Guest post by Dr. Laila Abu-Lail (She/Her), Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Chemical Engineering, and Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE)
Living in a diverse world where technology is advancing every day, I find that access to free educational resources is a necessity and aligns very well with my philosophy as a teacher. As a faculty member, I was inspired by open educational resources (OERs) as learning tools that helped me research materials for my courses. While researching and using OERs, I got more excited about the intersection between OERs and social justice. Recognizing the value of creating a more inclusive curriculum in the engineering field, I wanted to introduce OERs into a new graduate course that I was developing.
The new graduate course titled “Environmental Health and Engineering” offered for the first time this past spring as part of the Civil, Environmental, & Architectural Engineering (CEAE) curriculum and had a diverse student body including chemical engineering, CEAE students, and students from the global school was the perfect fit to introduce and utilize OERs. The course focuses on addressing global environmental issues that have negative impact on our lives and have a profound effect on marginalized and underrepresented communities.
To decrease the cost of learning materials, OERs were adopted exclusively as reference materials for the course. In addition, students worked in teams on a term project to highlight the significant work of a marginalized figure addressing a global environmental issue while utilizing OERs and creating an OER library of literature for future students. The focus on utilizing OERs that aligns with social justice principles is important and new to engineering students. It is crucial for our engineering students to recognize the significant work of underrepresented communities and to consider the impact of their engineering solutions on these communities.
This initiative has the potential to increase student awareness about OERs and to strengthen their understanding of the connection between course content and social and environmental justice issues.
It’s very inspiring to see inclusive OER work in our graduate courses! This project thoughtfully blends OER reference materials while also involving students in co-creating resources that expand awareness of marginalized people in environmental issues – work that will enrich the experience and awareness of students in future courses.