The OER textbook Why Do I Have to Take This Course? A Guide to General Education, published through the Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens (ROTEL) project, helps students think about why they take General Education courses and what significance they have. It allows students to do something they often do not have the opportunity to do: contemplate the potential reasons for developing certain learning outcomes and skills as well as the applications to their professional and personal lives. Sections include stories, research, testimonies and reflections about student success, and activities, which can be used in their entirety or in parts as needed. In this workshop, we will explore General Education through the main lens of the book: what the late Civil Rights activist and Congressperson John Lewis called "good, necessary trouble,” an approach that applies anti-racist and universal design pedagogy. We will workshop how to utilize the book inside and outside of the classroom.
Attendees of this session will be able to:- Devise methods for using the OER textbook Why Do I Have to Take This Course? A Guide to General Education inside and outside of the classroom.
- Apply anti-racist pedagogy and an equity and inclusion approach to exploring the significance of general education with students.
- Develop strategies supported by OER to provide students time and resources for engaging with the why of general education learning.
