OERs at StFX

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, students didn’t spend thousands of dollars on textbooks, for many were freely provided by the institution they attend. But wait, this isn’t a fairy-tale—for many students attending university in British Columbia, it’s reality. Since 2012, students on the West Coast have saved almost $24 million dollars as many of their courses are taught using open textbooks. It’s not just students that benefit from these open textbooks, either—hundreds of faculty members have made the switch and have a variety of free textbooks at their disposal.

What is AtlanticOER and Why Does it Matter?

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are online, freely distributed textbooks, but can also include a variety of resources such as videos and educational materials. To learn more about these OERs, I attended the virtual launch event of AtlanticOER and spoke with its lead organizer, StFX alumna Tiffany MacLennan ’19, ’20.

First, MacLennan explains, “AtlanticOER is a repository of open educational resources that are going to be available to any student in Atlantic Canada. That means that once it gets off the ground and gets building itself a little bit more, it will be a place that any professor in Atlantic Canada can put in either their textbooks, educational materials, or videos. As it grows, the aim is that students get access to free educational materials and we can ween away from the traditional textbook model.” You don’t have to convince any student about the benefits of OERs. Many of us know that textbooks can be expensive, unengaging, and unhelpful to the learning process. Many students choose not to buy textbooks for a class because for them, it is a choice between textbooks and groceries.

There are benefits for professors, too. MacLennan explains that “bringing OERs into your classroom can provide you with a new learning opportunity and can force you to have more exciting and inviting conversations with your students. Through using OER, you get to learn more yourself… and you get to play with it—it’s a fun initiative. We also have librarians who can comfortably find OERs for a classroom to remove some of the burden.”

AtlanticOER was established to eliminate some of the barriers to creating OERs, McLennan shared. First, “it gives educators the platform to start creating and sharing their own OERs,” she said. It also helps overcome the challenges that come with creating textbooks and educational materials by addressing the barriers of limited time and resources. “Creating a textbook isn’t very fast–they take a lot of work. With the AtlanticOER repository, there are grants you can apply for that compensate your time spent on OERs or to hire students to help create OERs.” The organization also places a great deal of emphasis on disseminating knowledge, helping people understand the benefits that come with OERs. For McLennan, “the end goal is that no student makes the choice not to buy a textbook based on affordability. The grad gift this year is

for student food insecurity due to an uptick in food related asks from the financial aid office. That tells us those decisions are being made more and more often.”

Students’ Union Advocacy

I also sat down with Siobhan Lacey, current Vice President Academic (VPA) of the StFX Students’ Union to find out what they’re currently doing to advocate for OER adoption. Provincially, they’re working with StudentsNS, the province’s non-profit advocacy group that represents post-secondary students, to advocate to the provincial government for OER funding, such as providing financial incentives and grants to professors. Close to home, the Students’ Union is facilitating conversations with key stakeholders such as faculty and students.

Prior to the launch of AtlanticOER, StFX did not have the on-campus resources to push for OERs; but now, Students’ Unions across the Atlantic region are undergoing training to advocate for OERs at their University Senates. Moving forward, it is important for our Students’ Union to make a bigger push on OERs, but this change can only happen if students want it. It will require students talking to their professors about OERs to create an Open Education culture on our campus.

When asked about the barriers to implementing OERs, Lacey said that “there are a couple big ones. The biggest one is obviously funding. It’s always going to be funding. But to first develop an online infrastructure that can host a variety of OERs… is going to be very expensive, maintaining that even more so. The funding [barrier] is why I think we’re seeing such communal effort around OERs, and why no separate university is developing them. It would take a big budget that I don’t think one university would be able to sustain. Another barrier we’re seeing is incentivizing faculty to develop their own OERs. Obviously, developing a textbook is time consuming and can be a lot of work for faculty. But, ultimately, we know that it’s so much more beneficial for students. So, it’s about incentivizing those folks and showing them the benefit it has to student academic success.” The final barrier Lacey identified was awareness: “trying to encourage faculty to develop OERs because students want them while the majority don’t know what they are is a little difficult to do!” Earlier this year, StudentsNS ran an awareness campaign focusing on this final barrier, and is currently putting a lot of emphasis on knowledge translation to provide students with the skills to engage in conversations with faculty about OERs.

Offering advice to future VPAs or students interested in OERs, McLennan says “not be discouraged by the slow uptake at first, because all good things take time. Starting conversations isn’t easy, especially when faculty have been teaching with these books for [several] years. Use the time it takes to build things to build things right. We need more students to know about OERs to get more students to talk about them… with our faculty, administrations, and librarians to actually push this forward.”

University Administration

The university administration can play a big role in implementing OERs. On March 5, 2021, University Academic Vice President and Provost Dr. Kevin Wamsley agreed to sit down with me for an interview. “I’m a fan of educational resources being distributed to as many people as possible,” he said. “Education is difficult, it’s hierarchical, it can favour those with more resources, and textbooks have, for the past twenty-to-twenty-five years, become very expensive. Textbook companies have become unfair in their pricing. While education has been brought onto the open market readily, the burden of this falls to the student… providing free or low-cost educational resources makes education more accessible.”

When asked about benefits for faculty, Wamsley emphasized that the role of the professor is to disseminate knowledge. “I think it’s important that professors are actively involved in producing materials for class. Professors creating and modifying OERs is an important part of the process… professors are excited to talk about their work and that’s the way it should be. Once you begin to contribute, and you see how it can be dynamic in your classroom, I think people are going to be all in,” he said.

Coming back to one barrier identified by the Students’ Union in implementing OERs, I asked Wamsley about incentivizing professors to adopt and create them. He said there are no current plans to incentivize professors to take this project on, but went on to explain that the school does have a plan: “we have a fabulous teaching and learning centre over in Mulroney Hall operated by Dr. Angie Kolen, and this presents a marvellous vessel to get the word out and provide workshops about OERs and how to get involved.” Further, he says, “professors are not getting rich selling textbooks. They’re not, they never will,” so there’s nothing standing in the way of making future publications accessible.

Years of Treaty Conflict, StFX Professor Speaks

StFX anthropology professor Dr. L. Jane McMillan is the recent recipient of the Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing for her powerful release, Truth and Conviction: Donald Marshall Jr. and the Mi’kmaq Quest for Justice. Praise and recognition have been widespread since the book was released in late 2018, and she has since travelled to Harvard University as an invited speaker, and Toronto as an awardee.

On October 2, 2020, Dr. McMillan sat down with Staff Writer Nathan Penman to discuss her recent book award, the ongoing acts of aggression toward Mi’kmaq fishers, and what students can learn from Donald Marshall Jr.

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NP: To start, could you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you do?

JM: I’m a legal anthropologist and an applied anthropologist, so we do anthropology that hopefully does something that informs policy or can drive change. We identify social problems and work with community members to try and address those problems using whatever means we can. It is a really collaborative, community-led type of work that I do. I’ve had the wonderful privilege of working with the Mi’kmaq Nation for close to three decades now.

NP: Why did you write Truth and Conviction, and was it difficult trying to balance academic objectivity with your personal relationship to Donald Marshall Jr.?

JM: Well, it was a project that had been going on for a very long time. It was a project that was based on my Ph.D. dissertation, and then life got in the way. When Junior was alive, he wanted us to write a book together and we didn’t get to that work fast enough. He passed away in 2009, but I never lost sight of his desire to make sure that stories and his legacy continued.

So, I took that on, and my goal with the book was to honour his legacy and hopefully mobilize people to continue to act. To give them some insight into how he was thinking, but also [his] transformative impacts in terms of justice reform and treaty rights. I mean, it’s a heck of a story, he really was a remarkable man. But in writing it, I was also grieving the loss of somebody that I loved and cared about—somebody I spent many years of my life with. I spent a lot of time reflecting on our relationship and on our life, so that was a deeply personal experience for me. It wasn’t always easy, there were a lot of tears. A lot of tears working through that, but [there was] a lot that I needed to keep to myself because I’m quite a private person, so even putting in the personal anecdotes that are in there was pretty tough.

NP: You recently won the Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing. How did it feel to receive it, and what does this award mean to you?

JM: I was absolutely thrilled and honoured. I didn’t expect to receive the award. It means a great deal to me—the recognition is very affirming. It was a difficult book to write and one never knows how that type of work is going to be received as balancing the academic and the personal is always a bit of a challenge. And the recognition from the Atlantic Book Award—they wrote a really beautiful letter to me talking about the timeliness of the work, particularly in light of all of the racism and the tragic consequences going on over the summer.

NP: Dr. Ingrid R. G. Waldron’s There’s Something in the Water won the Scholarly Writing award last year, and this year you won it with your book, Truth and Conviction. To you, do these recognitions mean something for future work in mobilizing Mi’kmaq and Indigenous knowledge, ways of living, or current struggles?

JM: Well, I certainly hope so. I hope people will keep speaking out, the academy will keep writing and reporting, and news venues like yourself will keep the stories alive and in the headlines, and not just for the horrific sensationalism but getting at the root causes. Because it’s not until we address the root causes of inequality and discrimination that we’re going to make any change. This is why we’re seeing such important work being done by the Mi’kmaq Nation today to assert their livelihood rights against all of the obstacles that have been put before them that exclude them and prevent them from doing what is rightfully theirs. I think those moments are really important and that the press needs to accurately reflect those moments. There’s been a shift in the discourse around what the Mi’kmaq have been doing and there seems to be more positive support, as there should be, for treaty rights assertion.

NP: On September 18, The Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs declared a State of Emergency in response to the hostilities surrounding fishing treaty rights and their assertion. Your book describes how these came about. So, what do you think about the recent fishing rights disputes and the State of Emergency in Mi’kmaq’ki?

JM: Well, there are two important things, I think, for me. One, I 100% support the Assembly of Chiefs and the Mi’kmaq communities for asserting their livelihood rights and going out on their self-regulated livelihood fisheries. That’s been a long time coming, and that activity should not be criminalized in any way. It is legal under the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and of course through the Treaties.

I am terribly disappointed in the response from non-Indigenous fishers, but these conflicts aren’t new. The gear conflicts, the maliciousness, the destruction of traps, of boats—of anything that can interfere with the Mi’kmaq doing their ceremonial or livelihood fisheries—has been going on for many, many, many years. And the Mi’kmaq haven’t been well protected nor have their rights been well recognized. So, I think what I really enjoy seeing right now is the unity of the Mi’kmaq Nation in going forward in supporting each other; those that gathered down there for the Mawiomi yesterday, those that gathered in Potlotek, and those that are supporting the Membertou fishery.

That to me is always what Jr. Marshall would’ve wanted. You know, I think that he would be thrilled to see that kind of leadership, that kind of collective action. That was what he was aiming for when he continued on with that fight.

NP: Your book talks about continuing Donald Marshall Jr.’s desire for the Indigenous Peoples’ rights to be respected by everyone. I have to ask, what do you think the Department of Fisheries and Oceans could or should do to protect Mi’kmaq fishers and their rights?

JM: Well, I think there needs to be a whole-scale restructuring of the Fisheries in order to include, respect, and educate others on that space in the fishery. There needs to be very a distinct place for Mi’kmaq rights to the resource, and they need to stop interfering with the livelihood aspects, they should be enabling commerce rather than disabling it. And I think that the education programs of the regulatory body have to shift so that everyone understands there are Mi’kmaq rights to fishing and that other Indigenous communities also have very similar rights to access these resources in Canada and they can no longer be excluded from that. There’s a lot of work to be done. They also need to be protecting Mi’kmaq gear and Mi’kmaq lives around that water against the hostilities and conflicts.

NP: What do you think people should understand about the Friendship and Peace Treaties of the 18th century?

JM: They are living treaties. They have been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada and they are upheld in the Canadian Constitution. The Mi’kmaq have an unbreakable bond to those treaties and live by and adhere to them. And all of the settlers who live in this territory are also treaty people and have an obligation to live the treaties as well, and that means honouring and respecting the relationships and, ideally, someday getting to the place where they are constantly celebrating those relationships rather than fighting over what those rights may be.

NP: What do you think, then, that StFX University as an institution and its students could be doing to assist Mi’kmaq People trying to assert their treaty rights—their re-affirmed rights?

JM: I think we’ve got a great administration in place right now that are very supportive, and they want to be good neighbours to the Mi’kmaq Nation. The Indigenous student services section of the university needs some growth, it needs some support, it needs more resources put toward it. So that’s one thing the campus can do. I think the campus can also welcome the dialogue and help shift the conversation from one of antagonism and racism to one of peace and friendship. As you mentioned, to be living the meaning and intent of the treaties in better ways.

I think that we fly the Mi’kmaq flag, we acknowledge we’re on Mi’kmaq territory—those are important symbolic steps—but substantively, there’s work to be done in our research relationships, our teaching relationships, and our service relationships. And I think that those changes are coming, I think that there is certainly the political will on campus and that students are all benefiting from exposure to Mi’kmaq culture and Mi’kmaq knowledge. And Indigenous

knowledge isn’t general, and I think that everybody is learning and participating in that way, and we’re all better off for it.

So, I think more and more engagement and more and more opportunities for land-based learning. Our knowledge keeper on campus, I think that he could benefit from more resources because he’s really tapped a lot to educate and help people learn, but he can’t do it all—he’s a busy man—so we’d like to support Kerry Prosper in whatever ways we can. And I’d like to see at some point see the university set up sort of a space that’s both sacred and educational, and we could put in an ethnobotanical garden that relates to Indigenous knowledge, medicines, and plants, and maybe have a wigwam where we can do teachings and have the community come in and share their knowledge with us and have them be properly compensated for that exchange.

NP: Me, I’m from Sydney so I’ve grown up with some familiarity of Mi’kmaq knowledge but when I came to university—it just opens your eyes to just how much you don’t know. And having more of those opportunities to learn can never be a bad thing.

JM: I also think that we need more Indigenous faculty—we need more diverse faculty. But, more Indigenous faculty and staff, for sure. It’d be great to have a Chair of Indigenous Governance in the Public Policy and Governance program. A Chair of Indigenous Environment in the Climate and Environment program. A Chair of Indigenous Health in the Health program. A Chair of Indigenous Business—I mean we can have it everywhere.

NP: Let’s circle back to your book. In it you state: “The adversarial justice system features the state as the victim and punishment as the cure, in a narrow adjudication process separated from the community.” I wonder, then, to you, what would a pluralized justice system in Nova Scotia or Mi’kmaq’ki look like?

JM: It would be one where the community has way more input in the remedy. The restorative justice processes are fairly inherent in Mi’kmaq belief systems and they could be brought forward and brought into practice. The Wagmatcook Court is a great start, and they are working really hard with community members and [they] have their Elder advisory circle. They work with the Mi’kmaq legal support network which provides some customary and law and court worker support.

But I think we can take it a step further and see some self-determined justice institutes being brought forward relying on Mi’kmaq legal principles and I’d like to see that happen. So, I think that the Mi’kmaq have always had an interest in creating their own courts—it doesn’t have to look like a Canadian court, it doesn’t even have to be called a court, for the sake of this conversation. Or, [it could be] a justice lodge or someplace where people can come and gather and gain the teachings they need to repair whatever harms have been committed. And to reintegrate people back into the communities so people can go on living in a good way.

NP: As a follow-up, what would you say to those who have doubts in Indigenous People’s ability to judge or mediate through these justice circles, or so on, when harm is done to the community?

JM: I think regardless of what kind of justice system you have, you have people who doubt it. I mean, we certainly can’t have blind faith in our justice system in Canada; it makes mistakes, it makes a lot of mistakes. And Donald Marshall’s wrongful conviction is but one of many, many more. And, so, I think any sort of system that’s trying to generate knowledge, repair harms, and deter people from committing further offences and working to re-integrate people, of course, is going to run into its problems. But I think that the benefit of Indigenous legal principles and practice is that they’re far more focused on rehabilitation and reintegration than punishment. And I think that our justice system would benefit from changing its lens to one that’s far more rehabilitative and reintegrative than its focus on punishment because it’s not working.

NP: I think your passion for telling Donald Marshall Jr.’s story and telling people today why it’s important to continue his legacy—I think it speaks in the book, so I really do want to commend you for a quality book, and like I said I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from it. I really do hope that our readers will do the same.

JM: Thank you, Nathan, I appreciate that.