This piece is part of a series by participants in the Winter 2025 Open Knowledge Fellowship, coordinated by the Mina Rees Library. Fellows will share insight into the process of converting a syllabus to openly-licensed and/or zero-cost resources, as well as their experiences teaching undergraduate courses at CUNY.

Marcela Joya is a researcher and writer specializing in Latin American and Afro-Antillean music, with eleven years of experience in archival research, ethnographic and audiovisual documentation. As a photographer and PhD student in Ethnomusicology she is interested in the methodological development of applied ethnomusicology through artistic interdisciplinarity.

There may be something inherently narcissistic about the act of teaching. While it might seem contradictory to claim that teaching is not a purely altruistic vocation, this perspective arises from our reluctance to challenge the assumptions we typically use to justify our roles as educators. So, what are our true intentions as teachers? Are we aiming to share knowledge (with whom)? Are we seeking to inspire others (to adopt our viewpoints)? Do we wish to spark curiosity? Are we simply enamored with our own voices and hoping others will listen? Are we promoting specific agendas? Do we genuinely believe in the value of education? Do we desire to embody the values we believe in? Do we believe we can help transform the world into a better world? Perhaps we resonate with several of these motives, even if some may seem unflattering (because they are, indeed, narcissistic)?

I love teaching because of some of those reasons but especially because I like to think of the classroom as a lively political space that fosters the sharing of passions, ideas, and emotions. I love to think of it as a place for contagion. I truly believe that teaching is about receiving, engaging, creating an environment where knowledge and intuitions flow freely and learning becomes a shared journey. The Open Knowledge Fellowship allowed me to dive deeper into these ideas and put them into practice in a modern, practical way by helping me think and do through digital and interactive methods. When I applied for the Fellowship, I revisited the above questions, particularly because the Open Knowledge Fellowship proposal on creating Open Educational Resources syllabus helped me realize that teaching can be transformed into a less individualistic and more communal space, in a real, achievable way. This means not just directing specialized knowledge to a closed and privileged group but making it accessible to anyone eager to learn.

So, one of my main motivations for joining the Open Knowledge Fellowship was to gain the tools and space to design better, more effective methods for facilitating collective learning processes. I have to say, it provided me with those tools and encouraged me to explore new ways to invite students to participate. I’ve always felt that I lacked the talent (or patience?) for creating digital spaces. I might be one of the few from my generation who still prefers using a paper diary and notebooks. It never occurred to me that putting in the effort to overcome my perceived “lack of talent” could prove so beneficial for others.

Creating an Open Educational Resources (OER) website for my class, “The World of Music,” at Hunter College, was an unexpectedly enjoyable journey, despite my initial belief that it would be only frustrating. Although the process came with its own set of challenges, it ultimately proved to be rewarding. This experience challenged conventional ideas about sharing knowledge. While there is a wealth of accessible and open material in my fields of ethnomusicology, music, and the arts, I encountered significant obstacles trying to replace expensive (hard to find) course materials that are not OER and are laden with copyright restrictions. This issue is particularly challenging with contemporary literature, literary journalism, and recent ethnomusicology.

I believe in the importance of integrating academia with the arts and ensuring our classroom is grounded in real-world and sensorial experiences. That is why I encourage my students to connect artistic works with academic ones. Nonetheless, it is disheartening that many aspects of art and ethnomusicology still appear to be reserved for a small, privileged group.

What was so exciting was that while searching for different OER options, I discovered a huge variety of open access digital resources and libraries filled with wonderful sound and photographic archives. I was completely unaware of these treasures before, and I truly believe I wouldn’t have stumbled upon them without the helpful guidance from this Fellowship. This has been such a benefit for my students at Hunter, as they too were unaware of these options, and through these archives, they’ve started making their own discoveries. It felt refreshing to shift my perspective from viewing the full use of OER as an idealistic project to seeing it as a real and achievable goal. It’s comforting to realize that so many teachers are eager to reflect on our profession, its purpose, and how scholarship can evolve. Now, I’m enthusiastic to create various digital spaces that cover a wide range of topics I’m passionate about, all while ensuring free and easy access to materials and knowledge. This focus, I believe, could help us evolve teaching processes from its individualistic shell into a genuinely collective experience.

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