Up until now, we’ve mostly been discovering open education resources and tools and thinking about how we can apply them in our teaching. But one area of open education – sometimes referred to as open pedagogy – takes this a step further and applies concepts of openness to student activities.
In this challenge, you will explore 3 examples of open pedagogy.
Examples
Although there are many open pedagogy examples scattered around the internet, here are two open textbook resources that are a good starting point for learning more about open pedagogy and what it looks like:
Challenge
- Visit the following sites:
- Go to this example of how a psychology professor engaged his students in an exam question writing activity. This link has a Hypothesis layer that allows you to annotate and see annotations of others.We will learn more about Hypothesis in our next challenge.
- Go to this example of how medical students gained research and writing skills by improving wikipedia articles. This link has a Hypothesis layer that allows you to annotate and see annotations of others.We will learn more about Hypothesis in our next challenge.
- Go to this example to read about how students worked with local community to gather artefacts and stories around the history of Northern BC canneries and then visit the UNBC History 493 course site, paying attention to the Student Research Project section.
2. Reflect on how openness has been applied to these activities and what that changes for the teaching and learning experience. Share your thoughts in the comments section for this post.
In the example of the psychology professor he was able to engage his students in learning through a seemingly simple exercise – coming up with exam questions. I also think this is a great example of providing students with power and autonomy. I had not considered this activity an open pedagogy teaching method prior to this exercise. I like the idea of engaging students in the course evaluation. I would assume it would give the instructor and idea of what the students are prioritizing in their learning. For example, this could be part of a post assessment after a lecture. You could compare what did the students focused on versus what I wanted them to focus on.
Anita, great comment about the activity giving students “power & autonomy” when it comes to their learning. And I love that the instructor was planning on revising these questions with future classes and then releasing the full question bank to accompany the open textbook. I wonder if there is an additional motivating factor for the learners to create good questions knowing that there is a possibility that these could be used by others in the future.
Challenge 6: Lots to explore here. Similar to when I linked online library resources for the online component of a scholarly science writing course at UBC, I found it a bit tricky to see when I was ‘in the course’ and when I was elsewhere on a web link. It takes practice and some clear messaging to make sure students know ‘where they are’, how to ‘get back’ and exactly what they are to do with the material they are linking to. All great though, and such a wonderful way for what I know as flexible learning – learning anytime and anywhere.
Hi, there!
I strongly believe in approaches that make room for the student to be the protagonist of his own learning. In all examples, teachers assume the role of tutors, an important task to ensure quality learning. I really enjoyed this challenge.
I looked at the UNBC History 493 example in most detail. It’s so powerful to see the students creating public and open resources that anyone can access to share their learning. I will think about how I can incorporate an assignment with these outcomes into my computer science courses.