Chapter 1 | Relevant Literature
Defining Open Pedagogy
Defining a term always runs the risk of overly emphasizing a few voices that have been historically prioritized around that term and overlooking the many practitioners who have contributed to our understanding of the term without being spotlighted in the literature. This literature review attempts to provide a historical context for the term “open pedagogy” while acknowledging that the discussion is necessarily incomplete and derivative.
“Open pedagogy” is a term that is used very inconsistently in the open education community; in fact, some have argued that the idea resists a concrete definition (DeRosa & Jhangiani, 2017). The term “open pedagogy” referring to learner choice and autonomy was actually introduced as early as 1979 (DeRosa & Jhangiani, 2017), although more modern conceptions of it and its relationship with open educational resources generally begin with David Wiley’s use of the term in 2013. In his blog post, Wiley defines open pedagogy as pedagogy “only possible in the context of free access and 4R permissions characteristic of open educational resources” (2013, final paragraph). Later Wiley and John Hilton rejected the nebulous “open pedagogy” term in favor of the term “OER-enabled pedagogy” to describe this type of teaching (2018). The term “open educational practices” was introduced around the same time and came to mean something very similar (Cronin et al, 2022), such that these terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Renewable Assignments
One form of open pedagogy is a renewable assignment. Wiley defined “renewable assignments” as classroom activities and assessments that are shared openly, rather than shared only with the professor and then discarded — also known as “disposable assignments” (2013). The typical “disposable assignment” is often where a student creates something that only their professor will see. Making assignments renewable allows them to have value beyond the students’ learning, and can provide a more meaningful learning experience (Jhangiani, 2017). The renewable assignment is typified as being an (1) artifact that is (2) authentic, or having value beyond the creator’s learning, (3) constructionist, or being available publicly, (4) and openly licensed, having a Creative Commons license applied (Wiley & Hilton, 2018). Some controversy around renewable assignments has included the pushback around the term “disposable” and the sense that it devalues the concept of creating the artifact for a student’s own learning. Other concerns around renewable assignments involve privacy and agency considerations that should be included in the assignment design. Catherine Cronin describes the balance of privacy and sharing as existing “at four levels: macro (global level), meso (community/network level), micro (individual level), and nano (interaction level).“ (2017)
After Wiley’s initial, practical conception of open pedagogy was introduced, others in the open education community began to interpret open pedagogy more in terms of values, and not necessarily tied to the 5Rs. In 2015, Bronwyn Hegarty introduced the following eight attributes of open pedagogy: participatory technologies; people, openness, and trust; innovation and creativity; sharing ideas and resources; connected community; learner-generated; reflective practice; and peer review (p. 5). Some of these attributes, such as connected community, reflection, and peer review, don’t even require the use of OER (Hegarty, 2015). The idea of open pedagogy as an approach to teaching as opposed to a set of specific practices was expanded by Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani, who defined it as an “access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education AND as a process of designing commons of which they are a part” (2018, pp. 13-14).
Emerging Definitions
While the open education community continues to define open pedagogy (Witt 2020), modern attempts at a definition almost always separate open pedagogy from other, related terms, like OER-enabled pedagogy or open educational practices, by relating open pedagogy to the values or perspectives that underlie use of open educational materials in the classroom, rather than distinct learning activities (Casey et al., 2022; Witt, 2020). Some of these values include student agency, use of OER, diversity and inclusion, peer learning, renewable assignments, co-creation/collaboration, and active/experiential learning (Casey et al., 2022). The term can also be thought to overlap with other pedagogical theories, such as constructivist pedagogy, connected learning, and critical digital pedagogy (DeRosa & Jhangiani, 2018). In addition, many researchers have made connections between open pedagogy and the potential for more equitable and inclusive learning experiences (Year of Open, 2018). Student participation in openly sharing may empower those from historically silenced or marginalized groups to actively contribute to the course content and enrich the learning with their diverse perspectives (Lambert, 2018).
Defining Learning
In her 2023 keynote at the Southern Regional Educational Board conference “OER and Dual Enrollment,” Regina Gong referenced the image of a woven tapestry as an example of “things we think about as we pursue this important work.” This image might also be valuable when approaching conversations about definitions of learning and how the learning experience is supported through effective instruction. In Chapter 2, we explore questions related to open pedagogy in terms of why, what, and how. Since many of the reasons supporting incorporating open pedagogy point back to its impact on learning, it is valuable to take time to center a definition of learning using terms that surface in learning science research. This section will discuss some of the characteristics of meaningful learning and identify how those characteristics can be surfaced in conversations about open pedagogy as an instructional strategy that supports and facilitates meaningful learning.
Characteristics of Meaningful Learning
Meaningful learning is a process through which students make “nonarbitrary and substantive connections among ideas” (Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman, 2009, p. 65). Howland et al. (2013) describe learning as “a natural, adaptive human process” (p. 3). In the 1900s, learning was defined as a “relatively permanent change in behavior” (Jonassen, 2002, p.45). This change in behavior was considered to be visible to and measurable by outside observers. Contemporary learning scientists, however, consider learning to be a “process of meaning-making” (Jonassen, 2002, p. 45) that includes internal and external conversations and choices as learners make meaningful connection among different ideas (Jonassen, 2002; Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman, 2009). Since much of this meaning-making process takes place “in individual and socially negotiating minds” (Jonassen, 2002, p. 45), it is difficult to point to an observable behavior that marks the act of learning as having taken place. Instructors can, however, design research, teaching, and learning environments that include characteristics widely accepted as facilitating meaningful learning processes.
The characteristics of a meaningful learning process align with open pedagogy practices as described elsewhere in this book. Meaningful learning opportunities are active, constructive/reflective, intentional, authentic, and cooperative (Howland et al., 2013). Active learners are engaged in meaningful tasks and experiences in which they are able to observe what happens when they interact with the world around them. Constructive experiences provide learners with opportunities to reflect on outcomes or insights that may be the same as or different than learners expect, inviting them to become curious about how to integrate these insights into the known world or “establish goals for what they need to learn in order to make sense out of what they observe” (Howland et al., 2013, p. 4).
Meaningful learning includes learners’ intentional, active work toward accomplishment of goals set as informed by constructive and reflective interaction. Authentic tasks help students understand, remember, and transfer understandings to other disciplines and to life outside of the classroom. When working in cooperative, knowledge-building communities, students “learn that there is more than one way to view the world and there are multiple solutions to most of life’s problems” (Howland et al., 2013, p. 5).
Identifying ways in which characteristics of meaningful learning align with those of open pedagogy can strengthen advocacy for its use as the strategies are articulated in learning goals, learning objectives, and learning outcomes. Ko & Rossen (2017) describe learning goals as “things that can be known but not easily measured,” (p. 43) while learning objectives are things that can be known and demonstrated. Jonassen provides additional shared vocabulary by defining learning outcomes as “generalizable skills that can be applied to any content domain” (1997, p. 66). Intentionally designed and articulated goals, objectives and/or outcomes act as effective instructional design strategies that provide opportunities to observe points in the process where learners are invited to demonstrate conceptual understanding by using a variety of ways to “represent what you know” (Howland et al., 2013, p. 2).
Open Pedagogy as Instructional Strategy
Instruction is defined as “anything that is done purposefully to facilitate learning” (Reigeluth & Carr-Chellmann, 2009, p. 6). For instance, the previous section of this chapter, “Defining learning,” is intended to act as instruction for readers of this toolkit. The section has been purposefully included to help facilitate the reader’s meaning-making process about how learning is defined by learning science scholars. Presented only as prose, the instruction is heavily dependent upon the readers’ willingness and ability to intentionally move through the information in ways that are active, constructive/reflective, intentional, authentic, and cooperative (Howland et al., 2013; Mystakidis, 2021). It is likely quite easy for you to think of instructional strategies — such as open pedagogy — which would support a more meaningful learning process than we facilitated through mere presentation of expositional prose.
Effective instructional strategies embed activities in contexts meaningful to students themselves, in which they see themselves as contributors to a body of knowledge in ways that they are able to “construct their own meaning of the world” (Howland et al., 2013, xiii). Sometimes the context most meaningful to students is simply the grade they are able to earn, and their own meaning of the world is that they need to get a good grade to acquire the right credential in order to get the job they want. Instructional strategies intentionally developed in relation to learning goals, objectives, and outcomes can help create environments in which the learning process goes beyond the context of grades to help students “engage in a larger community of scholars” (Howland et al., 2013, xii). Such instructional goals and objectives could include, for instance, the reason for the assigned experience as well as how the interaction integrates into their “existing knowledge” or accommodates “knowledge gleaned from the experience” (Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman, 2009, p. 120).
Students who are “active negotiators of their experiences,” such as in instructional strategies incorporated into collaborative experiential learning (Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman, 2009, 121), have both primary and secondary experiences. Reigeluth and Carr-Chellman suggest “the act of flying a kite” (2009, p. 121) as a primary experience, with the secondary experiences being “ways that people might process those experiences” with others who shared the experience. These primary and secondary experiences provide active and collaborative activities reflective of real-life experiences, meaningful opportunities in which students will “readily accept responsibilities for learning” (Howland et al., 2013, p. xiv).
Praxis: Applying theory to student experiences
In this section, a faculty member at a community college shares her experiences with developing open educational pedagogy projects and creating learning spaces. This section was authored by Deidre Tyler.
We are all familiar with the active learning approach that involves such activities as think pair/share or the muddiest point. However, with OEP there are numerous ways in which we can expand the active learning in the OEP arena. For example, in designing the OEP at the beginning of each re-design, the instructor should keep in mind the activities that are in the face-to-face class and those in the online class. Let’s examine the OEP in both modalities. In the face-to-face class, OEP can be used with the assistance of the computer in the class and the Learning Management System. In this environment, the student and the class can be structured in a way that allows students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information in real-time. Students can be placed in breakout rooms where they can work on reading and analyzing an article. In this case, the instructor can tell the students to come up with their prompts. Secondly, in online classes, students can allow the students to work in groups and assign them into a group ahead of time. The online students can be given the task of developing a prompt and analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information. The work will be done at their time using a Google doc. In conjunction with the active learning approach, the OEP team approach can also allow the students to involve themselves with developing a rubric that can be used to evaluate the activity. The team student lead rubric can give students agency and voice on the evaluation process.
When thinking about the team approach to developing an OEP what should be considered are the transparency of each assignment. Does the student understand each step in the process? In designing transparent assignments using the team approach the questions that the team should focus on are as follows: Am I using language that is clear to the learner? Do the learning objectives connect with the Open Educational Practices? Am I engaging the learner in assisting with the design of the Open Educational Practices? Lastly, are you allowing students to have choice in the transparent assignments? Lastly, are you allowing the students to have choice in modalities of presentation? Let’s examine each of the questions in detail.
Using language that is clear to the learner
Many times the language we use is not familiar to the learner. For example, when you say the structure of the assignment should be done using the essay form. The term essay may not be clear to the learner. To make everything transparent, the learner should be given step-by-step instructions on how to construct an essay. In addition to that, the learner should be given an example. This will allow the learner to have a clear picture of what is needed to complete the assignment. All of the information should be then transferred to a rubric that allows for point values and creativity.
Am I engaging the learner in assisting with the design?
In order to create an atmosphere of inclusivity, learners should be part of the design process. The team could invite a student to review the class to ask questions about the clearness of the class. Everything that is done for the class should be reviewed from the student point of view. Having a student to review the class OEP will be advantageous because changes can always be made to the learning management system. I strongly suggest that the learning management system be used for online and face to face classes. Stating the Open Educational practices will allow for transparency for all involved.
Are you allowing students to have choice in the modalities of presentation?
Choice allows for student success because there are many different learner preferences (Nancekivell et al., 2021). Some students thrive on writing and others are better with verbal skills. Allowing students to decide on how they will present their work is creating an educational transparent environment that fosters great communication between the learner and the faculty member
Student Success
Intentional use of open pedagogy practices can help fulfill institutional commitments to student success (Colvard et al, 2018; Cuillier, 2021; Seiferle-Valencia, 2020). Referring once again to the tapestry mentioned by Gong (2023), we find student success does not have a singular definition (Moore & Mendez, 2014) but is, rather, “beautiful components stitched together to make a whole” (Gong, 2023, n.p.). Acknowledging that student success is traditionally tied to outcomes and measures, Gong encouraged institutional communities to come to a clear definition of what they consider to be student success, and then consider how to surface evidence of that success.
Defining Student Success
Student success associated with degree attainment as an outcome is commonly measured and communicated using observable, quantifiable metrics. These metrics include grade point average, retention, time to degree and completion (Moore & Mendez, 2014). The ability to set and achieve goals, acquisition of skills and knowledge transferable across disciplines, “psychosocial development indicators [and] citizenship skills” (Moore & Mendez, 2014, p. 32) are examples of student success experienced over the course of the university educational experience, and can be communicated using qualitative measures.
Many institutions have articulated a definition of student success as part of mission and vision statements or strategic plans. For example, Oklahoma State University (OSU) discusses student success in terms of both degree attainment and the development of capabilities and competencies which will position them to “impact their communities” (Oklahoma State University, 2022, n.p.). Those competencies, as stated by Oklahoma State University, are professional preparedness, engaged citizenship, ethical leadership, and personal responsibility (Oklahoma State University, 2022). OSU defines each of those competencies in terms of measurable characteristics and outcomes. This supports clear alignment of campus research, teaching and learning activities with student success.
Regina Gong (2023) defines student success as “the institution’s ability to equitably support every student so that they can learn, thrive, and be productive members of a democratic society” (n.p.). She pointed to career readiness, competence based learning, and skill development as issues currently centered in conversations about student success (Gong, 2023). Measurable definitions of student success can aid in examining and communicating how open practices such as open pedagogy support student success.
Open Pedagogy for Student Success
A clear definition of student success measured and communicated using quantitative and qualitative metrics can help “tell the story” (link to or cite chapter 2 of this book) of how open pedagogy projects support student success. For instance, students empowered as knowledge creators and “public contributors of ideas” (Katz & Van Allen, 2020, n.p.) may “connect ideas from the classroom into the community” (Moore & Mendez, 2014, p. 33). They will be building understanding of the course content while also developing into engaged citizens (Katz & Van Allen, 2020; Moore & Mendez, 2014). As students use the open approaches characteristic of open pedagogy they are able to interpret tasks and re-purpose aspects of the experience to suit their needs and context (Stevenson, 2023). Students are able to intentionally and actively create and shape knowledge “allowing content to develop in unique ways” (Katz & VanAllen, 2020, n.p.).
Partnering clear measurements of student success with a deep understanding of the University’s institutional strategy can facilitate administrative commitment to open pedagogy. Thomas Carey, Alan Davis, Salvador Ferreras and David Porter (2015) aligned their practice with specific elements of the Kwantlyn Polytechnic University’s institutional strategy in order to communicate how open pedagogy supports student success. This approach enabled them to develop a plan for open studies which laid the groundwork for “deeper integration of our engagement in Open Educational Practices” (p. 169) into the institutional strategy. The authors point, in particular, to how open pedagogy helped support student success by preparing students for relational and contextual challenges they will encounter in the workforce. Highlighting this alignment helped secure resources and support for further integration of OEP.
The Chronicle of Higher Education report College as a Public Good (Fischer, 2023) shares challenges and strategies that resonate with the ways open pedagogy can support student success. The report frames student success in college as a public good, and aims to make a case for strengthening that understanding through intentional engagement between institutions of higher education and their communities. The report includes case studies describing institutional initiatives which include strategies such as community-based scholarship and highlights the role of student voice, stating that current students look “to colleges to tackle social injustice and inequality in their communities” (Fischer, 2023, p. 15) and are seeking opportunities for authentic civic engagement.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have provided ways to explore alignments emerging in scholarly conversations about open pedagogy, definitions of learning, and student success. Our aim is to point toward those conversations to facilitate the continuing work of researchers and practitioners engaging with open pedagogy. This chapter is not intended to be comprehensive, and the authors welcome continued input as we partner to enhance understanding of open pedagogical practices.
References
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