In this session, Amanda Coolidge will discuss how open practices can support precarious contract academic staff, especially during these challenging times. She will share issues of access, affordability and equitable design principles that lay the foundations for open practice. Further, she will highlight the digital inequities that have been surfaced and heightened as a result of the pandemic and how open practices can, in some ways, alleviate those inequities. In addition, Amanda will share examples of open education practices in Art, Art History and Visual Culture.
Amanda Coolidge is an uninvited settler on the Esquimalt and Songhees Nation of of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) Speaking Peoples. Amanda Coolidge is the Director of open education at BCcampus in British Columbia, Canada. She leads the province's initiatives in open education from open textbooks to open pedagogy and with a team of nine other people who work across British Columbia to enhance access for students. Amanda has a Masters in educational technology and has had many years of experience as an instructional designer at various universities across Canada. Amanda has worked in open education in Calgary, Alberta; Nairobi, Kenya and in British Columbia. When Amanda is not at work she can often be found on the beaches and in the woods of British Columbia traveling with her family in their 32 foot fifth wheel RV. Amanda, her husband and her son live in the RV seven months of the year and enjoy everything there is about the outdoors and the opportunity to explore across North America.
