To define open pedagogy, we need to break it down to its two components, open and pedagogy:
- Open, in this instance, refers to open educational resources (OER) – defined by UNESCO as “any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license.”
- Pedagogy is the practice and method of teaching; how we teach, rather than what we teach.
Open pedagogy, also known as open educational practices (OEP), is the use of open educational resources (OER) to support learning, or the open sharing of teaching practices with a goal of improving education and training at the institutional, professional, and individual level.
From: The Values of Open Pedagogy
The following resources define Open Pedagogy and provide resources for learning more:
Rajiv Jhangiani at Kwatlen Polytechnic University adapted the course textbook and had his students write and review multiple choice questions for their Social Psychology class.
Open Case Studies at UBC brings together faculty and students from across departments and Faculties to co-create an interdisciplinary, open educational resource with case studies that can be used by anyone, at UBC or elsewhere.
This book was revised and adapted by an elite team of graduate students at the University of Saskatchewan ETAD 874: Advanced Instructional Design course. The goal was to create an affordable and accessible text intended to improve how students learn about instructional design in graduate programs at the University of Saskatchewan and beyond.
UBC's SPAN312 class contributed to Wikipedia during Spring 2008. Their collective goal was to bring a selection of articles on Latin American literature to featured article status.
David Gaertner, Assistant Professor, UBC First Nations and Indigenous Studies, describes some of his motivations for why he engages his students in open pedagogy
While open scholarship focuses on equitable access to knowledge, the focus of open pedagogy is equitable participation in the creation of knowledge.
In this way, open pedagogy often transforms the student experience within the classroom.
It can help students begin to see themselves as scholars and it de-centres the instructor from the information expert to a facilitation role that supports student negotiation of ideas and transforms the efforts of their learning into open knowledge resources.
If a core goal of scholarship is research, dissemination, and dialogue to further the knowledge base and growth of fields of study, then open pedagogy engages students in this very same process within their courses. In contrast to traditional learning assessments such as multiple choice quizzes or essays, student work in open pedagogy is seen as having value beyond just informing the learner or instructor. As such, students are asked to create new knowledge and given a degree of agency, autonomy, and control over their work.