This piece is part of a series by participants in the Summer 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.

Ugur Akpinar is a PhD student in the History Department at the Graduate Center, CUNY, interested in the history of orphans and orphanages in the Middle East in the context of identity, capital, and violence. He holds an MA from Bogazici University, Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History. As a graduate teaching, he currently teaches world history at City College.

I joined the Open Knowledge Fellowship because of a deep personal and professional commitment to equity and access in education. As a historian teaching World History I am aware that the classroom is not only a space of learning but also a space where inequalities can either be repeated or challenged. I wanted to be part of a program that would help me build a more inclusive course and rethink the materials I use in my class.

One of the main takeaways from the fellowship was that moving away from expensive textbooks helped me reorganize the structure and content of my course. I’ve started rethinking the most effective ways to bring students into class discussions by using visual and oral source materials that are available through various Open Educational Resources (OER). Using open materials in the classroom creates more engagement and integration—not only because the sources are diverse, but also because they activate different senses for students at the same time. While engaging different senses makes learning more effective, it also helps us rethink and improve our pedagogy, especially in areas where we are still trying to find the best approaches in the intersection of education and technology.

Pfeifer, Herman. The Child At Your Door. 1919, lithograph. Library of Congress.

My own research focuses on the intersections of power, care, labor, and identity in the late Ottoman Empire. I study how orphaned children became subjects of competing efforts by states, missionaries, and communities, each attempting to shape their futures and identities in particular ways. For my project, the fellowship helped me discover a range of visual materials, including photographs, illustrations, and audiovisual sources. In this sense, one of the most important contributions was learning about the rules determining the publication and circulation of these materials, which shows which ones are both accessible and openly usable.

All in all, my experience in the OER Fellowship, along with my fellowship colleagues, was very valuable. It helped me discover different ways of using OER materials, rethink my approach to teaching, and make information and education more accessible for students.

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