The Regional Leaders of Open Education Network (RLOE) is about building diverse human networks that center the perspectives of and shift power to the marginalized in order to create conditions for their voices to shape a new vision for open. We believe that open education can be a key lever in bringing justice to higher education and a razor sharp focus on supporting underserved and underrepresented student populations.
Framing our work with social justice and equity at the forefront, we seek to broaden our impacts and address the enormous systemic problems that inequity and racism bring to our students. Systemic problems need a huge variety of actors in every corner to combat them, therefore our leaders should come from a variety of institutions in a variety of institutional roles and with a variety of areas of influence. Integral to making systemic changes, we feel that it is important to continually question what leadership means.
In this panel the RLOE leadership team will bring their personal experiences and engage participants in an exploration of the following foundational questions:
What is justice for higher education? How can open education be a key lever in the justice we seek? Who has agency within our organizations and is empowered to make change? How do we nurture a diverse range of leaders that can help drive agendas for open education that focus on underserved students? Who are the leaders and future leaders? How do we empower leaders and help them grow to take the next steps towards equity and justice confidently? How do we make sure our organizations center our historically underrepresented and underestimated communities in open education? What expertise needs to be connected for big challenges that face our projects and organizations? How do our leadership development programs assist leaders to adapt open practices within their own spaces in order to most effectively impact the underserved students in their particular institutions?
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Question the future of leadership for Open Education.
- Identify strategies for recruiting, supporting and empowering underrepresented open education leaders (including student leaders).
- Explore open practices that can most effectively impact the underserved students in their particular institutions.
