Open Pedagogy
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Provide a definition for open pedagogy.
- Describe the major components of a renewable assignment.
- List three tools commonly used for the creation of renewable assignments.
Free access to materials is not the only benefit provided by using OER. Another aspect of OER that is commonly commended by instructors is the academic freedom that using openly-licensed content affords them in taking control of their classroom and engaging students in learning.
Attribution: “Open Dialogues: How to engage and support students in open pedagogies” by Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, University of British Columbia is licensed CC BY 3.0.
Innovation in the Classroom
The open licenses on OER allow instructors to adapt and integrate materials into their classes in new ways, incorporating topics of local interest or translating content into another language. Instructors who teach graduate level courses or courses in niche subject areas are often drawn to OER for two reasons:
- They can adapt existing materials to meet the specific needs of their class.
- They can share created materials with other instructors in their subject area around the world.
Developing new open educational resources can be incredibly impactful, especially for instructors who feel they are underserved by the traditional textbook model and market.
Open Pedagogy
Using open educational resources in the classroom can make it easier for students to access and interact with course materials. However, another major aspect of Open Education asks not “what you teach with” but “how you teach.” The set of pedagogical practices that include engaging students in content creation and making learning accessible is known as open pedagogy.
As DeRosa & Jhangiani (2017) explain, “one key component of open pedagogy might be that it sees access, broadly writ, as fundamental to learning and to teaching, and agency as an important way of broadening that access.”[1] DeRosa & Robison (2017) expand on this topic further, explaining that:
“students asked to interact with OER become part of a wider public of developers, much like an open-source community. We can capitalize on this relationship between enrolled students and a broader public by drawing in wider communities of learners and expertise to help our students find relevance in their work, situate their ideas into key contexts, and contribute to the public good.”[2]
Depending on the source you consult, open pedagogy might be a series of practices, a learning style, or a state of mind. For the sake of this chapter, open pedagogy is defined as a series of practices which involve engaging students in a course through the development, adaptation, or use of open educational resources.
Dig Deeper To learn more about about how different scholars are defining open pedagogy, please read:
- DeRosa, R. & Jhangiani, R. (2017). Open pedagogy. Open Pedagogy Notebook.
- Schuwer, R.