Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
When authoring your content, you’ll want to keep the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion on the forefront. Our goal is to create resources that respect and reflect the myriad identities and lived experiences of our student population.
The University of Southern Queensland developed the Framework for Reviewing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER). It’s a practical starting point for creating new open educational resources (OER) and assessing and editing OER for inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility (IDEA). Each section below notes a broad category to assess. The “Aims” list requirements to fulfil the needs of the category. The “Actions and Considerations” offer areas to assess, tips, and examples that will help achieve the aims.
Note: this framework briefly mentions accessibility, but we’ll do a deeper dive on accessibility best practices in the next section.
Framework for Reviewing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER)
You can also download an editable copy of the Framework for Reviewing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in OER. This framework is adapted from OpenStax’s Improving Representation and Diversity in OER Materials [PDF], licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License.
Key Takeaways
- Equity, diversity, and inclusion should be central to your authoring process. Creating original content or revising existing content gives us an opportunity to create resources that reflect the wide range of identities and experiences of our students.
- Tools like the Framework for Reviewing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in OER can be helpful in evaluating strengths and weaknesses in your resource and identifying areas to make improvements.
Adapted from Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER) by University of Southern Queensland, licensed CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License.
