To be completed by Tuesday, June 13.
Watch the video below, in which Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani introduce the idea of open pedagogy. The video is about one hour in length. The first three minutes are an introduction to the webinar series, so the video is cued to start at 3:12 to skip that part.
Drawing on the “What Is Open Pedagogy” article and this talk by DeRosa and Jhangiani, respond to the following in the comments section below:
- What interests or excites you about open pedagogy? What, if anything, do you find confusing or challenging?
- How would you describe open pedagogy to a colleague who has never heard of it?
- What makes an assignment open pedagogy?
6 thoughts on “What is open pedagogy?”
What excites me about open pedagogy is giving the students the opportunity to access materials without having to incur the high cost of textbooks. Another thing that excites me is the idea of reaching students where they are, in particular their sophisticated knowledge and engagement with online platforms and media. I’ve always thought of learning as a primarily social activity and how the current/traditional model can only accomodate this idea to a limited extent. One principle I go by is that whatever I experience along the teaching process, it’s likely my students experience it the same way. In other words, if I feel negatively about student learning as an isolated, two-way exchange (like Freire’s banking model) it’s very likely they feel negatively about it as well. And why wouldn’t they? Learning in isolation really isn’t sustainable in the long run. One challenge I find is in thinking about what Robin had done with students building a textbook of their own. I wonder whether students would enjoy doing it, or, as mentioned in the video, they would feel put upon to provide additional labor. I also wonder how an assessment for that would work, what it would look like. On the other hand, I see real potential for creativity: illustrating the texts, designing creative writing assignments based on the texts, etc., so perhaps it’s just a matter of taking time to see more models and find more resources.
I tried out describing what open pedagogy is to someone who’d never heard of it, and further, is not in the education field. The way I described it was for them to think back to the 2000s when the internet was still somewhat young and gave rise to the “2.0” platform. Similarly, open pedagogy is user-generated content, taken from or building from prior available content. I explained that the same way a meme takes one visual image and users can change the text accompanying it to describe their experiences, open pedagogy allows students to build off texts to create their own based on their learning experience. I think they got the idea sufficiently, but in retrospect, I would have liked to show them one of my Open Lab sites just to drive home the point. Open Lab is a good example of what makes an assignment open: the site itself is an intranet, but is available on the internet for anyone who might find it on a search. The body of knowledge is entirely generated from the students wherein their work is based on a single writing prompt. They are encouraged to add images and treat their writing as if it is an article for public consumption, rather than an essay that only I will read. Additionally, they are required to comment on classmates’ work in order to build a community of writers that support and inspire each other.
One final note: this past spring semester I opted not to utilize Open Lab just as an experiment on my part. I wanted to see if the students would react any differently from students in past semesters. There were some benefits, namely, Blackboard does not have the signup requirement that Open Lab does. I found getting students onboarded to Blackboard was frustrating for them: some can’t use their BMCC email, some didn’t understand how to do it, some seemed resistant for reasons I could not identify. Those that experienced difficulty seemed hesitant to reach out to the help staff, and as a result, many students end up never submitting over Open Lab at all. But I will say that this was the primary benefit of using Blackboard over Open Lab. The drawbacks to Blackboard are many, namely, it is not the most user-friendly and it becomes difficult for students to find materials, especially if they fall behind on assignments and have to backtrack. Another drawback is that other than Discussion Board, the assignments are inevitably a two-way exchange, which is unfortunate. For this upcoming semester, I am leaning toward going back to Open Lab, but am still giving it some thought.
What excites me the most about open pedagogy is the idea of unlimited access to knowledge, but even more, getting the students to the place where they can be contributers, not just receivers of knowledge. The challenge for me, as an adjunct, is finding the time to reconfigure my course, learning the “how to” of it all. I often do describe OER, so I guess I would add that open pedagogy expands the idea of open resources to incorporate the student input to a course. I have had many students ask such great questions that I have added them to my conten on specific subjects and open pedagogy is a way to make that type of addition not just available to anyone, but also give the student the recognition of their idea/thinking.
To me, an open pedagogy assignment is democratic. The instructor/faculty and the students make the decisions on how the assignment is designed, and then that work is made available to others to use of modify for their own.
If I had to define Open Pedagogy in one word it would be “accessibility.” This one word can mean many different things from the material covered, and how diverse or inclusive it is, to the student body and the diverse experiences, identities, and circumstances that they contribute to the learning community. I find Open Pedagogy to be a broad term that allows us, as instructors, to continually reframe and redefine the learning environment to meet the changing needs of our students and their present realities. The open-ended nature, global scope, or revisionist approach of an assignment are some hallmarks of Open Pedagogy.
As someone who is new to teaching and all the terminology and philosophy surrounding it, this really opened things up for me and got me excited about how to approach my classes going forward. One thing that really stuck out to me was the idea that even learners who are new to a subject can contribute to a foundational textbook (or other educational assets), and, as new learners themselves, these people are probably the BEST people to be creating educational materials for others who are brand new to a subject. I thought of how I actually had to re-educate myself about how to write an “academic essay” in order to teach ENG101, how much I learned from that, and how much my students probably benefited in dialoging with a “teacher” who was quite capable, but also still figuring things out herself.
A few notes I jotted down:
Open pedagogy =
– Thinking about the learners in your class as contributors to the knowledge commons, making them agents of their own learning
– Moving from thinking about static content to a field that is in motion; students are welcomed into the learning community to participate, receiving and contributing
Among other things, I love the idea of inviting students to help curate course content. Why not ask students at the beginning of the semester to help design the syllabus? For Intro to Literature, I might ask each student to suggest a genre they like to read or a story they love that we can discuss as a class. Then, instead of asking students to write 4 “disposable” essays throughout the semester, I’m now thinking about breaking a more long-term project into sections in which students create different educational assets. Perhaps the first step is to write a book review for BMCC Reads, step two could be turning that review into a podcast, step three might be contributing to the Wikipedia page on the author or literary genre, etc. Maybe at some point they create a video explaining a few literary devices or elements. My wheels are turning…
What interests or excites you about open pedagogy? What, if anything, do you find confusing or challenging?
Audience interests me. As a writing instructor, audience is paramount, but it can be difficult to get a student to imagine an audience if it’s not…actually there. Open pedagogy creates a real audience; and it’s a two-way street. The student is both creator and observer.
A challenge: As a paid employee of an expensive educational institution, my very existence seems to contradict the greater aims of open pedagogy. How can I manage this apparent contradiction, especially as I consider myself an underpaid employee in this system?
How would you describe open pedagogy to a colleague who has never heard of it?
Education is for everyone. Education and all of its various components should be available to all people. Period.
What makes an assignment open pedagogy?
The assignment does not die in the classroom. It lives in a public forum so that anyone can interact with it and learn from it.
When I think of an Open Pedagogy, I think of the opportunity to contribute to the expansion of African Development-related courses and to be able to expand the AFN course curriculum at BMCC and to develop new course resources, informational materials that will enhance student learning and contribute to overall academic achievement. This is a course that has remained dormant at the Ethnic Studies Dept for a while the dept is looking to revise it with fresh content to generate interest in BMCC students and the diversity of course selection and offer at the University.
A course that has not been offered by the Dept in years that is “non-African history” based but one that will need to meet the needs of contemporary issues and understanding the problems of African economic and political development since the 1900s and one in which. the emergence of conditions contrary to the goals of independence and African participation in world affairs is explored. An opportunity to create a revised and decolonized course context, including resources from diverse perspectives with multiple opinions, will be the focus of the OER activity while engaging and encouraging student creativity, contributions and access.