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Bossu, Carina and Iniesto, Francisco
(2023).
URL: https://eden2023.exordo.com/programme/presentation...
Abstract
Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) has been a topic of recent debate within the Open Education (OE) community, and some would argue that it has underpinned the OE discourse since the beginning. However, access to free and online resources alone, such as Open Educational Resources (OER) cannot be considered equitable, diverse, and inclusive. In fact, the large majority of OER are only available in English, which limits access and reach for many learners around the world (Bossu et al., 2023). The Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN) is a network of PhD candidates around the world whose research projects include a focus on open education. These doctoral researchers are at the core of the network; around them, over two hundred experts, supervisors, mentors and interested parties connect to form a community of practice. EDI has been driving the GO-GN agenda since its foundation in 2013, but it was only in 2018 when its first projects directly related to EDI was developed; the first one had a focus on EDI in Open Education in Africa, followed by a second project which focused on Latin America. One of the aims of these projects was to increase representation from these communities within GO-GN, as despite attempts, most of GO-GN participants are from Global North/developed countries. Another aim was to reach those who could potentially benefit the most from being part of this network (Rodés & Iniesto, 2021).
In this presentation, we will briefly explore key aspects of these two EDI projects. We will also present, the GO-GN EDI Guidelines, which is an evidenced-based document that contains set of guiding principles that prompts questions and raises issues to be considered by higher education institutions, individuals, and in particular for GO-GN, and other similar initiatives wishing to create a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive open education environment so that it can benefit those who need it the most. Although the EDI guidelines were informed and contextualised by some of the regions of the Global South, it can be changed and adapted to suit different EDI and open educational contexts.