17 Considerations For Using Open Pedagogy
Before jumping in with open pedagogy, you should keep in mind how you will support students through the changes you plan to make. Ward [1] discussed some of these considerations in an interview with Rajiv Jhangiani, a leader in the field of open pedagogy:
If you are interested in utilizing open pedagogy in your courses, first consider how this will affect your students.
Understand your tools
You don’t have to use a flashy tool or technology to make open pedagogy work. Make sure that you are choosing a tool or technology that your students can easily learn and – if it is not already familiar to them – that you have included time in your course for teaching students how to use your chosen tool.
Scaffold learning
Not all students will be familiar with technology or able to engage with OER quickly. It’s important that you scaffold technology support into your teaching so all students can be on the same page when it comes to using the tools you’ve created or adopted.[2]
Some methods for scaffolding learning are provided below:
- Integrate interactive exercises into your class to help students work through new concepts.
- Create tutorials on how to use any technology or tool unique to your class.
- Use blogs and discussion posts to introduce the concept of writing for a public audience.
- Give students the choice between set assignment types to accommodate learners with different technical competencies.
Educate students about copyright
It’s important that students who are creating items that might be published and shared openly understand what that means. If you’re uncomfortable about discussing copyright with your students, ask the open publishing team located in the Library to deliver a copyright session to your students or to direct you to relevant resources.
Considerations:
- Your students don’t need to be copyright lawyers to feel safe using OER. Focus on building a comfortable foundation of knowledge about CC licenses: the rest, if necessary, can come later.
- Students should also understand their own work is covered by copyright unless you have applied a creative common license. If students cite or quote previous work, they should treat themselves as the author and their own previous work as an unpublished paper.
- If you’d like your students to learn more about this topic but don’t know where to start, consider reaching out to the open publishing team or read Part II of this publication.
Be considerate of student privacy
Some students will be energised by the idea that their homework can be seen, used, or even improved upon by future students in the class. Others may feel uncomfortable with this step. Allow students to opt out of making their materials public if they are uncertain about doing so and give them the option to remove their name from public documents if they are uncertain about this for any reason.
Considerations
- Explain clearly how and where student-created course content will be shared in the course syllabus.
- Teach students their rights as content creators and allow them to opt out of sharing their assignments.
- Allow students to share their work without attaching their personal information to it, if they are concerned about this.
- Reaffirm students’ interest in publicly sharing their materials with each assignment that will be posted.
These are only a few concepts to keep in mind when exploring open pedagogy in your course. You can learn more about this topic in the Open Pedagogy Notebook.[3]
- Ward, D. (2017). Turning open education into a social movement. http://cteblog.ku.edu/turning-open-education-into-a-social-movement/ ↵
- Kim, M. & Hannfin, M. (2011). Scaffolding problem solving in technology-enhanced learning environments (TELEs): Bridging research and theory with practice. Computers & Education, 56(2), pp. 403-417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.08.024 ↵
- Jhangiani, R. & DeRosa, R. (n.d.) Open pedagogy notebook: Sharing practices, building community. https://openpedagogy.org/ CC BY 4.0 ↵
A set of open licenses that allow creators to clearly mark how others can reuse their work through a set of four badge-like components: Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commercial, and No Derivatives. ("The OER Starter Kit " by Abbey Elder is licensed under CC BY 4.0)
A set of pedagogical practices that include engaging students in content creation and making learning accessible to all. ("The OER Starter Kit " by Abbey Elder is licensed under CC BY 4.0)
A set of intellectual property laws that give the rightsholder of a work (usually the author) exclusive rights over the reproduction, reuse, remixing, display, performance, and redistribution of their work.
(Adapted from "The OER Starter Kit " by Abbey Elder is licensed under CC BY 4.0)
