OER at City Tech

Author: Joanna Thompson (Page 1 of 7)

Accessibility 101: Open Edition

“For accessibility to become embedded in our everyday thinking and world, we all need to realize the role we all can play in accessibility.  We need to incorporate accessibility into workflows and considerations.  Try to step back and think “is X accessible? Is there a way I can make Y accessible?” Ensuring accessibility does not need to be part of a person’s job description or a person’s personal experience and life to become something all people can participate in.“ (Amy Wolfe, OER Accessibility Toolkit) 

Accessibility is a core part of OER programming at City Tech. Developing course materials with accessibility in mind can help with course delivery across modalities and remove barriers to engaging with course subjects. Rather than making course materials accessible after accommodation requests have been made, we can make our courses accessible to everyone from the start by building accessibility into our instructional design process. If you aren’t sure where to start with making your courses accessible, below you’ll find openly licensed materials about digital accessibility, including document, image, and video accessibility. 

  • Accessibility Toolkit for OER by CUNY Office of Library Services’ Accessibility Librarian, Amy Wolfe (Updated 2023). License: CC BY-NC-SA
    “This guide was created to assist CUNY Librarians, faculty, staff & OER developers create accessible content and accessible Open Educational Resources (OER). On this guide you will find information on:
    • Creating Accessible Content: Tips on how to create accessible content including, word docs, pdfs, Images, videos, social media posts and other multimedia
    • Platforms: What OER platforms are accessible? What are the pros and cons of using each platform?
    • Evaluating your OER site: Determine if your site is accessible and see how to fix issues on your site
    • VPATs: Voluntary Product Accessibility Template: Collection of VPATs from various vendors to see relevant information on how a vendor’s product or service claims to conform to the Section 508 Standards.”

  • Digital Accessibility as a Business Practice by Greg Gay, Frank Miller, and Christopher West, The Chang School of Continuing Education at Toronto Metropolitan University (2019). License: CC BY-SA
    “This resource provides business leaders with the tools and knowledge needed to effectively enable digital accessibility in an organization through cultural change, raising awareness of its importance, and equipping employees with the specific tools and knowledge they need to address digital accessibility as part of their everyday work.”

  • Flexible Learning for Open Education (FLOE) Project by The Inclusive Design Research Centre and OCAD University. License: CC BY
    “Learning happens best when the experience is personalized to individual needs. Open Educational Resources (OER) that are open to use and adapt, provide an opportunity to meet the diverse needs of learners, including those with disabilities. The FLOE Project supports the OER community in providing a sustainable, integrated approach to accessible learning, addressing the needs of learners who currently face barriers.” The FLOE project materials include a variety of open guides and toolkits as well as other open education efforts such the Coding Educator’s Toolkit, Ecocultural Mapping Project, and more.  

  • Improving the Digital Accessibility of OER by Amy Hofer (2020). License: CC BY
    This post provides an overview of accessibility and evaluating inaccessible OER as well as a detailed account of the author’s accessibility workflow. 

  • OER Accessibilty Tookit by BCcampus, Camosun College, and CAPER-BC (2018). License: CC BY
    “The goal of the OER Accessibility Toolkit is to provide the needed resources to each content creator, instructor, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, and teaching assistant to create a truly open and accessible educational resource — one that is accessible for all students.” The OER Accessibility Toolkit is available on one site page here.

  • Professional Web Accessibility Auditing Made Easy by The Chang School of Continuing Education at Toronto Metropolitan University (2019). License: CC BY-SA
    “Digital accessibility skills are in high demand, as the world becomes more aware of barriers in digital content that prevent some people from participating in a digital society. These are essential skills for web developers, and essential knowledge for organizations that want to ensure their web content is reaching the broadest audience possible.”

  • Understanding Document Accessibility by The Chang School of Continuing Education at Toronto Metropolitan University (2020). License: CC BY-SA
    “With much of the world gone digital, learning to create documents that are accessible to everyone is becoming a necessary skill. Intended for a general audience, this free resource reviews a wide range of document authoring applications, including the tools they contain for creating accessible documents, and tests them to ensure they do not contain potential barriers. Learn how to create accessible word processed documents, spreadsheets, presentation slides, and PDF documents, among others, so they are accessible to everyone.”

For more information about OER and OER programming at City Tech, email OER Librarian Cailean Cooney at ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu.

Open materials in Gender & Sexuality Studies

Starting this semester, the OER team is highlighting open educational resources in underrepresented disciplines with an emphasis on sharing high quality open materials.

This post focuses on gender and sexuality studies and was compiled by Jo Thompson. The materials within this post may be of interest to those in Gender and Sexuality Studies as well as those working across the Social Sciences and Humanities. Enjoy!

  • Gender: Reflections and Intersections (2022). Vancouver Island University. License: CC BY-NC-ND
    • “Gender: Reflections and Intersections is the collaborative culmination of student contributions in the Sociology of Gender Relations class (SOCI 322) in the Fall term of 2022 at Vancouver Island University.” Topics covered include gender and sports, gender bias in medicine, gender-expansive early childhood education, and more. 
  • Gendered Lives: Global Issues (2021) by Nadine T. Fernandez and Katie Nelson. License: CC BY
    • “Gendered Lives takes a regional approach to examine gender issues from an anthropological perspective with a focus on globalization and intersectionality. Chapters present contributors’ ethnographic research, contextualizing their findings within four geographic regions: Latin America, the Caribbean, South Asia, and the Global North. Each regional section begins with an overview of the broader historical, social, and gendered contexts, which situate the regions within larger global linkages.”
  • Global Women’s Issues: Women in the World Today, extended version (2012) by Bureau of International Information Programs, United States Department of State. License: CC0
    • “We cannot solve global challenges unless women participate fully in efforts to find solutions. Female participation in the private sector is a crucial economic driver for societies worldwide. Economic security benefits every facet of a woman’s life, with positive effects on the health, education and vitality of families. Learn about women who are changing their societies for the better. This extended version of Global Women’s Issues: Women in the World Today includes, for each chapter, a summary, key words, multiple choice questions, discussion questions, essay questions, and a list of additional resources.”
  • The Homosaurus by The Digital Transgender Archive. License: CC BY-NC-ND
    • “The Homosaurus is an international linked data vocabulary of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) terms. This vocabulary is intended to function as a companion to broad subject term vocabularies, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions are encouraged to use the Homosaurus to support LGBTQ research by enhancing the discoverability of their LGBTQ resources.”
  • Introduction to Human Sexuality (2022) by Ericka Goerling, PhD and Emerson Wolfe, MS. License: CC BY-NC-SA
    • “[The] first section, Reflections and Explorations in Human Sexuality, includes ten chapters ranging from Sexology to Gender to Sexual Behaviors. In many ways, Part 1 is a great example of introductory human sexuality and many of the subjects have personal application to one’s experiences and learning. Our second section, Part 2, is Professional and Clinical Topics in Human Sexuality and covers topics such as Sexuality Over the Lifespan, Sexually Transmitted Infections, and Sexual Dysfunctions and Treatment. While our Part 2 is still considered introductory in nature, it does have a more clinical/professional approach to topics in terms of learning. [The authors feel] that all these subjects hold value for students’ personal and professional development whether they’re going into psychology, social work, gender and sexuality studies, nursing, public health, anthropology, or something else entirely.”
  • Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach (2022) by Deborah P. Amory, Sean G. Massey, Jennifer Miller, and Allison P. Brown. License: CC BY
    • “Designed for an introductory course, this textbook takes a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of LGBTQ+ issues that helps students grasp core concepts through a variety of different perspectives.”
  • Introduction to Women and Gender Studies (2020) by Deborah Holt. License: CC BY
    • “The overall goal of the content selected for the creation of this book is to [b]roaden understanding and awareness of Women and Gender studies in the Humanities produced within the cultural and historical contexts of social groups throughout the world drawing upon such fields as art, literature, religion, philosophy, and music.”
  • Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies (2017) by Miliann Kang, Donovan Lessard, Laura Heston, & Sonny Nordmarken, University of Massachusetts. License: CC BY
    • “This textbook introduces key feminist concepts and analytical frameworks used in the interdisciplinary Women, Gender, Sexualities field. It unpacks the social construction of knowledge and categories of difference, processes and structures of power and inequality, with a focus on gendered labor in the global economy, and the historical development of feminist social movements. The book emphasizes feminist sociological approaches to analyzing structures of power, drawing heavily from empirical feminist research.”
  • Marking Gender in Spanish by Silvia Rivera Alfaro. License: CC BY-NC
    • “This open educational resource is created for language learners who want to make independent decisions on the politics over their bodies and identities and determine how they would like to be called while learning Spanish. The material can also serve teachers and professors as a resource to help navigate this challenging topic of our current times. This guide allows the learner to gain a basic understanding of Spanish grammar and its relationship to gender in an independent way. It intends to be not only a resource to decide how you would like to be named but also to understand the complexity of the subject, in relation to Spanish-speaking societies.”
  • Persistence is Resistance: Celebrating 50 Years of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies (2020) by Julie Shayne. License: CC BY-NC
    • “Persistence is Resistance is a collection celebrating 50 years of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. Contributors are a diverse group of scholars, from undergraduate students to faculty emeritus, representing twenty-four institutions. Essays cover GWSS’s history, praxis, and implementation. The book also includes artwork by GWSS undergraduates and alumni, and their answers to “why GWSS?” Persistence is Resistance is ideal for the classroom because the essays are short, jargon light, and inspire feminist inquiry, activism, and pride.”
  • The Psychology of Gender (2023) by Suzanne Valentine-French and Martha Lally. License: CC BY-NC-SA
    • Topics covered include and introduction to the psychology of gender, methods for studying gender, theories of gender identity, and more.
  • Sexuality, the Self, and Society (2022) by Susan Rahman, Nathan Bowman, and Dahmitra Jackson. License: CC BY
    • “Content included in Sexuality, the Self, and Society is aligned with the typical scope for an introductory, interdisciplinary Human Sexuality Textbook. It is written to be a complete text for a semester length course but could be used, in part, reorganized, or edited in true OER fashion. It is meant to be accessible, relevant, and inclusive. It also will not remain static meaning that the author will continue to update periodically and those who adopt may do so as they see fit.”
  • Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Employment Discrimination (2017) by Matthew William Green. License: CC BY-NC-SA
    • “This Chapter will address the current protections that are available to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (“LGBT”) individuals who allege they have been victims of employment discrimination. The Chapter’s primary focus will be on federal statutory law, particularly Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although the focus here is on federal law, Appendix I to this Chapter lists the states that protect individuals from public and/or private discrimination under state laws.”

Get inspired by CUNY OER work!

Happy Summer 2023! To celebrate the start of summer, we want to share some of the important work being done by our colleagues across the CUNY system. Below are just a few examples.

  • Concepts in Statistics (School of Professional Studies)
    A replication of the openly-licensed book from the Online Learning Initiative. Concepts in Statistics is an “[i]ntroductory statistics [text] designed for students who may have a weak algebra background.”
  • The CUNY 1969 Project (Baruch College)
    The CUNY 1969 Project was developed over several years and is housed by the Baruch Center for Teaching and Learning. This project started as The CUNY Game, “an open-access gaming pedagogy model about CUNY’s student activist histories.”
  • CUNY Digital History Archive (Graduate Center)
    “The CUNY Digital History Archive is a participatory project, a counter-institutional archive that centers the experiences of students, workers, faculty, community residents, retirees, and alumni. We take an active approach to documenting CUNY history from the ground up, because we believe that today’s students deserve to know the people’s history of the people’s university.”
  • GC Music Teaching Hub (Graduate Center)
    “This is an online space that allows instructors to find and share teaching materials developed for music classrooms at CUNY. In addition to uploaded documents, you can also find a community-generated list of online music teaching resources and a collection of fact sheets for the CUNY campuses at which most graduate instructors teach.” The GC Music Teaching Hub is organized by current and former graduate teaching fellows of the CUNY Graduate Center Music Department. 
  • Marking Gender in Spanish: A Guide for Language Learners (Graduate Center)
    “This open educational resource is created for language learners who want to make independent decisions on the politics over their bodies and identities and determine how they would like to be called while learning Spanish. The material can also serve teachers and professors as a resource to help navigate this challenging topic of our current times. This guide allows the learner to gain a basic understanding of Spanish grammar and its relationship to gender in an independent way. It intends to be not only a resource to decide how you would like to be named but also to understand the complexity of the subject, in relation to Spanish-speaking societies.”
  • Teaming (Baruch College)
    “Our mission in this platform is to facilitate the unlocking of this potential by providing evidence-based resources so that you can successfully engage in teaming: to leverage the diversity of perspectives and experiences in your team, and to do so in an inclusive way. Our hope is to help your team to work together and solve problems that matter, to innovate, and to develop every team member’s skills and thinking to meet the demands of modern, collaborative, and diverse organizations.”

If you have questions about OER or OER programming at City Tech, contact Cailean Cooney, OER Librarian at ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu.

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