCC grant. So this book is hosted on Libre Texts. So they provided us with the platform. And they also provided us with the technical help. And this book is free of charge, right? It's online, it's accessible. And after we got this grant, and we put this book on Libre Texts, Suzanne and I thought, oh, this is perfect, right? We got this book. But, you know, during one semester, about a couple years ago, we were at our college attending this gender and sexuality equity team presentation. It is called a safe zone training. So where we learned that there are students and there's a staff and that don't see themselves, like their students don't see themselves in the books. They don't see themselves in the staff and the teacher or the professors at their college. So they feel kind of like left out. So we thought, and then Suzanne and I thought, oh, you know, our book needs a little modification. So maybe we don't represent our student population in our book. So we applied for another grant to make this book more equitable, more inclusive, and we got another grant from ASCCC. And we tried to make this book more inclusive. But the thing is, like we got the grant, but now we were not sure how we were going to do this. They have, we're going to make the book inclusive, so how we are going to go ahead with the project. So I got, I became a member of gender and sexuality equity team. And they helped me come up with a survey. So that's what I did. That's what we did, or I mostly I worked on this part of the project. So we created this survey. So there are nine questions on the survey. So we gave it out to faculty and staff and a few students and we asked them if they could see the gaps in the book, if they could see what is missing in the book. So there is a sample of three questions out of the nine questions you can see over here. And also when you get these slides, if you click on the survey questions, you can actually, it takes you to the survey questions, which are hosted on our website, the college website, where you can see all the questions and you can use them if you want to make your book inclusive. So these three questions that I got, these red text is the feedback that I got. So the first question, I was amazed that some people, they rated one on, you know, one to five scale and some rated all the way to four. So people just saw different things in the book that could be fixed or improved. For the second question, how well do the images reflect our student body? What recommendations do you have for making the images more inclusive? So most people said that they did not see diverse pictures of diverse population that we have at the college. Most of the images were of white people with skin or white passing individuals or women. They were pictures of pictures. They were not enough pictures of women scientists or non video, non white videos were also not, you know, there. So there was like, basically, there was not diversity. So most pictures were of white individuals. For the third question, where in the book should LGBTQ identities and perspectives be added or more clearly articulated? So there was a lot of information that we got from feed from the survey. Reproductive strategies of different species had normative assumptions are unfounded. So they asked me to add information about, you know, and organisms in general, right? So this is all human made things. So this is male, this is female, right? So they were intersex representation was missing sex chromosomes were called like female sex chromosomes, male sex chromosomes. So there are other things you can see there's a lot of things which could be improved in this book. So when we when I looked at these answers, and then I looked at the book so you can guys can actually see one of the examples. So this is the chapter 14 in our book. And I looked at a lot of pictures, a lot of content and study case studies. All I see was white representation. So I did not see includes, you know, diversity in these case studies and the images. If you just look at this picture, you know, you would assume that oh, if I'm showing a person with high heels, it should be a white person, you know, with white skin, skinny white person. So that's what I had. And if we look at the name, most of the names were just, you know, American names and Melissa loves wearing high heels. And she so we know Melissa has to be she. So these are the things that I started noticing after I looked at the survey results. And so what we did is, you know, so this is one example. So how did how did I modify this? So you can see that I changed the image. So here image of people with different skin tone. And we can also see muscle tone. And so this is a muscular female so female could be muscular and also a name that I changed the names. So I used diverse names from different cultures. So when students are reading these case studies, so they're talking about names and they're talking about cultures. I also tell reader that Amari uses gender neutral pronouns. So I introduced these gender neutral pronouns, they them there. So these are the some of the changes that we have made. We also included some information about different cultures, their food, their, their lifestyle. For example, here you have I took an opportunity to introduce my own culture a little bit. I'm from India and I cook Indian food. So that is also part of the biology of human rights. So once we are used to of something, we, we feel sad when we don't have it. So people, they come from different cultures, they bring their culture with them, they bring their recipes in their spices. For example, this is a nice picture, but actually this chapter is about phytochemicals. It's not about Indian culture or Indian food only. And then also in some case studies, I have included people with different abilities. So here you can see a person on a wheelchair, but here I'm not talking about ability or disability. So this chapter is about carbohydrates. So this person has this nice cotton candy. So we're focusing on the cotton candy, but we cannot resist looking at this person that this person is on a wheelchair to. So this is one example. So the most problem that we had was in the reproductive chapters, because all the information that's out there is about, oh, this is a male, this is a female, and male does this, females body does this. And there's not enough information about different gender identities. And not, not even like people who, you know, who identify those, whether those identities, they don't actually know about those identities. So there's not enough information. So I have a little note for the reader, right? As you're reading, so there are going to be some information, which is going to be heteronormative, right? It's going to be kind of presented as, Oh, this is what male does. This is what female does, or this is what male's body is, females body. So there's no kind in between. So if you read, so I have some information about what these acronyms mean, LT, BTQ, what that means. And also, why I don't have information because there's not enough science, there's not enough research that's happening in these in this field. So here you can see that you can see that I have defined different terms, for example, bisexual, what does that mean? Queer, what does that mean? And the other, you know, pansexual, what that means. So there is a lot of information. So there was this and also developmental chapter was a little hard. And also the other problems that we had was people had a hard time reading these case studies when they saw the single person with them, their pronoun. So we introduced something little controversial. But eventually, I think people are accepting. So this book has been adopted by many instructors over in all over California and even internationally. So yeah, so this is our book. And now Rachel is going to talk. So this is going to talk about like how we created a framework after this experience to tell, you know, to kind of introduce this to other instructors if they want to change their OER content. Okay, Rachel, it's your turn. So you want to share your yeah, I'm doing it really quickly. Okay, so as a librarian, I work with faculty across campus adopting open educational resources, mostly doing searches for them and answering questions, but also helping throughout the whole process. So I was one of the people who did the survey that Monty sent out to respond. And there really was coming from both students and from faculty a need to kind of make this process a bit easier because Monty and Suzanne did a lot of work. It was, you know, a big process because they were figuring out how to do it for the first time. So I thought why not try to make it easier for people that wanted to do this? So why did we develop this framework? I talked a lot to Monty about the process you went through with the biology texts. And like I said, we actually got a request from a student that was like, why can't everyone do this? Like, can you help more faculty do this? So we wanted to streamline this process and really saw it as a way to have better content and design for textbooks. It also allows more diverse authors and students to create content because of course OER, depending on the license, you can modify and edit them. And as you saw with the examples, you can really be culturally responsive with your teaching and have textbook examples that are unique to your population. So our student population in Butte County is going to be different than a population somewhere else in California or somewhere else in the United States. So you can really tailor your texts to your diverse student population. So like I said, we worked with the Academic Senate, the California Community College's Open Educational Resources Initiative, because they wanted to develop a process like this also. So we thought we'd make a broader scope to the framework and really give faculty opportunities for innovation when they create OER or work on OER. So we wanted to make the case for people who both had questions about this process and were hesitant about making their resources more diverse and inclusive, but also provide resources for people who were ready to do this. So we also recognized that every discipline is going to be different. You heard about some challenges with biology, like explaining the scientific part of sexual reproduction is going to be a different challenge than say for a math textbook. And we also know that we are possibly asking people to reconsider what they know and how they know what they know in their discipline. So this was all part of the process that we worked on actually over the summer to expand the framework. So the framework has different components that were created to kind of walk you through or walk a faculty person through the framework. So it's divided into specific areas to review, and each area has two sections, the restorative requirements and elements for consideration. So what we wanted to do is restore and include voices that had been previously excluded or marginalized. And then the goal of each section is to meet those requirements. And so the way that you would meet those requirements are by looking at the elements for consideration, which basically tells you, it gives examples and tips and areas to assess to help meet those requirements. And I will show you some examples in a minute. So I'm not going to go into every single component, but I just wanted to give a snapshot of how the framework is divided. So there are different components, illustrations and photos, example names, gender inclusive language, and the use of pronouns. How do you address that? How do you address researchers and people in your field, whether historical or current, how do you bring diversity to that? Because these are textbooks and they will have references and bibliographies. How do you give credit to diverse researchers and authors or make sure that you give credit to diverse researchers and authors? And then application examples and problems, how do you create those for diverse audiences? What are the appropriate or what is the appropriate terminology? Addressing keywords, glossaries and metadata representation, providing balanced perspective on issues and making sure that underrepresented groups are included. And then there is a section at the end that is additional resources with things like style guides, where to find diverse images and things like that. So now I'm going to show you the framework. So I just wanted to point out that this is a work in progress. We're not actually totally done working on everything with the team that we put together over the summer. It's almost complete, but we have someone editing it right now just because there's some little revisions. So when everything is done and the draft framework that we have now is shared on the Butte College page, but it will be shared in other places too, but I just wanted to have the link when you use the slides and during the presentation we'll share it so that you always know where to look at the most current version. So now let's look at, well let me first show you the page. So this is where the framework will live with the most updated version is the Butte College page, but then it'll also be shared on the OERI page at some point. We just don't have a space for it yet. So we have the survey that Monty mentioned. We have the framework, the original version, and then we have the updated version that the ASCCC worked on over the summer. Okay, now let me show you the actual framework. So what we did is we wanted to not just have the different elements that you would need to work through if you wanted to look at a text, but we also provided information like why is this important and what is a background and cultural awareness of editing a textbook for inclusion and diversity. More about specifically OER, who writes OER. Rachel, are you sharing the document right now? Oh, you can't see it. And it can't see it yet. Shoot. Okay. You have to stop sharing and stop sharing again. Did you see the website? I saw the website. Yeah. Okay, that's weird. Can you see it now? Yes. Okay, I'm sorry about that. So this is a framework. The link was on the website page. It's open so you can copy it and edit it if you would like to to make changes. Let's look at the actual framework. Sorry, I'm scrolling. So this is the framework. The first section is illustrations and photos. And so I'm not going to show you everything because we just have one more minute. But this was a really good example. Monty walked you through what she did by looking at specific photos. So you can see the requirements is make sure your images and photos reflect diverse populations. Students are able to see themselves. Don't perpetuate stereotypes. So then how do you make sure that you do these things? So look at your images. Analyze what they're actually showing. Where are the connotations of the image? Look at your book as a whole and also section by section. We have some examples that are used. And then just really quickly I'll show you we have examples of applying different elements to the framework. So examples for the first three sections, which is basically the same example that Monty talked about, but walking you through how you can do this. So each section is broken down with examples, ways to meet the requirement and the elements that you should consider. So I think we're pretty much out of time. I just wanted to give you a snapshot of what you would see. So during the presentation, hopefully we will either be able to share the slides that have links or share the actual link so you can find this information. Thank you for attending our presentation. Thank you.