Contemporary Social and Moral Issues: An Intersectional Approach

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  PHIL2200
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: This open textbook is being utilized in a philosophy course for undergraduate or graduate students by Katie Howard at Cal State, Los Angeles. The open textbook provides classic texts in moral philosophy, alongside contemporary texts on animal rights and reproductive justice, as well as supplementary lectures and interactive exercises from OER repositories. The main motivation to adopt an open textbook was to make my course more accessible to low-income students and non-philosophy majors who may be reluctant to purchase a textbook. Most student access the open textbook in Canvas via personal computers.

Course Title and Number:  PHIL2200 Contemporary Social and Moral Problems: An Intersectional Approach
Brief Description of course highlights:  Philosophical examination of values, assumptions, and arguments concerning moral and social issues. Intersections with race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality. Possible topics include, reproductive rights, poverty, marriage, identity politics, and justice. (https://www.calstatela.edu/al/philosophy/information)

Student population: Most students who take this course are undergraduates who have not previously taken a course in philosophy and are not philosophy majors. Their majors and preparation for the course vary widely. 
Learning or student outcomes: Students who take this course will:

• Become acquainted with the major ethical frameworks in the West (Utilitarianism, Kantian Deontology, Care Ethics); 
• Assess how these ethical approaches fair with respect to particular issues (animal rights and abortion);
• Develop critical thinking, reading, and argumentative skills;
• Explore how the intersections of race, gender, and disability shape contemporary moral and social issues.

Key challenges faced and how resolved: A key challenge I faced was adapting the course to a hybrid teaching schedule. Incorporating OERs helped me to supplement student asynchronous learning.

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title:  Philosophy 2200 
Brief Description: I also included OERs in the form of supplemental lectures by Prof Marianne Talbot (Oxford University) and an interactive exercise called “Are ethics fixed? An animal welfare exercise” that gave students the opportunity to gauge their own intuitions and beliefs about animal rights before studying the views of philosophers in the syllabus.
Please provide a link to the resource.  This course uses a number of OER and no-cost titles, primarily articles. These include titles available through my university library:

Utilitarianism by J. S. Mill
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant
In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan
Primates and Philosophers: How morality evolved by Franz de Waal
“All animals are equal” by Peter Singer
“Animal Rights, Human Wrongs” by Tom Regan
“Killing the Black Body” by Dorothy Roberts

https://www.oercommons.org/courses/bioethics-an-introduction
https://www.oercommons.org/courses/are-ethics-fixed-animal-welfare-exercise

Student access:  The students access the materials through the “Module” or “Reading List” function of Canvas. The above two resources are linked through OER Commons, while the texts are linked through the Cal State LA University Library. 

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  A used copy of a popular “Contemporary moral and social issues” textbook costs nearly $40.
License: Creative Commons attribution and non-commercial share alike licenses

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. My primary motivation was to save students money and make the course more accessible for low-income students or students new to philosophy who may not be motivated to spend money on courses outside their primary area of study. I also wanted to provide online resources that would be accessible to students with disabilities.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course? I browsed OER sites and my university library for open-access versions of the texts already listed in my syllabus.

Sharing Best Practices: Some of the OER and low-cost tools/strategies I learned,such as integrating materials into Canvas using the “Reading List” function, required some extra work up front. These changes were worth the effort! My Canvas pages are now streamlined and make all my materials easily accessible. Using OER sites, I was able to supplement my instruction with activities and resources that I would not have known about otherwise. 

Describe any challenges you experienced, and lessons learned.  The relative dearth of philosophy resources on OER sites was a challenge. I suspect that other disciplines have more materials to offer.

Instructor Name:  Katie Howard
I am a philosophy professor at the Cal State, Los Angeles. I teach feminist philosophy, contemporary social and moral problems, and philosophy and the emotions.

Please provide a link to your university page.
https://www.calstatela.edu/al/philosophy/faculty-staff

Please describe the courses you teach.   I teach courses in feminist philosophy, social and political philosophy, and affect theory. My research is concentrated in these areas, specifically dealing with the embodied, affective dimensions of oppression and resistance to oppression. My research informs my teaching and my teaching informs my research!

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching. Teaching is not just about transmitting knowledge, but supporting and challenging students as they critically examine themselves and the social structures they inhabit. I promote a caring and open environment in the classroom for students to take intellectual risks.