CIDER Session: Experience of online faculty in using open pedagogy to support social justice

You are invited to the next CIDER session on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. This online session will feature Dr. Melissa Ashman of Kwantlen Polytechnic University presenting her research on supporting social justice through open pedagogy.

Experiences of online faculty in using open pedagogy to support social justice

It's often assumed that open education, by virtue of improving access to education, de facto supports social justice, but this is not the case. Additionally, online learning is generally thought to improve students' access to education because of the flexibility in when and where to learn that is possible, but it can, in fact, be a site of social injustice for historically marginalized students. As a result, using open pedagogy in an online course to support social justice requires intentionality on the part of the instructor.

In this presentation, Dr. Ashman will address the central research question: What are the experiences of post-secondary faculty members who teach online using open pedagogy to support social justice? In answering this question, she has developed a social justice model of open pedagogy that faculty members can use to plan how they will engage in open pedagogy to support social justice while avoiding the perpetuation of potentially marginalizing teaching practices.

Registration is not required; all are welcome.

About CIDER

CIDER is supported by the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL) and the Centre for Distance Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Athabasca University: Canada's Open University and leader in professional online education.

The Sessions and their recordings are open and available to all, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.