Open Pedagogy

What is open pedagogy?

David Wiley describes open pedagogy as a set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible in the context of free access and 5R (retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute) permissions that are characteristic of open educational resources. OERs have many benefits to students- they save money and students can access them anywhere they have a Wi-Fi connection. But beyond these benefits, students are able to interact with OER in a different way than traditional learning materials. The ability remix and revise material opens up a whole new set of possibilities.

The disposable assignment

I remember very few assignments from my high school or undergraduate education. The few I do remember were extremely interactive- writing and reading aloud a modern day poem in the style of Canterbury Tales, calculating velocities at Six Flags, etc. Let’s be honest though, most assignments are what David Wiley calls “disposable assignments”. They’re not memorable, they’re not interactive, and they mostly involve simply repeating something described in a lecture. 

This is a disposable and edible assignment

Open pedagogy seeks to move beyond the constraints of disposable assignments by making them more open and interactive by taking advantage of the 5 R permissions.

Open pedagogy examples

What would an example of open pedagogy look like in a course? A disposable assignment might be to write a summary of the key concepts covered in a particular chapter. This type of assignment is again, not interactive, not memorable, and doesn’t add any value to the world. An open pedagogy take on this assignment could take many forms. The professor could ask students to take the key concepts in the chapter and re-work them for a different audience such as high school students. Another example of an open pedagogy assignment would be for students to edit the textbook using examples from their own life or to go into the field to take photographs to add to the textbook. Perhaps you could have your students to research a particular subject and then participate in a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. These types of assignments have two things in common- they’re interactive and they create an end product that is released openly into the world.

Open pedagogy allows students to really interact and think critically about learning material because they’re being asked to do more than just read and recall. Of course, similar types of assignments can work with traditional education resources but one huge advantage to using openly licensed material that students can revise and remix and then publish them. This means that the assignment can live beyond a short semester and become a valuable tool for other students.

References:

Wiley, D. (2013). What is open pedagogy? Retrieved from https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2975

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