This Open Education Resource (OER) focuses on the Downtown Eastside (DTES) Research Access Portal (RAP) as a case study through which to understand community-university knowledge exchange. The DTES RAP is a knowledge exchange platform designed with input from DTES neighborhood members in Vancouver, Canada. This community expressed a need for a platform to provide access to research done about the DTES, which has been historically over-researched with residents seeing limited reciprocity. The UBC Learning Exchange formed the Making Research Accessible Initiative (MRAi) to build the RAP and address this gap.
The OER, linked below, consists of an Instructor’s Guide on teaching this module as well as an accompanying Slide Deck with speaking notes.
The module emphasizes three primary themes:
– Principles and practices of community engagement for knowledge exchange;
– Meaningful access to research for non-academic audiences;
– Research ethics in historically marginalized underrepresented communities.
We have organized the OER to consist of a “core” module, “Community-based knowledge exchange and mitigating information privilege” and three pathways: 1) “Information access and alternative formats,” 2) “Supporting community led research,” and 3) “Community engagement and services.” Instructors can “mix and match” content from the pathways depending on available class time, course structure, and student interests. The core and pathway modules include learning objectives, a wide selection of open access academic and professional articles, books, blogs, websites, videos and multimedia, and active learning activities for in-person or online delivery.
Open Education Resource: Access in the RAP (guide, slides), in Google Drive or via SCN OER Commons Hub.
Choie, M., O’Brien, H., Sinnamon, L., & Ubels, N. (2022, April 13). Understanding community-university knowledge exchange : A case study of the Making Research Accessible initiative (MRAi); An open educational resource (OER) module and instructor guide. http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0427382