PHIL 3026: Philosophy of Disability

Purpose: To ensure the materials required for taking the course are affordable and accessible to all students

Common Course ID:  PHIL 3026
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: These Affordable Learning Solutions are being utilized in a Philosophy course for undergraduate students by Kevin Watson, PhD, at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). There are no prerequisites for the course, and the students enrolled were a mix of freshman to seniors. All students accessed the course materials for free online. The course materials included peer-reviewed journal articles made available through CSUSB’s John M. Pfau Library subscriptions, online videos available through youtube, and philosophy encyclopedia articles available online though the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Website.

PHIL 3026: Philosophy of Disability
Brief Description of course highlights:  This course includes the study and critical analysis of ability and disability. Topics include social and medical models of disability, perspectives in critical disability studies, and disability as identity.

Prerequisites: None

Student population: Students who enroll in the course are diverse. Amongst the most common majors who enroll in the course are students interested philosophy, psychology, or social science/social work. Many of the students who enroll in the course have some background knolwedge regarding disability, but very limited understanding of academic work being conducted related to the study of disability

Learning or student outcomes:  The main objective of this course is to familiarize students with some of the many discussions taking place within the philosophy of disability. To do so,

• First, students become acquainted with some of the ways in which ability and disability are defined.
• Second, students are familiarized with the philosophical accounts of well-being and how such accounts relate to ability and disability.
• Third, students gain a better grasp of debates within critical disability studies and the importance of disability as an aspect of identity.
• Finally, students are exposed to some of the various organizations that contribute to the enhancement and advancement of the lives of people with disabilities.

Upon successful completion of this course, students are better able to:
1. Think critically about ability and disability in a philosophically rigorous way.
2. Understand the accounts of disability and its relation to well-being, identity, and other matters.
3. Appreciate of the valuable work community organizations provide for people with disabilities.

Course Syllabus:  PHIL 3026 (Online)-s60c45424.docx

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title: 

Brief Description: The Primary Resource used for the course is Stanford Encycloperia of Philosophy, available at https://plato.stanford.edu which is a freely available online resource published by Stanford University’s Metaphysics Research Lab.

Authors:  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy organizes scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines to create and maintain an up-to-date reference work.
Co-Principal Editors: Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman

Student access:  Students accessed the affordable learning solutions through the course’s Canvas Page. The canvas includes Videos, links to all external sites and journal articles, as well as copies of all required readings.

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook. Cost Savings: Had Affordable Learning Solutions not been available, I was planning to rely on the following textbook, titled The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability by Shelley Tremain. This text currently retails from $36 (eBook)-$100 (Hardback). As 26 students were enrolled in the course, this represents a total cost savings of at least $936 per section of the course.

License:  The Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford University, and authors of specific articles, hold copyrights of the relevant materials; however, 2b of their terms of use permits limited electronic distribution rights according to the following terms:

• A user may electronically distribute an SEP entry to others only for private electronic correspondence. This includes communications between the User and an individual, and communications, postings or file-sharing to closed, invitation-only groups of individuals with no archives publicly available, provided that the group consists of no greater than 30 individuals. 

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. Recognizing that many students have limited financial resources, a major motivation for using affordable learning solutions was to minimize financial barriers to student success while promoting accessibility. While a PhD student at the University of Kansas, I was fortunate enough to received two grants for the development or implementation of open educational resources for use in teaching undergraduate courses. Building on the knowledge gained from previous grant-work, and because of my interest in promoting OER and ALS, I built the course using resources freely available to students at CSUSB.
How did you find and select the open textbook for this course? I did not use or select an open textbook for this course. The affordable learning solutions selected include journal articles sourced from the John M. Pfau Library, queries of online resources commonly used within philosophy departments (e.g., the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, PhilPapers, academic journals, etc.), Op-Eds, and the like. Additionally, in the case of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, professors of philosophy at CSUSB are also contributors.

Sharing Best Practices:  My work on the course has largely been independent, but I hope to collaborate more extensively as I continue to develop and prefect the contents of the course.  The incorporation of Affordable Learning Solutions into my course has always been a positive experience, and something I am continually working on. In future, I hope to work more closely with the library, services for students with disabilities, the ALS coordinator, and faculty within my department to continue working on and perfecting the contents of the course.

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned. One of the primary challenges faced in using affordable learning solutions of the course was the fact that no OER texts exist on the exact topic. As a result, building the course required sourcing materials from several different avenues—e.g., journal articles, online resources, op-eds, and the like. Additionally, because I wanted to use specific subsections of some of the Stanford Encyclopedia articles, and the online and PDF versions contained the entire article, it required copying small portions of the text and inputing them in Canvas to make the material more accessible for students. In the future, I think creating edited/simplified versions of the downloadable PDFs might make the course go more smoothly and materials more easily printable. Additionally, as I continue to work on and improve the course, I hope to seek more feedback from students regarding the reading materials and assignments..

Instructor Name:  Kevin Watson
Part-time Faculty in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, San Bernardino 
https://www.csusb.edu/profile/kwatson2
Please describe the courses you teach.  Since joining CSUSB in the Fall of 2023, I have taught sections of Philosophy of Disability.  The courses I teach complement my research interests, which revolve around well-being, justice, equity and equality, morality, ability and disability, and rational decision-making.

Describe your teaching philosophy or interests My primary research interests are in ethics, well-being, personal identity, justice, and disability. As an instructor, I understand that my courses, my instruction, and my interaction with students has a fundamental impact on their success. Additionally, as a student from a low-income background, I understand that textbook costs can be prohibitively expensive. When teaching, I see myself as a collaborative guide—a fellow learner and student who can facilitate discussion, provide background information, and demonstrate part of what it means to be a lifelong student of philosophy. The collaboration between my students and I inspires me to tailor the course to the students, hopefully resulting in the students being inspired to engage with the course material and with the topic outside the course—which I believe helps students and instructors feel ownership over their learning.