OERs for Our Changing Demographics: Hispanic-American Media Education
Channel: Open Education Southern Symposium
Date: 2021-09-22

Academic libraries play an important role in advancing the use of open educational resources (OER) in higher education. In addition to connecting communities with information, an increasing number of libraries now provide OER publishing support and services for faculty. This panel presents an OER creation project supported and funded by such a program.
The OER project titled “Spanish-Language Television News Production in the United States of America” (original title in Spanish) is the first of its kind focusing exclusively on Hispanic TV news education in the US, a highly neglected area of study. This OER, written in Spanish and containing terminology in English, provides a resource that specifically seeks to explain demographic changes and language use shaping the present and future of American society, all in the context of television news content creation.

To develop this OER, the author spent years researching the topic and carefully developing resource networks that enabled him to create an American OER written in Spanish. Creating this online resource presents extraordinary challenges, among these are (1) the lack of research on Hispanic TV news, (2) the complexities of language, (3) the cultural challenges posed by a Latino population that is far from monolithic, (4) the limited number of Latino faculty devoted to Hispanic media, (5) the fluctuating political environment, and (6) a Spanish-language TV industry not used to opening its doors to researchers.

The pilot version of the OER started in January 2020, with a dozen universities participating in the test. Most of these universities now have a Hispanic TV news program; furthermore, these institutions have Spanish-speaking faculty leading these programs and have created a community to improve the quality of Hispanic journalism education.
The author of the OER, an academic librarian, and two bilingual students enrolled in the pilot course will discuss their experiences and perceptions of the OER.

Presenters:
Julian Rodriguez
Katie Willeford
Neemekh Mudvari
Brenda Saldana