When it came time to start replacing items on my syllabus with “open” versions, I realized the limitations of OER. Only one of the resources on my syllabus was widely accessible to all regardless of institutional affiliation.

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I was eager to find ways to lessen the financial burden of being a college student in a university system that was once and should still be free to attend. I struggled to find resources that could make my courses a zero-cost experience and introduce students to critical traditions in psychology that are typically excluded in mainstream psychology textbooks and curricula.

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It felt wrong, from the beginning, to require my students to find the money and spend so much on a book we would only read a few texts from, [made up of] classics of literature that largely belong to the public domain.... I needed to learn how to make this right and allow my students to engage with my course materials without having to go penniless for it.

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Encountering a paywall on my way to some piece of scholarship prompts me into critically questioning the systems of power that keep people in and out of the spaces where knowledge circulates and is transformed and grows, and in/out of the borders of peer-reviewed research in the various fields of specialized knowledge.

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Whenever I thought about exchanging my textbook for open access materials, I was cowed by the amount of time and effort I imagined such a process taking. I had spent years designing my slides, quizzes, lectures, and course schedules around my textbook—how could I square a complete course overhaul with the axiom of “researcher first, teacher second”?

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A music appreciation course, even one centered on the traditional body of European literate music, can have an emancipatory effect. [This effect], however, is limited in starkly practical terms by the availability of its pedagogical materials.

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