Open Education: Resources and Practices

Open Pedagogy is an approach to teaching that:

(a) emphasizes information access as fundamental to learning

and (b) emphasizes agency as an important way to maximize individual learning

with (c) the goal of also broadening information access for others.

Pedagogical Rationale

Derosa & Jhangiani identify the following philosophical principles informing open pedagogy: 

"First, we want to recognize that Open Pedagogy shares common investments with many other historical and contemporary schools of pedagogy. For example, constructivist pedagogy, connected learning, and critical digital pedagogy are all recognizable pedagogical strands that overlap with Open Pedagogy. From constructivist pedagogy, particularly as it emerged from John Dewey and, in terms of its relationship to technology, from Seymour Papert, we recognize a critique of industrial and automated models for learning, a valuing of experiential and learner-centered inquiry, and a democratizing vision for the educational process. From connected learning, especially as it coheres in work supported by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, we recognize a hope that human connections facilitated by technologies can help learners engage more fully with the knowledge and ideas that shape our world. And from critical digital pedagogy, as developed by Digital Humanities-influenced thinkers at Digital Pedagogy Lab out of educational philosophy espoused by scholars such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks, we recognize a commitment to diversity, collaboration, and structural critique of both educational systems and the technologies that permeate them."

Using the 5 Rs of OER as a model, these 5 Rs (Jhangiani, 2019) provide a framework for values embedded in open pedagogy:

1. Respect for the agency of students and creators

2. Reciprocate by contributing back to the commons and building community

3. Risk is always present with open pedagogy, and we should be mindful of how risks are higher for some (e.g., women, students and scholars of color, precarious faculty)

4. Reach means having an impact beyond the classroom

5. Resist destructive forces in order to be democratizing, liberatory, and decolonized

In practice, open pedagogy is built around the use of:

• Open educational resources (OER)
• "Renewable" assignments

Renewable Assignments are:

Learning assessments through which students contribute to the openly accessible knowledge corpus.

In essence, the rationale behind renewable assignments (which could also be understood as "sustainable" or "neighborly" assignments) is that the products by which student learning is assessed should not be destined for the trash bin of history, but rather have a chance to live on in a publicly accessible capacity that might benefit others in the future. By adding this gravity and purpose to assignments, the stakes for student performance are raised; a product intended for public access inherently encourages student effort in a different way. Most importantly, involving students in the construction of knowledge can afford them agency in their learning and empower them beyond a single course.

Open Licensing Considerations for Student Work

• Teaching students about copyright and open licensing is an important preface to most renewable assignments. This can be an empowering student learning outcome as it emphasizes students' ownership of their assignments and supports their agency by allowing them the choice of how to share their work. See our Copyright and Creative Commons LibGuides for more information, and/or contact your liaison librarian or the Open Knowledge & Research Impact librarian for more information about copyright primers for students.
• Student privacy is an important concern to account for when planning renewable assignments. Allowing students to decide whether their work becomes public preserves student agency in the knowledge construction process. A common refrain amongst open advocates when facing privacy decisions is "as open as possible, as closed as necessary," which can be applied on a case-by-case basis. For example, asking students to use pseudonyms when working on sensitive public-facing assessments is one way to afford protection while maintaining the open impact of their work.