Originally published in the Learning and Teaching weekly newsletter (internal publication) at Saskatchewan Polytechnic.
You may have heard the terms open access, open scholarship, open education resources, and open pedagogy – but what does ‘open’ mean? The “concept of openness is based on the idea that knowledge should be disseminated and shared freely through the internet for the benefit of society as a whole” (Panda & Santosh, 2017, p. 90). Under the open umbrella, there is a growing community in higher education that produces, creates, uses, disseminates, adapts, and modifies materials that are made freely available to anyone, anywhere, and at any time. These materials are typically licenced using a Creative Commons (CC) option, freeing the resource from many of the traditional copyright restrictions. Therefore, open access materials remove price and permissions barriers and are largely free of restrictions on re-use (Suber, 2015). CC licenses allow you to use content if you provide attribution and, depending on the licence, abide by one of the other stipulations, such as non-commercial use.
Modification and use of materials are one aspect of open. However,
what happens when there is a lack of resources in your discipline, or what is
available is not applicable in the local context? Many faculty members choose
to create their own resources, such as learning objects, textbooks, or open
courses. If the thought of creating a whole textbook is overwhelming, consider
creating an assessment where you work with the students to develop the
resource, thus incorporating the principles of open directly into your teaching
practice. Open pedagogy “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” (BCcampus, n.d., para. 1). Examples include a course
assignment that tasks each student with researching and writing a portion of a
larger text, website, or another open option. That resource is then openly
shared and may be updated in the next iteration of the course. Open pedagogy
has the potential to increase engagement, as students are responsible for a publicly
available final product. This type of project increases student investment and
provides them with real-world experience. Jhangiani and DeRosa (n.d.) emphasize
that open pedagogy shifts the role of the students from mere passive consumers
to active contributors of knowledge where teachers and students are active and
equal participants in the learning process.
References and Suggested Further Reading
BCcampus.
(n.d.). What is open pedagogy? [Blog entry]. https://open.bccampus.ca/what-is-open-education/what-is-open-pedagogy/
Creative
Commons. (n.d.). About CC licenses. https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/
Jhangiani,
R., & DeRosa, R. (n.d.). Open pedagogy [Blog entry]. Open Pedagogy
Notebook. http://openpedagogy.org/open-pedagogy/
Panda, S.,
& Santosh, S. (2017). Faculty perception of openness and attitude to open
sharing at the Indian National Open University. International Review of
Research in Open and Distance Learning, 18(7), 89-111.
Suber, P.
(2015, December 5). Open access overview: Focusing on open access to
peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints [Blog entry]. http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
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