Open Pedagogy

In this chapter, let me break down Open Pedagogy as it is used in this book. I use the term open because of what we have previously learned. Open is a mixture of being freely available and I also have a set of permissions that I can work under to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and/or redistribute the desired work.

Pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning and heavily relies on educational psychology and to some extent philosophy of education.  Often times pedagogy shapes the actions of the teacher. How one might use different strategies that align with learning theories, students’ needs, or their interests to create instruction.

Thinking about those statements, Open pedagogy is an approach to engage students by giving them a role to think critically, creatively, and move away from regurgitating information. Similarly, we are helping students create learning elements that go beyond an in-class discussion, term paper, or assignments done in the classroom. Instead, I’m asking for assignments that can have a lasting and impactful life outside of the classroom.

This idea was made clearer to me when I watched a specific presentation from Dr. David Wiley. he had mentioned in his classes he had previously used “Disposable Assignments”. These assignments are described as “student work whose ultimate destination is the garbage can”. These types of assignments are more than your run-of-the-mill busy work assignments as there is a lot of time initially designing the format, students are engaging with the activity, but as soon as the long hours of grading are done and feedback has returned to the students. there’s no lasting impact, instead, this student-created resource is thrown into either a physical or metaphorical trash can; never to be reviewed again.

Wiley suggests turning the disposable assignments into “Renewable Assignments”. Instead of throwing the work away, could we add value to student work and push it back into the world? One of the things that I agree with Wiley about; is people like to feel valued and we feel joy when our work matters. If you go into a project knowing that it’s not going to valued, helpful, unimpactful, etc. There is not the same level of rigor, passion, or engagement.

Because of open licensing, we are able to take elements that would normally be behind closed doors restricted to just a semester in a classroom to making resources that are openly available for others to retain, reuse, etc.

One of the last reasons I wanted to discuss is doing open education at the individual level is time-consuming and think that’s why a lot of instructors choose to opt out. I agree that if there is no community to share and bounces ideas OER and Open Pedagogy are dead in the water. However, by doing open-pedagogy in your class, you are creating a community in your class that you can delegate responsibility and share the load together. There still be work to do but it will be work that matters and is impactful to empowering our students to learn, create, and share.