Happy Spring!
I just came back from two weeks of conferences including the Online Learning Consortium: Innovate and the Social Work Distance Education Conference. Though exhausted and behind in grading, I am inspired by the amazing work that is being done in online education! I engaged in numerous conversations about how our digital world presents opportunities to change the educational system making it equitable, innovative, and a place to create community and connect with our global digital community.
As social work educators we are called to instruct students about social work theories, history, and knowledge AND prepare them with the skills needed to practice social work. However, our purpose does not stop there. As social work educators, specifically online educators, we need to confront injustice in our digital world, both in the educational system and at large.
There are current movements that are addressing these issues inside and out of social work. One area that MSU Denver is focusing on is using open educational resources. Open education resources are free and anyone can revise, remix, reuse, retain, and redistribute the materials listed. This means you can use the materials, lectures, and books for your class free of cost to your students. The OER movement wants to disrupt “who” gets to produce knowledge and share it. In addition, it addresses issues of access by offering all resources FREE of cost. Explore the web sites below and see what you can find. Also, Check out what MSU Denver is doing to encourage the use of OER!
Web Sites with OER resources:
- The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources – CCCOER is a joint effort by the OER Center for California, Foothill-De Anza Community College District, the League for Innovation in the Community College and many other community colleges and university partners to develop and use open educational resources (OER) and especially open textbooks in community college courses.
- OpenStax is a non-profit digital ecosystem serving millions of users per month in the delivery of free educational content to improve learning outcomes.
- Free Online Course Materials is a California State University MERLOT collection of over 35,000 open course materials.
- MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
- The Open Course Library, from Washington State University, is a collection of expertly developed educational materials – including textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments – for 81 high-enrollment college courses. 42 courses have been completed so far, providing faculty with a high-quality, affordable option that will cost students no more than $30 for textbooks.
- OER Commons was created as a network for teaching and learning materials, the web site offers engagement with resources in the form of social bookmarking, tagging, rating, and reviewing.
- The Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organization that provides leadership, networking and support for educators and educational institutions to achieve their objectives through Open Education.
- WikiEducator is a community project working collaboratively with the Free Culture Movement towards a free version of the education curriculum by 2015. Driven by the learning for development agenda WikiEducator is developing free content for use in schools, polytechnics, universities, vocational education institutions and informal education settings.
- The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.
In addition to OER, digital social justice issues being addressed include artificial intelligence and algorithms. Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble has been conducting research about how algorithms contribute to oppression. Dr. Ruha Benjamin just wrote a book about Race after Technology and speaks across the globe about our responsibility as educators to address injustice in technology. Dr. Benjamin is speaking on the MSU Denver campus on May 30th, register NOW.
What is our role as social workers to combat these injustices, prepare students for navigating change in the digital, and constantly questioning educational technologies impact on equity and justice? I challenge you to think about your class and your online presence and identify an area that would benefit from disruption, challenge, or tender care.
Starting in our own house,
- How do our online classes create equitable and just environments for students and instructors?
- What can you change in your class or share with your students that works actively to create a just digital world?
- How are our courses encouraging students to contribute their expertise and experiences to the larger digital world and knowledge base of social work?
- How are we using digital education to liberate current oppressive systems of education?
MSU Denver Department of Social Work is committed to asking these questions and continuing to improve our online educational offerings to our students. We look forward to having you on this journey of digital justice.
Feedback and Lunch:
Please join me to review your online teaching experience this past year and provide feedback to the department to improve our online education. On Thursday May 16th at 11am, we will host a get together for online instructors to give feedback about their online teaching experience and to provide recommendations for improvement. With your help, our online program improves every year. Following our feedback session, please have lunch on us.
LUNCH IS ON US May 13 through 16th! Please sign up for lunch BEFORE midnight on May 6th for one or all of these days by clicking here, then stop by CN 103 between noon and 1pm on your sign up day(s) to pick up a boxed lunch. If you happen to be meeting with your lead faculty that week, this is a perfect opportunity to grab lunch before or after that meeting. Affiliate Faculty Appreciation Week Sign up.
**If you are unable to make it, please feel free to share your feedback via email. Please email Ann Obermann at [email protected] with any feedback, suggestions, or input to our social work online delivery.
Upcoming MSU Denver Social Work Online Training:
Are you teaching online this summer? Do you have questions or need a refresher about online teaching? Send me an email, plan on attending one of our online synchronous trainings, and/or feel free to look at the resources below for great help in online teaching (including an OER online course for teaching online . . . FOR FREE). Please RSVP.
August 14th 3:30pm to 6:00pm MSU Denver Central Classroom 201 or Online via Zoom https://zoom.us/j/5809705887
This is an opportunity to ask instructor specific questions about online learning and teaching as you are preparing your courses for the semester to start. Ann Obermann and other online committee members will be available in the office and online via Zoom. This is open house style so you may overlap with others virtually or in person.
Resource Links: