The Open Pedagogy Workshop

Helping Faculty to Understand Open Pedagogy

You heard the phrase "open pedagogy" during the Workshop but we want to take some time to dig into it here. Why? Because open pedagogy allows the full potential of education to be realized. It invites students in as co-creators, creating rich opportunities for deep and active learning. Open pedagogy empowers faculty to make education more diverse and inclusive, but they may need your assistance and guidance to realize open pedagogy's full potential. Much of the information that follows is taken from the Introduction to Open Pedagogy Slide Deck Links to an external site.. If you'd like to make changes (It's openly licensed, so you may adapt all you want!), please make a copy. 

Goals for This Module:

• You will be able to define open pedagogy for faculty.
• You will hear from some faculty practitioners in the field of open pedagogy. 
• You will be equipped with some commonly used tools faculty employ when engaging in open pedagogy.
• You will have some concrete examples of open pedagogy. 
• You will be able to access the Open Pedagogy Workshop. 
• You will be pointed to additional resources for helping faculty understand and engage in open pedagogy.

Defining Open Pedagogy

What is open pedagogy?

"Open pedagogy is an access-oriented commitment to learner driven education. It is also the process of using tools and building architectures for learning that allow students to shape the public knowledge commons of which they are a part. Open pedagogy might look like co-creating course policies, rubrics, or even schedules of work with students or replacing traditional course assignments in which only the instructor may see the student's work with assignments that have a larger audience, impact, and legacy. This could involve students writing or editing articles in Wikipedia, writing op ed pieces instead of another research essay, creating brief instructional videos instead of giving another classroom presentation, or annotating, updating, or even authoring open textbooks." 

Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani

Another Definition

Open pedagogy, an open educational practice (OEP), is the use of open educational resources (OER) to support learning. When you use open pedagogy in your classroom, you are inviting your students to be part of the teaching process, participating in the co-creation of knowledge (B.C. Campus). 

A Final Definition

Open pedagogy is "the practice of engaging with students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it. It's a form of experiential learning in which students demonstrate understanding through the act of creation. The products of open pedagogy are student created and openly licensed so that they may live outside of the classroom in a way that has an impact on the greater community." University of Texas, Arlington Libraries.

Why Do We Need Open Pedagogy?

In addition to tuition and course material costs still providing problems for and obstacles to learning for many students, we know that students need to feel as if they belong in order to persist. “Racially minoritized and first-generation students at four-year institutions are less inclined to feel that same sense of belonging compared to their peers at two-year institutions” (Gopalan and Brady, 2019). 

Financial barriers and inability to see themselves in the curriculum can have a direct impact on students’ sense of belonging, particularly those who come from historically marginalized backgrounds. These students may feel like they aren’t being seen in the classroom. Open pedagogy provides a student-centered perspective on learning, one that prioritizes student agency and values student contributions to learning, empowering students to create or adapt learning to be more culturally relevant and inclusive.

What Does Open Pedagogy Do?

According to Bali, Cronin, & Jhangiani (2020), "Open pedagogy is an open educational practice that shifts learning

1. from content-centric to process-centric;

2. from teacher-centric to learner-centric;

3 from primarily pedagogical to primarily social justice focused. 

If primarily social justice focused, we can consider the degree to which it addresses 

a. Economic and/or

b. Cultural and/or

c. Political injustice." 

(Bali, Cronin, & Jhangiani 2020) https://jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/jime.565 Links to an external site.

Examples of Open Pedagogy in Practice

One example of open pedagogy is the use of renewable assignments Links to an external site., assignments that students create for the purpose of sharing and releasing as OER.  Wiley & Hilton compiled the criteria in Table 2 to distinguish between different kinds of assignments, from least to most open.

Wiley & Hilton's Criteria Distinguishing Different Kinds of Assignments 

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3601/4724 Links to an external site.

Examples of open pedagogy range from students editing Wikipedia articles Links to an external site. to students writing test questions Links to an external site. to students contributing to a textbook Links to an external site., and these are just a few examples. To find more examples of open pedagogy in action, point faculty in the direction of the Open Pedagogy Notebook Links to an external site. or the Open Education Group Links to an external site.. For a more in-depth description of a faculty foray into open pedagogy, read about Robin deRosa's experience Links to an external site. when she invited her students in as co-creators and curators of The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature Links to an external site.. 

OER-enabled Pedagogy

In 2018, Wiley and Hilton suggested that, "rather than attempting to argue for a canonical definition of open pedagogy, we propose a new term, 'OER-enabled pedagogy,' defined as the set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions that are characteristic of OER." They go onto suggest a four-part test to determine the extent to which a specific teaching and learning practice qualifies as OER-enabled pedagogy, and these questions may be helpful for faculty as they engage students as co-creators of curriculum:

1. Are students asked to create new artifacts (essays, poems, videos, songs, etc.) or revise/remix existing OER?
2. Does the new artifact have value beyond supporting the learning of its author?
3. Are students invited to publicly share their new artifacts or revised/remixed OER?
4. Are students invited to openly license their new artifacts or revised/remixed OER?

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3601/4724 Links to an external site. Links to an external site.

Up Next: Support and Tools for Open Pedagogy