The open licences applied to 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:

1. They can adapt existing materials to meet the specific needs of their class.
2. They can share created materials with other instructors in their subject area around the world.

Developing new OER can be incredibly impactful, especially for instructors who feel they are underserved by the traditional textbook model and market.

Open pedagogy

Using OER 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 and Jhangiani 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 and Robison expand on this topic, explaining that:

Depending on the source you consult, open pedagogy might be a series of practices, a learning style, or a state of mind.

One method of engaging in open pedagogy is the development of renewable assignments, assignments which students create for the purpose of sharing and releasing as OER. These can range in content from individual writing assignments in Wikipedia to collaboratively written textbooks.^{[3] [4]}

Wiley and Hilton^[5] compiled the criteria in the table below to distinguish between different kinds of assignments, from least to most open. You can explore more examples of open pedagogy in action in the Open Pedagogy Notebook.

Wiley and Hilton’s Criteria Distinguishing Different Kinds of Assignments