Making the case for open access as a tool for inclusive education

"A recent report by New America explains another set of factors contributing to the issue: widely convoluted adoption processes, districts’ limited capacity to develop and curate new materials, and schools’ lack of time to prepare teachers to implement them well all contribute heavily to the persistence of exclusive and irrelevant materials. To make matters even more challenging, pandemic-induced online learning has exacerbated the need for better materials while also demanding the majority of schools’ time be spent on addressing urgent and unexpected health and safety matters. Both the need for better materials and the capacity to deliver on it are unprecedented.

One possible tool for meeting this moment—and sustaining inclusive learning down the line—is open educational materials, or OER. Unlike proprietary textbooks, OER are licensed with a Creative Commons license, making them free to use, adapt, and share. These materials typically live in online repositories, such as OER Commons, but don’t need to be used digitally; they are free to download, print, and use offline. Though still relatively niche, OER are already used by a number of states and districts maintaining their own repositories, which took off after the launch of #GoOpen, a federally-funded effort by the Department of Education to increase access to quality materials...."