By Josie Gray, manager, Open Education, BCcampus
In July 2023, BCcampus funded a project to adapt Introduction to Psychology – 1st Canadian Edition through the lenses of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
This textbook was first adapted by BCcampus in 2014 to make what had been an American-focused textbook more applicable to teaching psychology in a Canadian context. In eight years, this textbook was used in 200 psychology courses in B.C. and saved students $810,000 in textbook costs. By 2022, we knew it was very out of date and had some specific equity issues. With funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, BCcampus decided to fund a DEI-focused adaptation of the textbook to address these issues.
The project team quickly realized that the existing Canadian edition would be a challenging starting point for an adaptation. Instead, the authors looked to other introductory psychology open textbooks that referenced more up-to-date science, or where others had already started the work of making the content more equitable. As a result, the final book is a remix of five different open textbooks in addition to considerable original content.
Successes
Collaboration across institutions and roles
When BCcampus began project planning, we knew we didn’t want this to be a one-person project. Adapting an open textbook can be complex so having people with different areas of expertise is important. In addition, we wanted an author team to represent different institutions who could share the load and bring different perspectives to the project.
The team that worked on this project included 10 people across five institutions. It included authors, editors, project managers, copyright librarians, and illustrators. There were also advisors who provided insight and feedback to authors on topics related to Indigenous knowledges, equity in curriculum, and inclusive design. This diversity was key to the project’s success.
Large teams can come with their own challenges, especially if people don’t know each other and work is being coordinated remotely. With that in mind, the two project managers and the lead author played crucial roles coordinating the work, building relationships across the team, showing up to every meeting, and staying on top of the details.
Student input and contributions
The project team was very intentional about bringing students into this project. We recruited 10 students to read and provide feedback on early drafts of specific chapters, and their feedback was very valuable to the authors. Each student received an honorarium for participating.
Thanks to an additional grant provided by Capilano University, we hired a student to create 30 illustrations for the textbook and openly license them. These illustrations are a key part of increasing the diversity of people represented in the book.
Challenges
Adaptation vs. starting new
We went into this project with a plan to adapt one textbook and this really dictated how we thought about the project, especially in the beginning. Throughout the project, we had a number of conversations about the pros and cons of adapting from existing content versus starting from scratch. When starting new, you have a lot of flexibility to reimagine what a textbook for a discipline could look like and to design for inclusion and equity from the beginning. However, it requires a lot more work to scope, structure, and write the content. In contrast, with adaptation you are often working from an established framework with existing content and research. This can save a lot of time, but it can also be an impediment if the content that exists doesn’t fundamentally align with the goals of the adaptation. If I were to support a project like this again, I would recommend starting by articulating a vision for the book and then looking to see what already exists that could be adapted and what new content needs to be created.
Articulation vs. diversification vs. length
One challenge we had throughout this project was balancing articulation requirements for psychology courses – ensuring the basic topics and learning objectives that psychology instructors are expected to cover are present – with the desire to add previously excluded scholars, research, and examples to diversify the content. The result of trying to do both means this book is long, which on its own can be a barrier to student learning. This is likely something we could have improved with more time for developmental editing and more rounds of revisions. We hope those kinds of changes can be made in future versions.
Our Advice to You
For anyone who is considering taking on a similar project, we have the following recommendations:
- Spend time at the beginning building relationships. Doing this at the beginning of the project meant that the team genuinely liked working together and was able to have tough conversations about content and approach because there was an established level of trust with each other.
- Hire research assistants to assist with updating and diversifying references. This type of work takes a lot of time and bringing in research assistants can free up subject matter experts for other things.
- Prioritize the work. We had a ton of “would haves” and “should haves” for this project, and scope creep is inevitable. At the outset, prioritize work to ensure you accomplish the most important bits as you will never have enough time or resources for everything you want to do.
- Determine how decisions will be made. It can be difficult to determine ways forward when working with a distributed team so determine how decisions will be made and be clear about that. We had a lead author who was able to make the final decision when needed, and that helped move the project forward.
Resources
See Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in OER in Getting Started: OER Publishing at BCampus for a collection of resources for creating open textbooks through an equity lens. This page includes:
- Guiding questions to consider when planning a new project
- Examples of how to ensure diverse and inclusive representation throughout a resource
- A rubric for evaluating the equity of an existing resource
Read the Book
The final book is finished and ready to be used. You can access Introduction to Psychology: Moving Towards Diversity and Inclusion in the BC Open Collection to read online, download, or order a print copy. There is also a supplement to accompany the textbook that includes case studies and deep dives into various psychology-related topics.
If you adopt this book in your course, please let us know.