Latest research into open texts and social justice
May 11, 2020
As Australian institutions seek to find ways to reduce costs for students in COVID19 times and beyond, free online texts and a pivot to open-access rather than for-profit publishing could play an important part. To find out about the latest research in this area, please join us for the launch of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) special collection focused on Open Education and Social Justice.
This special edition, co-edited by Open Textbook project leader Sarah Lambert, is a collection of international research papers devoted to the topic of social justice and digital equity.
In particular, there are 3 excellent papers in this collection that have produced practical/applied research into open education textbooks (economic and identity justice for diverse equity learners) that are related to the Open Textbook project. The 3 papers are:
- a quantitative study from the US looking at benefits of Open texts for black and Hispanic/minority learners;
- a case study of a National Open textbook project in South Africa; and
- an exploratory quasi-experimental study of the effects of diversifying the contents of an open textbook to correct gender-mis representation in a 100 level Psychology textbook.
The papers were also developed in a way that “walks the talk” of social justice for the authors who wrote the papers. Funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation provided mentoring for the authors to ensure that a wide range of emerging and experienced scholars from global south and regional universities could be included.
The launch will be held on the 13th May via Zoom and participants will hear from some of the authors who contributed to the special edition. The editors will also talk about the process of justice and equality for diverse authors in academic research- a topic of interest for all Australian Universities.
Please register your online attendance via Eventbrite or come back here a few days after the event to view a recording of it.
Image Credit: Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay