You’ve got a lot going on, and you’re doing it. Your energy, your dedication to making this a better world, you are amazing. Your faculty and professors admire you too, and they are trying to do whatever they can to help support your success. They know that it is frustrating to spend a bunch of money on textbooks that are seldom used in class or required only for homework. They realize that representation matters, and that many, many people in our community do not see themselves in the textbooks we require you purchase. They know that what drives you to explore and learn has nuances unique to your lived experiences, and that ‘one-size-fits-all’ instructional experiences are frequently actually ‘one-size-fits-hardly-anyone’ or ‘one-size-fits-people-life-already-works-for’.
They are trying to fix this by shifting to teaching and learning resources that you do not have to purchase. They are finding and creating resources that reflect you and your communities. They are crafting instructional designs which can be modified to address and help give life to your goals and what you know to be true. They want your time in their course to be the transformational university experience you have been told you can expect at OSU.
Your voices matter . As university administration become aware of your appreciation for faculty engaged in this work, they will be able to justify allocating more resources to supporting faculty doing this work. They result will be even more courses which don’t require you to purchase a textbook, and even more faculty empowered to discard the traditional, commercial educational resources which frequently act as a barrier to innovation in teaching and learning. My gig is to help support this shift. Click here to be heard. You can say ‘yes, please keep doing this’, ‘yes, this is why I appreciate faculty who are doing this’, and, if you are interested in participating in activism associated with this cause, say ‘yes, I want to help amplify these successes’.
Thank you for sharing your voice. ~Kathy