1 What is Open Pedagogy?
Kathy Essmiller
Let’s Begin
Hello! The purpose of this chapter is to provide opportunity for faculty and instructors to discover some of the essential characteristics of Open Pedagogy. Let’s start out by seeing how you would describe Open Pedagogy. In the box below, click into the white rectangle which reads ‘Type your answer here” and share your thoughts. Each entry allows for 20 characters, but you can answer as many times as you like.
It’s interesting to see how your thoughts are the same as or different from others exploring the same topic. How did seeing what others had shared shape your thoughts? As you progress through this chapter, you will be invited to imagine redesigning elements of an existing course to incorporate practices reflective of the values and purposes of open pedagogy. You are welcome to work straight through, or sip and dip. The strategies shared are just one approach; feel free to adapt the aspects which suit you and scroll right on by those which do not. Hopefully you find something which inspires you! An objective is shared below, for those who welcome a more structured experience.
Learning Objectives
Discovering Open Pedagogy
You very likely already do many things in your classroom which qualify as open pedagogy. Before we settle on a definition, however, let’s consider a couple of questions. What are your hopes for higher education? What is your vision for your classroom? What do you absolutely wish your students would do (DeRosa & Jhangiani, 2018)?
Click into the Flipgrid below using the password GoPokes! and share your reflection. Feel free to be informal and chatty, we are exploring together. The FlipGrid is set to public, which means that anyone with the Flip Code can join and view videos on the grid. You can join with a Microsoft or Google account. If you prefer not to use a personal account, you may log in with the OpenOkstate Google Account.
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Once you have shared your reflection, give yourself time to listen to what your colleagues have to say. Feel free to respond if you hear something that you agree with, something that surprises you, or even something you would like to push back on a bit.
Defining Open Pedagogy
As you have engaged with each other in this conversation, you have probably discovered you share similar hopes and dreams for higher education. Most of us in the classroom want our students to engage with the content in a meaningful way, are pleased when students collaborate constructively, and ultimately hope to see our students step into further conversation and exploration.
Open Pedagogy is a system of practices which can be used to facilitate the type of learning experiences described above. Classroom practices become the focus as teachers and learners move “beyond a content-centered approach” (Cronin, 2017) and share the knowledge creation experience. Rather than teachers or classroom resources broadcasting information to students for their consumption who then compl