Guest Post: Furthering access, equity and pedagogy: Developing a new OER/OEP resource By Catherine Cronin, Celine Peignen, Claire McAvinia and Angelica Risquez | OERxDomains Conference

One year ago, the FemEdTech Quilt of Care and Justice in Open Education was shared publicly at #OER20. The quilt was a labour of love, coordinated by Frances Bell and created by feminists across multiple continents. #OER20 and the launch of the quilt seem more than just one year ago, after this year like no other. As #OERxDomains21 approaches, we wonder what physical artefact could possibly capture the work of care and justice in open education of this past year. How to describe the work of keeping going, supporting, caring, repairing, calling out injustice, advocating, falling, rising, keeping going – in education and more broadly? We look forward to connecting with all at #OERxDomains21 to consider these and other questions – and to sharing our own open work.

We are four open educators in higher education in Ireland, all actively supporting students and staff who teach across a number of domains, organisations and institutions. During the early months of remote/online teaching, each of us found ourselves sharing with colleagues the potential of open educational resources and practices (OER and OEP) for designing authentic assessments, building/adapting textbooks, developing digital/data literacies, fostering student-staff partnership and furthering equity. We began collaborating last summer with a vision of answering many of the questions we had received and describe the potential of using OER and OEP in various contexts. With the support of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, our plan was to develop an OER/OEP resource, to share and invite feedback on this resource, and later to develop a short professional development course.

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