Research Guides: Open Educational Resources: UN Sustainable Development Goals Fellowship

UN Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellowship Program

CCBC has joined with Montgomery College in Maryland, Maricopa Community Colleges and Pima Community College in Arizona, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Langara Community College, and Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, and ULACIT in Costa Rica as part of the Leadership Team directing the UN Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellowship Program. This fellowship aims to create renewable assignments based on the 17 sustainable development goals established by the United Nations. Faculty chosen for this award-winning fellowship program will be partnered with faculty from the four other institutions to create 3 renewable assignments. The application for this fellowship is linked below. Please be sure to read through the description and all requirement before submitting an application.

Please contact Jamie Witman (jwitman@ccbcmd.edu) or Cynthia Roberts-Whitelock (croberts@ccbcmd.ed) if you have any questions.

CCBC Leadership Team:

Jamie Witman

Cynthia Roberts-Whitelock

Natalie Johnson

Shawn Crosby

You can read more about renewable assignments here:

Renewable assignments: Student work adding value to the world

Are Your Assignments Renewable or Disposable?

OER-Enabled Pedagogy

UN SDG Fellowship

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellowship

Description

Open educational resources (OER) increase equitable access to education and empower students in the learning process. Open pedagogy – an approach to teaching and learning that draws on OER - places the student at the center of that learning process in a more engaging, authentic, and collaborative learning environment in order to achieve social justice in the community. Montgomery College in Maryland, Maricopa Community Colleges and Pima Community College in Arizona, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Langara Community College, and Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, and ULACIT in Costa Rica are committed to supporting social justice through this international partnership in which faculty can work across institutions to maximize global impact.

This global award-winning fellowship[1] provides faculty with an opportunity to work with their colleagues and students to impact change via open pedagogy and community engagement. The conceptual framework on which this fellowship is based is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), which is a set of 17 goals that address a wide range of social issues, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and peace and justice. The SDGs are designed to achieve and maintain social justice and a sustainable future, with a target of the year 2030 set for the attainment of each goal.

[1] The fellowship was awarded the Open Pedagogy Award for Excellence by Open Education Global (OE Global) in November 2020.

This fellowship is designed to assist faculty with creating renewable assignments[1] (all of which will carry a Creative Commons license) to help students become agents of change in their own communities. Each fellowship team will design three renewable assignments in Summer 2022. A minimum of two renewable assignments will be deployed in the classes of each fellowship team during Fall 2022. Faculty will be expected to present on their proposed assignments prior to their deployment. A student showcase will take place during Spring 2023 (tentatively set for February/March 2023) in which a select number of students will present on how they improved their communities and achieved global justice through open pedagogy using the UN SDG framework.

Fellowship teams must include 2 to 3 instructors from different disciplines and different institutions so as to maximize student impact. It is anticipated that 10 teams will be selected. The table below lists the requirements of the fellowship, which must be met in accordance to the timeline shown:

Deliverable	Deadline
Pre-Event Session	April 2022
4 Virtual Meetings 1:00-4:00 p.m. EST	Thursday, June 16, 2022 Thursday, June 23, 2022 Thursday, June 30, 2022 Thursday, August 4, 2022
3 Creative Commons Licensed Renewable Assignments	Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Course Data	Friday, October 7, 2022
Faculty Reflection	Friday, December 16, 2022
3-Minute Student Video	Friday, December 16, 2022
Faculty/Student Showcase Presentation (Optional)	TBD in February/March 2023

[1] Renewable assignments (also known as non-disposable assignments) are those that add value to a student's world, live outside of the boundaries and beyond the duration of the course, and are likely to have a lasting impact. Disposable assignments, on the other hand, are those that only the instructor and students will see and which students are likely to throw away once they have been graded (Seraphin et al., 2019; Wiley, 2013).

CCBC faculty interested in becoming a UN SDG Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellow should discuss their interest with their chair and dean (Signature Form Below). If selected, you will be partnered with a faculty member(s) from an external partner institution. Communications with their faculty partner(s) can be done entirely through web conferencing and/or email. The application, which can be found here: UN SDG Fellowship Application must be completed by April 1, 2022. In Part 3 of the application please upload the signature document with your chair and dean’s signatures of endorsement (Signature Form Below). Applicants will be notified of acceptance into the fellowship the week of April 12, 2022.

In preparation of filling out the application, please be advised that in Part 2 you will be asked to read Open Pedagogy by Robin De Rosa and Rajiv Jhangiani, and respond to the following prompts in narrative form:

In one paragraph, describe how open pedagogy, as outlined by De Rosa and Jhangiani, might benefit your students in your proposed course(s).
In one paragraph, describe how open pedagogy might benefit your discipline.
Describe other reasons why you would be intersted in becoming a UN SDG Open Pedagogy Faculty Fellow.

For questions, you can contact:

Cynthia Roberts-Whitelock: croberts@ccbcmd.edu

Jamie Witman: jwitman@ccbcmd.edu

UN SDG Fellowship Signature Form

Prof. Danielle Truskowski:

"My fellowship experience deploying my interdisciplinary renewable assignments was a great learning experience. I enjoyed the time working with Dawne, who is outside of my college, country and discipline. This experience gave us the opportunity to think outside the box since we teach students from vastly different backgrounds, from different cultures, and different subjects. It surely took quite a bit of time, but now that I have done this once, I believe it will be easier to create smaller or a similar project in the future.

Being a mathematics professor, the first questions I received when they saw the project was still, “Why are we doing all of this in math class?” After we went over the project I think it was clear on how much math is truly incorporated in to other subject areas and life in general. The students seemed interested in even discussing such research in an interview type setting as well. My hopes and hopefully theirs too are to not have this project die at the end of their class and semester."

Prof. Dan Krausz:

"For my SDG project a fellow faculty member from Montgomery Community College and I developed three assignments centered around the UN sustainable development goal #2 – Zero Hunger. Being that he taught sociology and I nutrition, we determined to focus on the topic of “food injustice”. For this we created three scaffolded assignments for students to complete blending our two disciplines. The first was a public service announcement-style video in which the students reported on a particular aspect of food injustice such as environmental health, workers right, animal right, food insecurity, public health, etc. Next, they were to create an “action plan” to determine who the individuals/entities that could affect change were, and how they could make a meaningful difference in the matter. Lastly they were asked to carry out their plan and report on its effect.

I was certainly pleased with the design of the assignments and I truly enjoyed the collaborative process. Due to time constraints I decided to deploy this as two assignment, blending the second and third portions into one. My course was offered fully online asynchronous this semester and had VERY low enrollment with just seven students. I felt this created a bit of a disconnect between my students and I in regards to this effort, despite my detailed instructions, video announcements and reminders. I feel that this project could have been much more impactful if it was delivered in a face-to-face format. In the future I will also have my students select their topics and devise their action plans much earlier in the semester to allow for more time to carry it out.

Despite the challenges I was very proud of the project design and my students’ efforts. Examples of their food injustice actions included letters to state politicians, educational news letters, donations to a local food bank and educational posters. Upon interviewing two of them, I learned that they had no idea of the impact our dietary patterns had on the planet and humanity prior to this activity. Beyond that, I found idea of open education practices and renewable assignments enlightening and plan to incorporate more of these into all of my course. I truly appreciate this opportunity to collaborate with fellow faculty from around North America and look forward to the future!"

Prof. Patricia Rhea:

"This was a powerful fellowship experience. Working with a professor from another field brought in viewpoints not previously considered. There were also differences at our learning institutions. Professor Rhea teaches in a large community college just outside a major city. Professor Lammie teaches in a prison. The pedological restrictions on higher education in the prison system was a challenge Professor Rhea had not yet experienced. These included limited available resources and no internet access.

The professors integrated a wellness discipline with a substance abuse education program into this interdisciplinary project. Specifically, our students in Maryland (studying wellness) and our incarcerated students in Arizona (studying substance abuse) became agents strengthening the prevention and treatment of substance abuse. This experience was about offering students open options to choose substances and treatment options that are meaningful to them. Ultimately this will create an open database of informational media on substances and treatment options that will inspire change in the community. The interdisciplinary nature of this scaffolded assignment allows the database to have many unique perspectives and the ongoing and ever-developing nature of open pedagogy will guide the database to evolve as the nature of substance abuse evolves within the community.

While the first three parts of the assignment went along smoothly (research and student peer review) the fourth (video presentation) did not. An unexpected issue with deploying the renewable assignment was with the first-person video Public Service Announcements (PSAs) – they were too good. The students rose to the occasion and created informative, factual, detailed drug presentations. In short, several videos were very believable. Therefore, to protect the students’ privacy and concern that viewers outside the class would consider the students drug addicts – the project presentations were restricted to the learning management system of the individual course. Next term instructions will include specific details on how to blur the speaker’s facial features and use assumed names."