This report details the results of a 2022-23 pilot program using the Equity Through OER Rubric, a tool designed to help institutions assess and improve their open educational resources (OER) initiatives through an equity lens. Sponsored by DOERS3 with funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the program involved six institutions across the US and Canada.

What is DOERS3?

The Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success (DOERS3) Collaborative is a group of public higher education systems and statewide/provincewide organizations that are committed to supporting student success by promoting free, customizable open educational resources (OER). Launched in 2018 and primarily focused on higher education in the U.S. and Canada, DOERS3 helps member organizations implement, scale, and sustain OER by advancing research and policy, sharing tools and learnings, and showing how OER can foster equity and student success. In partnership with 37 participating systems and statewide/provincewide initiatives (at the time of writing) and 10 affiliate members, DOERS3 serves over 7.84 million students at 876 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada.

Since its origins, DOERS3 has focused on research, innovation, and equity as drivers to building engagement, evidence, and sustainability of OER and as a means to help the world’s increasingly diverse student populations be successful. As membership has grown and work groups have delved more deeply into priorities and projects to build capacity, develop a research agenda, and support equity through the use of OER, the organization’s areas of focus have been refined and expanded. The result is a set of resources used worldwide to advance the impact of OER in addressing barriers to student success; the importance of closing gaps in outcomes that go beyond course materials; and institutional infrastructure, practices, and policies that structure how higher education institutions organize and deliver education.

What is the Equity Through OER Rubric?

The Equity Through OER Rubric, henceforth referred to as the “Rubric,” is a self-assessment tool for various partners in higher education to evaluate their OER efforts through an equity lens as it impacts students, faculty, administrators, and other academic practitioners. It draws on theoretical frameworks and academic research, and includes three broad organizational categories – students, practitioners, and leadership – each with several dimensions, and a scale of adoption by which users can evaluate their OER engagement.

The Rubric invites users to think more holistically about the structural and policy components of cultivating and achieving equity through OER and its application. It seeks to span silos and engender collective responsibility by bringing into the OER conversation not just the common units and spaces for doing OER work but the interstices of that work. The Rubric assists those using it to find the in-between and connecting spaces and functions that will lead to more comprehensive and therefore impactful engagement leading to quality and effective educational delivery and more equitable student outcomes. Engaging with the Rubric asks users to apply an equity lens to all corners and aspects of the academic enterprise as a means of elevating where equity is and is not but needs to be attended to.

The Rubric is one component of the DOERS3 OER Equity Blueprint. The OER Equity Blueprint emphasizes the importance of integrating OER initiatives with individual institutional goals of promoting student success and access. Students should have access to high quality and affordable academic materials and programs. The overarching goal of the OER Equity Blueprint is to enable users to integrate OER across higher education leading to equitable student access, outcomes, and success.

The Pilot Program

With generous funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Equity Through OER Rubric pilot was launched as a demonstration project to test and assess the Rubric and its design as well as its intended purposes and users.

Grantees were asked to produce four deliverables as part of their participation, some public-facing and some meant for their own internal purposes and those of the Equity Working Group. Templates were provided for each of the deliverables, designed to allow customization as well as some uniformity in grant products. The single institution projects each received $10,000 for their participation; the community college system received $14,000. Each grantee worked with two mentors from the DOERS3 Equity Work Group.

Key Findings

Over the course of the pilot program, we categorized key findings across five themes spanning from evidence and impact to collaboration and community building. Our findings will be used to improve the Rubric and its usability, as well as the mentorship component of the grant program. Our insights are summarized below:

• Finding 1: Evidence & Impact: The Rubric encouraged participants to consider data from a variety of sources to understand the impact of OER efforts on equity. This led to the identification of new data collection needs and a stronger appreciation for data-driven decision making.
• Finding 2: Engagement & Shared Responsibility: The project highlighted the importance of collaboration across institutional departments to address equity gaps in OER initiatives. It also revealed the need for administrative support and faculty development to foster a culture of shared responsibility.
• Finding 3: Institutional Capacity: The comprehensiveness of the Rubric exposed limitations in some institutions’ resources for implementing a robust OER program with a strong equity focus. This report acknowledges the challenges faced by institutions with limited staffing and high turnover among faculty, staff, and leadership.
• Finding 4: Student Experience & Agency: Grantees stressed the importance of incorporating student engagement by inviting students to provide their input for programmatic success and ongoing promotion of the equity dimensions of OER.
• Finding 5: Collaboration & Community Building: Team leads found that project teams with cross-departmental and cross-institutional representation raised the profile and visibility of OER and its relationship to practices and institutional objectives that strive to advance equitable access, opportunity, and student success.

The final section of this report outlines Rubric improvements. We identified several key improvements to consider when revising the Rubric in the future, including:

• Definitions and resources for key terms
• A one-page high-level version
• Acknowledgement of different institutional contexts
• Language translations
• Expansion of the inclusive pedagogy definition to include Universal Design for Learning

Conclusion

The enduring strength of the Rubric is in demonstrating the capacity-building enabled by OER engagement to remove barriers to student success and close gaps in outcomes, to enhance educational quality and institutional effectiveness, and to bring added dimensions of leadership and accountability to this work. We invite you to read the full report to learn more about our key findings and engage with our recommendations in greater detail.