We will explore three applications of open pedagogy.

Textbook Replacement

Replacing commercial textbooks with Open Educational Resources may be a concept familiar to most of us and is a wonderful solution for infusing open pedagogy in our classrooms!

The cost savings associated with replacing commercial textbooks with OER immediately allows all of your students to access the learning materials. Textbook replacement, therefore, is an effective, student-centered approach to making your course open access.

While the cost savings for students associated with instructors’ adoption or creation of open textbooks is much to celebrate, we must also be mindful that we aren’t utilizing OER in the same capacity we were using commercial textbooks. To swap one learning resource that fails to reflect the experiences of students, represent voices of the oppressed, or identify how the field has been shaped by racism, for another learning resource that does the same, is to perpetuate the underlying racist principles that shape education.

Beyond cost savings and open access, textbook replacement also allows us to apply anti-racist pedagogy in our course. In adopting or creating open learning resources, we choose what images are utilized in our text, whose stories are told, what history is revealed.

Open Student Projects

Some of you may solicit the help of your students to revise your OER content or remix it, by locating and contributing their own information to be included in the learning materials in the course. Others may engage students in a Wikipedia assignment where students become active contributors to the information and knowledge in your field.

Listen to Robin DeRosa from Plymouth State University, describe the evolution of her open pedagogy project,  The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature.

Putting Public Back in Public Higher Education by Robin DeRosa from The Learning Portal, provided by CC-BY

Consider This!

There are a variety of ways students can participate in open projects. Explore  some other open pedagogy examples listed on this guide from UTA. The Open Pedagogy Notebook also includes examples of open student projects.

Open Course Design

Please watch a portion of the following presentation by Suzanne Wakim, OER Coordinator at Butte College, who shares how she designs her course to include a variety of open resources by which students engage in learning. The video will begin at the 22 minute mark, please watch through 28:30.

How Open Educational Practices Support Student-centered Course design & Accessibility from Open Education Global, provided under CC-BY

Consider how Suzanne infuses open pedagogy in her course – how can you make your course more open?

Consider This!

For those experienced in online teaching and learning, you’ll notice a number of best practices and principles Suzanne shares for open course design also make for great online course design! We highly encourage you to learn more about Universal Design for Learning, the framework Suzanne mentions in her presentation, as an excellent guide for quality online course design. Keep in mind opportunities to employ open pedagogy and anti-racist pedagogy as you consider opportunities for applying Universal Design for Learning in your courses.