In 2022 the RIOS (Racially Just, Inclusive, and Open STEM Education) Institute awarded a grant to a faculty-staff team at WPI to develop a white paper on the status of inclusive OER initiatives, focused on social justice issues. The team, including Marja Bakermans, Courtney Kurlanska, Sarah Stanlick, Lori Ostapowicz-Critz, and Anna Gold, produced and published a white paper in August 2022, entitled “Small is Beautiful: OER for Cultural Change in a STEM Institution,” which was featured in the June 2023 QUBES newsletter.
RIOS, a virtual synthesis center, provides resources for STEM educators to implement just and equitable open pedagogies (https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/rios). RIOS can be found on QUBES (Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis), a social platform https://qubeshub.org/about that provides an open and inclusive virtual space for sharing STEM classroom activities and resources, discussing teaching and the adaptation of educational materials to specific institutional contexts, and working together to develop new ideas and insights that contribute to STEM education reform. For more information on OER work at WPI, see https://wp.wpi.edu/open/, and to learn more about OER, see the library’s extensive guide: https://libguides.wpi.edu/oer
