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Historically minoritized students are routinely silenced in classroom settings. This study aims to explore whether open annotations encourage students with historically minoritized gender/racial/ethnic identities to share knowledge and ideas. In addition, this study explores how the intersectionality of student identities relates to their experiences of open annotation and assess gendered and racialized achievement of student learning objectives.

This study uses mixed methods to examine the use of an open annotation tool (Perusall) to foster the redistribution of epistemic authority and more equitable interactions in science, technology, engineering, and math and humanities courses at the intersection of environmental and social justice issues. The study design draws on illustrative case study methods to assist others in seeing the potential and considerations in using a similar pedagogical approach.

An open annotation tool like Perusall can foster more equitable interactions for historically minoritized students. Women reported that open annotations deepened knowledge and engagement with the source and their peers. Women of color, in particular, acknowledged the benefits of social annotations as a tool that redistributes epistemic authority. Conversely, men were more likely to comment on dissatisfaction with grading.

This study suggests the value of open annotation as an effective and accessible method to foster inclusive classrooms. Through examining epistemic authority in social annotations, this study provides a novel approach to addressing the disengagement of historically minoritized students.

The internet and search engines dominate within people’s information acquisition, especially among the younger generations. Given this trend, this study aims to explore if information and communication technology (ICT) practices, internet reliance and views of knowledge and knowing, i.e. epistemic beliefs, interact with each other. Everyday practices and conceptions among beginning undergraduate students are studied as a challenge for higher education.

The study builds upon survey-based quantitative data operationalising students’ epistemic beliefs, their internet reliance and their ICT practices. The survey items were used to compute subscales describing these traits, and the connections were explored using correlations analysis.

The results suggest that the more beginning undergraduate students rely on internet-based information, the more they are inclined to epistemic beliefs where knowledge is regarded as certain, unchanging, unambiguous and as being handed down by some authority.

The approach used in the study applies to the sample used, and further research is required to test the applicability of the approach on larger samples.

The study highlights the risk of everyday information practices being transferred into the educational context.

Ignorance of these changes may pose a risk for knowledge building on different educational levels and in a longer perspective, a threat to democracy.

While there is some research on epistemic beliefs in relation to internet-based information, studies approaching the problem over a possible connection between epistemic beliefs and internet reliance are scarce. In addition, this study implies a conceptual bridge between epistemic beliefs and internet reliance over the concept of algorithmic authority.

To encourage more just open educational practices, the purpose of this paper is to describe Jose Medina’s theory of epistemic justice and develop a framework applying this conception of epistemic justice to OEP through learning design. The authors hope this framework will help researchers and practitioners develop more equitable learning experiences in open educational contexts.

This paper is conceptual and design-oriented. This paper seeks to draw relationships between José Medina’s work in The Epistemology of Resistance, recent empirical studies in learning design and OEP. By analyzing relationships between these works, this paper lays out design principles that can empower educators seeking to create equitable open learning experiences.

This paper finds several generative intersections between the social justice centered epistemology presented by Medina, empirical learning design studies and OEP. This study finds that structured learning designs which integrate well-researched principles may provide guidance for further practice and research in ways not generally discussed in open education literature. This paper builds on these findings by describing practical ways these intersections can be implemented in OEP.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first theoretical analysis of the relationship between epistemic justice and OEP.

In Virginia, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder accused the state’s library agency of racism for “its slow pace in processing and publicly presenting records from his tenure as the nation’s first elected Black governor” (Associated Press, 2020). The State Librarian responded that this was just a lapse in protocols and framed it as a budget issue and staff turnover. However, “Library of Virginia has been processing papers from his gubernatorial successors before finishing work on his” (Associated Press, 2020). Recently, the Alabama State Department of Archives and History acknowledged their participation in systemic racism, epistemicide, and their history of privileging White voices over those of Alabama African-Americans.

Epistemicide is the killing, silencing, annihilation, or devaluing of a way of knowing (Patin, Sebastian, Yeon, & Bertolini, 2020). Conceptualization and analytic application of epistemicide has an established tradition in a number of social science fields, but information scientists have only recently acknowledged epistemicide (Oliphant, 2021; Patin et al., 2020; Patin, Sebastian, Yeon, Bertolini, & Grimm, 2021). Building from our recent identification of the existence of epistemicide within the IS field (Patin et al., 2020), this work challenges the information field to become an epistemologically just space working to correct the systemic silencing of certain ways of knowing.

This chapter examines the four types of epistemic injustices—testimonial, hermeneutical, participatory, and curricular—occurring within libraries and archives and argues for a path forward to address these injustices within our programs, services, and curricula. It looks to digital humanities and to reevaluations of professional standards and LIS education to stop epistemicide and its harms. This chapter demonstrates how to affirm the power and experience of Black lives and highlight their experiences through the careful acquisition, collection, documentation, and publishing of relevant historical materials. Addressing epistemicide is critical for information professionals because we task ourselves with handling knowledge from every field. There has to be a reckoning before the paradigm can truly shift; if there is no acknowledgment of injustice, there is no room for justice.