Open Educational Resources: Open Educational Practices (OEP)

In The Open Pedagogy Notebook, Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangian lay out a definition of open pedagogy based on access and agency, connected to the ideals of Open Educational Resources and the broader open ecosystem as well as to collaborative, democratic, and critical schools of pedagogy (constructivist pedagogy, connected learning, critical digital pedagogy) that also center the learner and strive to make the learning process more equitable: “we might think about Open Pedagogy as an access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education AND as a process of designing architectures and using tools for learning that enable students to shape the public knowledge commons of which they are a part.” [1]

One key component of open pedagogy is the renewable assignment. There are four criteria for the renewable OER-enabled assignment as defined by Wiley and Hilton: 1) a student creates an artifact; 2) the artifact has value beyond supporting its creator’s learning; 3) the artifact is made public; 4) the artifact is openly licensed. [2] The “disposable assignment,” by contrast, is created by the student only for the instructor to see and assess. [3] Disposable assignments can generate powerful student learning, but miss the opportunity to share that learning with a community so that it can be used and revised.

Benjamin Croft and Monica Brown examine ways in which the promise of inclusivity in open educational practices comes into tension with systemic inequities in educational systems, knowledge creation, and social and technical interactions more broadly. [4]

Maha Bali, Catherine Cronin and Rajiv S. Jhangiani lay out a process-centered focus of open educational practices and point to social justice implications of open educational practices. [5] Their typology of OEP features three axes, one ranging from content-centric to process-centric, another from teacher-centric to learner-centric, and a third from primarily pedagogical to primarily social justice focused. Categorization of assignments and classes using this typology enables the critical analysis of social justice implications of various OEP.

Faculty can incorporate and scaffold aspects of renewable assignments even if the student work will not immediately be shared outside of the class for some of the same positive effects on student engagement as completely open assignments. It is important to be transparent with students how their work could be shared and credited in the future and be mindful of privacy and other concerns. The resources below offer more suggestions and examples.

1. Creating course materials

Having students create supplementary materials for a course (such as exam study questions and answers or slide decks that explain course concepts, skills, or ways to do course work, or even syllabus components such as specific assignments, assessments, or policies) or shared content-based learning materials (from annotated bibliographies to anthology or textbook entries

2. Wikipedia writing and editing

Writing or editing Wikipedia articles fulfills all of the criteria for renewable assignments, since Wikipedia is an openly licensed resource.