Definition of Open Pedagogies

Open Pedagogy (or open education practices, OEP) as defined by BCCampus is “the use of open education resources (OER) to support learning, or the open sharing of teaching practices with the goal of improving education”[1]. OERs can be in various formats such as textbooks, lesson plans, videos or any other resources that can be used to assist students or teachers in the classroom. OERs are free but come with licenses that specify what and who can access, use and edit the resource, the different symbols and what they represent can be found on the Creative Commons website. 

Integration Example

A simple example of integration of open pedagogy in a classroom is using an OER textbook instead of a traditional textbook. From my experience, courses often utilize textbooks as a supplementary resource. If students want additional clarification, examples or practice problems on a topic they can find all of this in the textbook. This to me meant that textbooks are not required to succeed in a class and I would often not purchase a textbook if it came with a big price-tag. However when a professor provided an OER textbook I would utilize this resource from the beginning of the course to brief myself on main topics prior to class, review unclear problems after class and to revise before a big test. Textbooks not only provide the information, it provides a roadmap of the course. Utilizing an OER textbook rather than a traditional textbook guarantees that this helpful resource can be accessed by any student with no obstacles from cost or location. 

Potential Problems with Open Pedagogies

From a student perspective open pedagogy sounds like there are no faults however OERs can come with concerns for teachers such as their effectiveness and quality. To speak on the effectiveness of OERs, I would recommend reading this article that analyzed the outcomes from 9 OER related studies and concluded that students not only “achieve[d] the same or better learning outcomes” but had “positive experiences” working with OERs[2]. Additionally I enjoyed listening to this podcast by Cult of Pedagogy that discusses the concerns about the quality of OERs. They delve into how people often think that “‘free’ can often be synonymous with ‘crap’” leaving a bad perception of OERs. However, they bring to light how OERs can be better than traditional resources as many OERs are now being created that are student-centered or hands-on.

Alignment with Topic

Currently my team is designing a Math course blueprint for a grade 2 level. Although for this level using an OER textbook may not be the most effective, other resources such as lesson plans or activities can be effectively incorporated to the course. One of the learning outcomes we have in our blueprint is to “Translate pictorial questions to symbolic equations and vice versa”. Lessons pertaining to this learning outcome should include lots of picture cues and visual descriptions of math problems. Creating these visual depictions can consume a lot of time when teachers instead could incorporate already created OERs so that their time can be used to plan other components such as how to relate this concept to real life situations. This is all to say that open pedagogies can be applied to our topic.

References:

[1] “What is Open Pedagogy?” Open.BCCampus.ca. https://open.bccampus.ca/what-is-open-education/what-is-open-pedagogy/ (accessed Jun. 4, 2021).

[2] J. Hilton, “Open educational resources, student efficacy, and user perceptions: a synthesis of research published between 2015 and 2018,” Education Tech Research Dev, 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-019-09700-4 [Online]. Available: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11423-019-09700-4#citeas