Working with my partner across institutions showed me how open resources can adapt to different settings without losing what makes them effective. What I love most about the Recipe Project is that it keeps giving back. Students actually use each other's recipes, share them with family, and genuinely engage with the work beyond just getting a grade. It's renewable in the truest sense: it respects what students bring to the classroom, it produces something with real value, and it helps them see that academic writing isn't some foreign language, it's just another way of organizing the thinking they're already doing. This fellowship reinforced what I believe most about teaching: our job is to help students recognize and build on the expertise they already have.

Lecturer of Technical Communication:

My partner and I created three scaffolded assignments focusing on UN SDG #4 Quality Education since my partner teaches education courses and I teach technical communication. My students chose groups to complete all three assignments.

 Our first assignment required students to choose a topic based on goals 4.4, 4.4.1, 4.5, and 4.7 where students had to choose to research the connection between technology skills, gender disparities, or vulnerable populations in education.  In this first assignment, they articulated a research question along with writing questions for their primary research using Co-Pilot as a guide.

Their second assignment included completing their research by interviewing students/faculty, conducting surveys they created, and finding peer reviews sources which they wrote up in annotated bibliographies. 

The final assignment required students to use that primary and secondary research to create a final deliverable for a specific educational community.  Their options included an infographic, presentation, brochure, or a recommendation report.  Interestingly, most of the groups chose to work on a recommendation report.

Personally, I loved the entire project.  My student learned how to

1.      utilize technology (Co-Pilot, the library database, Google Forms, and Canva)

2.      write research, interview, and survey questions

3.      conduct primary research in an ethical and professional manner

4.      design and write specific genres while keeping their audience and purpose in mind

This was the best way to show them how technical writing IS inherently interdisciplinary. Technical writers must work with subject matter experts first before they create documents, so this helped them understand real world educational information and translate it for a specific audience.

Senior Lecturer, Psychology

University of Central Florida

UN SDG Open Pedagogy Faculty Reflection

I had the pleasure of collaborating with Michelle Jung at Mesa Community College to develop renewable assignments that addressed UN SDG #3: Good Health and Well-being, aimed at fostering cross-cultural understanding of health and well-being through the interdisciplinary lens of Psychology and Exercise Science. The process began by identifying key learning outcomes that encouraged students to explore health from multidisciplinary and multicultural perspectives. The assignments were structured into three parts:

• Cultural Artifacts & Health: A Cross-Cultural Exploration

• Health Across Borders: A Cross-Cultural Reflection

• Cross-Cultural Health Portfolio & Community Proposal

Implementing these assignments in my online course required adapting the original UN SDG materials to fit the online course format and the specific needs of the enrolled students for this term. This involved modifying activities to address and balance workload conflicts with other course material and to ensure accessibility and engagement in a virtual environment.

Creating and integrating these assignments into my Cross-Cultural class was a rewarding experience. It deepened my appreciation for open pedagogy and the power of collaborative, student-centered learning. Seeing students engage with complex health and cultural issues and propose innovative solutions for local and global communities reinforced the importance of education in advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The assignments' renewable nature allows students to create work that can be shared, reused, and adapted by others, amplifying their impact beyond the classroom. The portfolio assignment, in particular, encouraged students to synthesize their learning and propose actionable community health initiatives. Student feedback highlighted increased awareness of global health disparities and the value of integrating multiple perspectives into health care. Overall, I enjoyed the experience, and students appear to have enjoyed the assignment.

Student Interview#1: https://ucf.zoom.us/rec/play/fha2kGRurV9hzG7w0pyekfwWywFLd-H7945r_BPHoDYIAuqhyy3QfTBkhpafVAufdCFo8Xtr5jqedTMB.NyiijCihrR8cPhc8

Student Interview#2: https://ucf.zoom.us/rec/play/A7Jn63NQv_xZGRqmvIKYjBFHU-wza8vKIQUNHBqK6kQJZOVuq0Hy9Uy2qWrbUon4oe7_3A-M-Y_RlwGo.lRcqlhaO02nkR7po

I implemented my fellowship experience in ENGL 101/011 in Fall 2025 at Mongomery College/Germantown Campus. I requested that students meet in groups to brainstorm topics that resonated with them about SDG 10.  I scaffolded the assignment from the first step of brainstorming to the last step of sharing their conclusion of their essays.  In addition, we discussed as a class how this assignment made them evaluate their own knowledge and bias on the topic of inequality and inclusion. I found that the students had success generating personal topics for research, but they seemed a bit reluctant to share their own experiences in their groups and as a class. For the follow up assignment where students shared their feelings about the assignment, they were eager to discuss inequalities in the community in relation to their topics. Overall, this part of the assignment seemed very beneficial for the class.

My students were interested in the United Nations project and the topic of gender equality. There was mixed familiarity with SDG among them, and we spent some time in class learning about the history and the current goals. When I introduced the assignments the students commented the assignments were unique and would increase their knowledge on the topic, while also giving them the freedom to explore specific areas of interest within the general topic. Reading and assessing the students' submissions was enjoyable, as the assignments were different than typical assignments I use. In the future I will make a few adjustments to assignment criteria to address the few minor things that confused students. Ultimately this project and the partnership across institutions and disciplines was valuable and added value to the knowledge of my course. 

The above assignments were implemented in General Chemistry Course (CHEM 132) at Rockville campus, Montgomery College during Fall 2025. Sixteen students in this class were divided into five project teams that worked on the above assignments. Tasks included: data collection and analysis, research, presentation and recommendation. The experience provided students with opportunity to learn about practical aspect of chemistry, and improve their creative and analytical skills, as well as collaboration and teamwork.

Attachments: Power Point Presentations and Class Photo

I chose the UN SDG #1 No Poverty particularly because of the student body who take my class and most people in the area are older and considers themselves on the right politically. When I introduced the assignments, I explained my feelings that regardless of political affiliation, we can probably agree that ending poverty is something that we can all get behind. Most of the students did two of the three assignments, a few did only one or none, and 1/23 students did all three. I did receive extreme backlash from a student who missed the introduction to the assignment and said they thought the “UN should be abolished.” They turned in their work filled with opinion, vitriol, and it was frankly quite offensive and not academic in the least. I considered turning them in for violating the Student Code of Conduct, but instead, I just graded it as I would any other assignment. Based on the rubrics, they received 5 out of the possible 550 points. One other person expressed discontent in a different class on my evaluation form. Otherwise, many students really enjoyed the idea, and expressed how much they learned from the Research and Analyze portions, regardless of their political leanings.  Eight works of art were created which is more than I thought, since most people come in to class with very specific projects in mind. Overall, I was impressed that so many students did the assignments and learned from our interdisciplinary approach, particularly in this political climate.

Rita Toikka, Yavapai College, AZ

Visual Arts, Welded Metal Sculpture

(Video/Audio coming-waiting on the student).

One thing I had not counted on in terms of soliciting feedback is that students were nervous to go on camera to talk about their experience of anything immigration related. Even though I offered extra credit for their reflections, I only received one response out of 31. This is totally understandable.

Mohammed Abuhannoud

The students were equally inspired by the interdisciplinary activities we created. These assignments encouraged them to step beyond their comfort zones and tap into their creativity while engaging deeply with a development goal that mattered to them. Their feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with many identifying these assignments as their favorite of the entire term. Importantly, the renewable assignments produced through this collaboration are now publicly available on an open website, extending their impact beyond our classroom. By making these materials accessible, we hope to support broader education and raise awareness of UN SDG #1: No Poverty, empowering more learners and educators to join the effort to address this critical global challenge.

Link from Langara's MediaSpace coming soon.

The assignment was deployed in my EDUC5040: Diversity: Constructing Social Realities, a 3 credit MEd course, within the Faculty of Education. I feel the deployment was generally a success.  Students were interested in the Fellowship.  The notion of assignment as an OER appealed to all of them and created a significant degree of pride in the work.   A lot of care went into the editing, formatting, and presentation of their OER resource. The scaffolding in three steps (Photovoice/ Group reflection on photovoice projects and identification of key themes/ preparation of an OER guide for the public for professionals engaging with diversity in community) was effective and I felt the students were able to see the progression towards the desired final outcome.   The course itself is one which allows students to draw from their own lived experiences, but I felt these opportunities were magnified and amplified by the OER assignment. 

In terms of collaborating across institutions and collaborating across disciplines (Business and Education), the process was painful at first but once Dr Kareh and myself were able to identify an SDG that would work for both of us – in this instance, SDG4 – and an outcome that overlapped in both of our courses (engaging with diversity in the population), it then became a very dialogical, logical, linear process, and we were effective at applying backwards design principles to create activities that were meaningful and assessment that could function in both courses, to assess the success of these learning activities.  Unfortunately, although we collaborated throughout the design of the assessment, Dr Kareh’s course was not run in the fall and he will be implementing his part of the roll out on another semester.  We explained this to my class and they are still interested in viewing the OERs produced by the other class, once these are available, and understood the way outside constraints affected the plans.  

Student experiences and narratives: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FFBmLVkD92_6m2VLtTv5SoGXRd3rrxeH/view?usp=sharing

Faculty Feedback: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nMZJwHfHm6xBMa2ZA7E_Kkkhnu1FviH6/view?usp=sharing

Link to video: https://mediaspace.langara.ca/media/t/0_3y7mgeg2

Student responses were very positive, and many reported learning a lot about the realities of employed life, or the particulars about their assigned field. Some students were very shy to initiate conversation over email, so I provided a "template" for first contact, and asked that they CC me on communications to help ensure that everyone was being polite (there were no issues, I'm very proud of my students). I think this "community-based" learning for my students is something very powerful for their vocational growth, and is essential in a time where referrals are often the only way to find gainful employment above minimum wage. I'm definitely going to develop this assignment further, and am very grateful to have had the opportunity to work on this as a part of the SDG Fellowship.