This Symposium was held on Friday, May 3, 2019.
The Symposium focused on the intersections of pedagogy and scholarly production that emerge around openly accessible, zero-cost materials. Questions of “open” are implicitly tied to deeper issues of access in higher education. The movements towards Open Access publishing and the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) emerged as a dual response to the high costs of academic journals and textbooks, respectively. Publishing materials with an open license allows for them to be redistributed freely, yet it also raises questions about the behind-the-scenes work required to create them.
Keynote speaker Clelia Rodríguez (author of Decolonizing Academia: Poverty, Oppression and Pain) spoke to these implications – which kinds of knowledge are contested, and which are silenced and contained? Using a decolonial perspective, Rodríguez’ work considers how we can use the guidance of our ancestors, tap into our own knowings, and the way that “open” challenges existing models of academic hierarchy and authority.
