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.

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 pointed to additional resources for helping faculty understand and engage in open pedagogy.

Defining Open Pedagogy

What is open pedagogy? Watch this short, one-minute video for a rich explanation.

https://media.kpu.ca/media/What+is+Open+PedagogyF/0_nu1pz7eq

"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. To explore a diverse set of examples of open pedagogy in practice, visit the Open Pedagogy Notebook."

Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Another Definition

Another, more concise definition of open pedagogy is a set of pedagogical practices that include engaging students in content creation and making learning accessible.

Examples of Open Pedagogy in Practice

One example of open pedagogy is the use of renewable assignments, 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

Table 2: Wiley & Hilton’s (2018) *Criteria Distinguishing Different Kinds of Assignments*
	Student creates an artifact	The artifact has value beyond supporting its creator’s learning	The artifact is made public	The artifact is openly licensed
Disposable assignments	Yes	No	No	No
Authentic assignments	Yes	Yes	No	No
Constructionist assignments	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Renewable assignments	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3601/4724

Examples of open pedagogy range from students editing Wikipedia articles to students writing test questions to students contributing to a textbook, 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 or the Open Education Group. For a more in-depth description of a faculty foray into open pedagogy, read about Robin deRosa's experience when she invited her students in as co-creators and curators of The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature.

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:

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

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3601/4724

Up Next: Support and Tools for Open Pedagogy