Interventions in Art History and Visual Art: A Professor's and Graduate Teaching Assistant's Journey to OEPs

This presentation shares the experiences and motivations of Dr. Sara Ishii, Art History and Visual Culture professor, and Hanna Selman, MFA candidate and Understanding Art instructor for using and adapting Open Educational Resources (OERs). Dissatisfied with World Art History commercial textbooks’ limited discussion of global art history, Ishii began her path to Open Educational Practices (OEPs) by adapting existing OERs for her classes. In her portion of the presentation, she will discuss her work on remixing OERs, publishing on this work, and further developing OEPs through the TWU Heart Initiative Grant. Selman, dissatisfied with the culture/gender inequities and the financial inaccessibility of commercial Art Appreciation textbooks, found through working with Ishii, that she can reformulate the TWU Understanding Art course to use OEPs. In her portion of the presentation, she will highlight the process of finding OER’s and implementing them in an accessible way within the digital learning space. Through their interwoven efforts to incorporate OEPs into the visual arts and art history curriculum, Selman and Ishii reflect on the benefits of developing and adopting open access materials in order to address social justice concerns and better serve our students.