This document discusses open education and student co-creation of open textbooks at the University of Cape Town as a means to promote social justice. It outlines four models of open textbook production with varying levels of student and colleague collaboration. Case studies describe students taking roles in authoring and quality assurance processes. Interviews with authors found benefits like capturing student experiences and mentoring from students. While individual open initiatives can address injustices, the document argues true transformation requires institution-wide adoption to dismantle underlying power structures and embrace pluralism. Open education must advocate for free knowledge access globally to fulfill its social justice potential.

1. Enabling ‘students as partners’: Open textbooks, power
shifts and curriculum transformation
Glenda Cox, Bianca Masuku and Michelle Willmers
Digital Open Textbooks for Development, Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching,
University of Cape Town
May 2023

2. Bianca background

3. Glenda Cox
GOGN pic

4. Open
Education
at
UCT
Scholar
Scholar
Scholar
Student
Scholar
Community
2018-
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
VC Student
OER Project
Health OER
Project

5. Disclaimer
Initiated as a three-year (2018–2021) research, advocacy and implementation project funded by the Canadian
IDRC, following in wake of Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) and other CILT
open education initiatives (since 2007). Now an institutionally funded initiative.
Glenda Cox, PI, Michelle Willmers, Publishing & Implementation Manager, Bianca Masuku,
Researcher
Digital open textbooks for Development (DOT4D)

6. OER World Map
(Project ended 2022)

7. The world in crisis
• Climate change
• Uncertain futures (pandemics, war,
refugees)
• Continued unacceptable inequalities

8. Academic freedom on the decline
(0 Low-1 High)
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Institute of Political Science (FAUIPS, Erlangen-
Nuremberg), Germany, and the V-Dem Institute in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Countries on the decline are India, China, Britain, Mexico
and United States

9. Futures of Higher Education: A
new social contract
(UNESCO,2021)
This new social contract calls for:
• radically different approach to higher education with a focus
on openness, inclusivity and diversity.
• moving away from neoliberal competition towards higher
education as a public and common good.
• rethinking of existing pedagogy
• continuing but also moving forward from the intergenerational
relationship between lecturers and students to
‘intragenerational’ pedagogy where the presence of students
are foregrounded, building a truly inclusive democratic higher
education where students feel a sense of belonging.

10. UNESCO OER
recommendation
(2019)
The Recommendation is structured
around five actions areas
1. Building capacity of stakeholders to
create, access, re-use, adapt and
redistribute OER
2. Developing supportive policy
3. Encouraging effective, inclusive
and equitable access to quality OER
4. Nurturing the creation of
sustainability models for OER
5. Promoting and reinforcing
international cooperation

11. Social justice imperative

12. Social Justice as a framework to understand the
potential of Open Education
At the heart of the open educational resource
movement is the intention to provide
affordable access to culturally relevant
education to all. This imperative could be
described as a desire to provide education in
a manner consistent with social justice.
”
”
Hodgkinson-Williams, C.A. & Trotter, H. (2018)

13. Economic Dimension
● Material resources
● Maldistribution and
redistribution
Political Dimension
● Political voice
● Mis/representation
mis/framing
Social Justice as participatory parity (Fraser)
Cultural Dimension
● Cultural attributes
● Misrecognition and
recognition
> Participatory parity looks at the what, who and how of social justice
> Justice in each dimension can be remedied through affirmative or
transformative responses.

14. Overcoming injustices:
Affirmative or
transformative
Fraser identifies two types of
strategies to overcome injustice:
affirmative strategies, which include
activities aimed at ameliorating the
scope or intensity of a particular
injustice; and transformative
strategies, which seek to address
the root cause of an injustice.

15. Open education at the University of Cape Town

17. Social
Justice
Open
Education
Eg: Open
Textbooks
● Open licences
● Localisation
● Voices of
collaborators
and students
● Free
● Digital affordance: adaptability
● Co-creation
● Economic ‘distribution’
● Cultural ‘recognition’
● Political ‘representation’

18. https://africanarguments.org/2021/06/fallisms-faultlines-the-paradoxes-of-fees-must-fall/
openstax
We visited Rice University and spoke
with students about their perspectives on
free textbooks. Check back tomorrow to
see another student’s
perspective. #ForStudentsForever
https://www.buzzfeed.com/
husseinkesvani/oxford-
campaign-rhodes-must-fall
Economic distribution, cultural recognition and political representation
#feesmustfall

19. Student co-creation of open textbooks (UCT
case study)
Authors found ways in which to not only capture “persons’ own embodied
experience and their lived realities" in the authorship process, but also to
include their feedback in quality assurance.
Student participation is a critical aspect of the institutional
transformation agenda, in that it addresses social justice and inequity in
the classroom.

20. 'Students as partners' and co-creators
Global movement to include (UG) students in course design, facilitation and research
“a collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to
contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical
conceptualization, decision making, implementation, investigation, or analysis” (Cook-Sather,
Bovill & Felten, 2014)
Principles: respect, reciprocity and shared responsibility
More recently: attempts to think about power differentials
“Promoting Equity and Justice Through Pedagogical Partnership”
De Bie et al (2021)

21. Recognising student expertise
and giving them agency to be
creative and make decision
about their curriculum

22. Quote from Bovill- why she created the framework?
Why whole class ultimate?
Before class, in class, after class…where to involve
students and how?

23. Bovill (2020) terms of inclusion
(adapted by DOT4D)
Participatory design Stakeholders contribute to the design and development of
initiatives. including curriculum; students are “testers or
informants” and don’t have a high level of agency
Engagement Activities to motivate and interest students; can include
engagement in teaching and learning
Terms of inclusion: Colleagues Terms of inclusion: Students
Authorship Quality
assurance
Publishing Authorship Quality
assurance
Publishin
g
Mechanical
engineering
Engagement Participatory
design
None Engagement Participatory
design
None
General surgery Participatory
design
Participatory
design
None Participatory design Participatory
design
None

24. Bovill terms of inclusion (cont.)
Co-creation Contribute new pedagogical ideas; empowerment; meaningful
engagement; students construct understanding and learning
resources
Representative Elected role, small group representing whole group
Consultant Students selected and paid to collaborate
Co-researcher Collaborating meaningfully on teaching and learning research
or subject based research
Co-designer Sharing responsibility for designing learning, teaching and
assessment
Terms of inclusion: Colleagues Terms of inclusion: Students
Authorship Quality
assurance
Publishing Authorship Quality
assurance
Publishi
ng
Marketing to SA
consumers
Co-creation: co-
design
Participatory
design
Participatory
design
Co-creation: co-design [Ongoing:
Engagement]
None

25. Partnership​ Collaborative; contribute equally; some
pedagogical conceptualisation and
decision-making; implementation
and analysis​
Bovill continued: Partnership
Complex numbers Partnership Partnership Participatory
design
Co-creation: co-
researcher
Co-designer,
representative,
consultant
Participatory
design
None
Computer science Partnership Partnership Participatory
design
Engagement
Co-creation: consultant
[Ongoing
engagement]
None
Chemistry Partnership Partnership Participatory
design
Co-creation: co-
researcher
Co-creation:
representative
None
Terms of inclusion: Colleagues Terms of inclusion: Students
Authorship Quality
assurance
Publishing Authorship Quality
assurance
Publishi
ng

26. Models of Open Textbook creation and
production

27. Collaborative open textbook production
models
Aim: Provide open textbook creators with sustainable models of production that manifest “parity of
participation” as the just end point of social justice
DOT4D context: Four models of open textbook production reflecting varying levels of students and
colleague collaboration
● Participatory/Engagement Model
● Participatory/Engagement and Co-Creation Model
● Co-Creation Model
● Co-Creation/Partnership Model
AFFIRMATIVE REMEDY TRANSFORMATIVE REMEDY
None Participatory
design
Engagement Co-creation Partnership

28. Student co-creation
● In 6 initiatives, students took on various co-creation roles in authorship.
● In 2 initiatives, students were co-creators in quality assurance processes.
● Authors found ways in which to not only capture students’ lived realities in the
authorship process, but also to include their feedback in quality assurance.
Student participation is a critical aspect of the institutional transformation agenda, in that
it addresses social justice and inequity in the classroom.

29. Current research focus: Interviews with 3 authors
Author 1: Three students (one withdrew): one students worked on designing
questions/quizzes for open chapter, another worked on a technical platform
(students were paid for this work- consultants)
Author 2: Various levels, whole class participation, tutors and co-teaching
Author 3: Students made videos (assignment) and wrote chapters (invited
whole class but not everyone co-creating)

30. How do academics experience working with students in OT
production (what are the benefits)?
Author 1: “Overall positive”, “fairly freeform” “hands off approach”
Benefits: second and third year students… you have a positive impact to play within the
department… you have a real role to play here to improve things, something that we on our
own are unable to do.
Author 2: “Satisfying because the students respond really well to the idea”
Benefits “Whole class, same level”...” And I think it's important to involve all of them at the
same level because you just get a lot of work out and it's just rich”.
Author 3: It’s fantastic. It’s very interesting,..
Benefits: they are actually mentoring me a lot more than I’m mentoring the students. They
are so inspiring to me because they are on a completely different frequency

31. Titling the power balance )(giving students
agency
Whole class but structure
Selected excellent students- free form but specific roles
Power to students, they could decide how involved they wanted to be, he
asked for buy in

33. Marketing for SA consumers
● GIFT video
https://openbooks.uct.ac.za/uct/catalog/bo
ok/29
29745 downloads

34. Who are the students?
● Gift- FAME!
● Money is also good: Reward
● But they also expressed a concern about attribution
Current work is interviewing student collaborators and students

35. ● https://thegreats.co/artworks?theme=better-sharing
● For images

36. Social
Justice
Open
Education
Eg: Open
Textbooks
● Open licences
● Localisation
● Voices of
collaborators
and students
● Free
● Digital affordance:adaptability
● Co-creation
● Economic ‘distribution’
● Cultural ‘recognition’
● Political ‘representation’

37. Student co-
creation
Student
belonging
Institutional culture:
support or Clash?
Academics with
open values

38. Social justice is:
Open education is
Student co-creation is
Student belonging is
Partnering- definition Bovill
Partnering; Cook sather
Healy, De Bie , Matthews etc....
some partnered with colleagues
No partnering with students- implies equality.
Problemmatising the concept?

39. Belonging

40. Does open education address underlying structures of
dominance and subordination? (transformative justice)
Only if it is created and used across the institution and potentially across the
country and globally, in order to embrace critical reflexivity and pluralism valuing
previously excluded knowledge and legitimising indigenous resources. (Individual
agency to a distributed response)
Only then will we be “dismantling (of) institutional obstacles” or root causes of
systemic injustice that underlie the pursuit of participatory parity present in higher
education (Fraser,2005).

41. A call to organise Open education…
Emphasis in
market value
of HE
Technological
monopolies
(Technology
is never
neutral)
Perpetuating
injustices
Racism
Economic
Equity
Access
Intersectional
ity
Collaboration
Community
Voice
Generosity
Care
Empirical evidence for
open education and its
role in affirmative and
transformative justice
Knowledge for the Public
good
Norm creation
Distributed response
moving beyond
individual agency
‘The power of publication for
all’ Creative Commons

42. "Higher education needs to
be a fierce advocate for free
and open access to
knowledge and science"
(UNESCO, 2021:75)
By Preeti Singh for Creative Commons

43. References
Cox, G., Masuku, B.,& Willmers M (2022a) Sustainable open textbook models for social justice. Front. Educ. 7:881998. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.881998
DOT4D. 2021. Open Textbooks in South African Higher Education: Action Brief. Cape Town: Digital Open Textbooks for Development. Available at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_BFNLHPRcPP1f94GyR9EiZ98HKKu54f1/view?usp=sharing
Cox, G., Masuku, B. & Willmers, M. 2020. Open Textbooks and Social Justice: Open Educational Practices to Address Economic, Cultural and Political
Injustice at the University of Cape Town. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1 (2):pp. 1–10. Available at:
https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/31887
Fraser, N. (2005). Reframing justice in a globalizing world. New Left Review, 36, 69–88. Retrieved from https://newleftreview.org/II/36/nancy-fraser-
reframing-justice-in-a-globalizing-world
UNESCO. 2021 Reimagining our futures together: a new social construct. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379707
UNESCO. 2019. OER recommendations https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/recommendation-open-educational-resources-oer
Savarimuthu, B & Cranefield, S. 2011 Norm creation, spreading and emergence: A survey of simulation models of norms in multi-agent systems. Semantic
Scholar https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Norm-creation%2C-spreading-and-emergence%3A-A-survey-of-Savarimuthu-
Cranefield/a7072328d1a090b145cb065e6312b0f8a3b01273
https://projectnile.in/2021/04/29/crowdfunding-for-social-justice/ from website
Decline in academic freedom.
https://www.fau.eu/2022/03/03/news/research/academic-freedom-on-the-decline/