From Syllabi to Textbooks - Accessibility in OER

From Syllabi to Textbooks - Accessibility in Open Educational Resources for Institutions of Higher Education

A series of 3 no-cost intensives designed to build capacity in IHE teams

ISKME and CAST’s National AEM Center invite teams of faculty to learn how to use accessible Open Educational Resources (OER) to make learning more equitable and bust the barriers to learning that millions of learners experience every day. 

The Accessible OER Academy series is provided at no-cost to faculty at Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) and will introduce cohorts to how openly licensed resources are key levers for both adapting existing resources to increase digital accessibility and designing resources that are accessible for learners with disabilities from the start. Participants will also gain an understanding of how accessibility relates to Universal Design for Learning (UDL). 

We invite educators from the same Institution to form a cohort. Throughout the six-week series, cohorts will receive access to a curated set of high quality resources to review and adapt for use in their own settings. Institution cohorts that complete all six sessions will be invited to present at a national summit alongside CAST and ISKME. Each individual participant of the Academy will receive a certificate of completion. Each team will submit one application.

We encourage cohorts of 3-5 faculty to represent a diversity of lived experiences, classroom expertise, and current educational roles. Consider building your team with representatives from full-time faculty, part-time faculty, disability services, ed tech, assistive technology, library media, and administration. Your team will produce resources that can be used with and to benefit all learners, so consider building a team that can collaborate for instructional purposes. The cohort will explore modifying a variety of resources - with a focus on syllabi and entire textbooks.

The series will consist of three 90-minute webinars with three 90-minute implementation sessions between each. All sessions will be at 1:00pm ET/10:00am PT.

• 101 - Collaborative Questioning and UDL - on May 4th and Implementation Session May 11th

• 201 - Adapting and Creating Accessible OER on May 18th and Implementation Session May 25th

• 301 - Curating and Evaluating OER for Accessibility on June 1st and Implementation Session on June 8th

Apply as a team by May 1st. If you have any questions, please contact Joanna Schimizzi (joanna@iskme.org) or Alison Driscoll (adriscoll@cast.org).