Contributed by Yang Wu, 2021 Contributing Editor, & Matthew Boyer

Open pedagogy, or Open Educational Practices, is a creative movement in education that combines constructivist principles of giving students creativity and self direction in learning, critical pedagogy and the creation of openly licensed online learning materials (DeRosa & Jhangiani, 2018, 10; Cronin & MacLaren, 2018, 136-137), is increasingly rising to the forefront of the Open Education movement. The potentials of open pedagogy in enhancing teaching, particularly in terms of fostering student engagement, creating opportunities for new forms of teaching that transcends the limits of copyright, the “surveillance” and “banking” models of education, as well as getting students to critically reflect on social justice issues have been widely touted by advocates of Open Education (Wiley, 2017; DeRosa & Jhangiani, 15). Can it also be used in educational research on OER development, allowing for a better understanding of the learning behavior and preferences of diverse learners who will be using OER materials by engaging them in continuous reflection on these subjects, analysis of OER materials and sharing these reflections online as a form of openly licensed information to assist other OER developers? 

As noted in our July 28th blog post, OER development is increasingly moving towards supporting the needs of diverse learners and creating materials that are more culturally inclusive. 

End user research and testing to address the need of diverse learners is critical to designing learner-centered and inclusive OER materials, and such materials have the potential to increase participation in subjects that have traditionally lacked diversity in students enrollment. However, discussion on end user research has been scattered in the larger OER literature. Research strategies, as well as findings in this area have also not been widely published or shared. 

Seeking to create accessible, inclusive, and learner-centered OER materials for robotics, a field in engineering that has traditionally not had broad participation by diverse groups, Clemson University will implement collaborative open textbook writing across multiple stakeholder participants. An interactive and inclusive approach to creating OER materials, collaborative open textbook writing engages students in the OER design process. It gathers together small groups of students from diverse backgrounds, who are in the subject of the OER being developed into a community of practice. Students will offer continuous feedback to OER creators on the design of OER materials throughout the development process. They reflect on what constitutes an educational resource that best fits their learning needs and what features it should have. Students learn principles that help improve their understanding of what is an educational resource that meets their needs, such as Universal Design for Learning guidelines (CAST, 2018), learner centered design (Rajeh, 2018) and culturally responsive pedagogy (Sobel & Taylor, 2011) during the process, building a growing sophistication in their feedback to OER developers. Students move from reflection on educational resources based on their learning experiences to analysis of existing traditional textbooks and other materials on robotics and early iterations of OER materials developed. 

Clemson University is currently applying this approach to Co-DREAM OER, a US Department of Education Open Textbook Pilot Grant Program funded project to develop three textbooks and ancillary learning materials on robotics in advanced manufacturing for the associate, 4-year undergraduate and graduate levels. It leads the project, with Trident Technical College, the largest institution of its type in South Carolina, and Tuskegee University, an HBCU in Alabama as consortium partners. 

Collaborative open textbook design and open pedagogy/Open Educational Practices share many commonalities. They are both learner-centered and aimed at fostering self-directed student reflection and analysis on the subjects they are learning. CO-DREAM OER incorporates practices of open pedagogy into collaborative open textbook design in several ways. Collaborative open textbook design is conducted in a course-based environment for Clemson students as part of the long-running Creative Inquiry program that supports undergraduate research experiences. Clemson students taking part in it enroll in ESED 3990: Creative Inquiry in Science and Engineering Education III, a variable credit course at Clemson University, with similar structures set up for students from Tuskegee and Trident. Their engagement with research and evidence-based feedback on OER design and development is evaluated as course activities and assignments. 

The success of collaborative open textbook design is dependent on student motivation, engagement, and self reflection in their analysis of learning materials and feedback for OER designers. Activities in ESED 3990, like open pedagogy, are based on constructivist models of education, such as the Montessouri method, that center the learner (Ultanir, 2012, 195) and encourage them to develop their thinking on OER design in a creative, collaborative and supportive learning environment. Course activities are scaffolded, moving the students from small reflections and ever more complex discussions on learner-centered design (Quintana et. al., 2001) and analyses and feedback on learning resources on robotics to foster growth in their thinking and confidence in providing feedback on OER design. Activities are either group or peer feedback based. Students write responses, receive comments on them from other students, and work together on larger analyses and feedback assignments. Reflecting the critical pedagogy component of open pedagogy, they also do readings and engage in discussions on anti-racism and cultural bias (Chew, Houston & Cooper, 2020), integrating these concepts into their feedback. 

ESED 3990 uses popular social media and online technologies as a tool of engagement. Responses and comments are posted online using a social media platform decided by students. Students, towards the end of the course, also have the option of posting a collection of assignments they select on an openly licensed online blog or website on collaborative open textbook design that they construct, creating a “non-disposable” assignment that highlights their participation in the project but can also be used as open data for other OER designers. They, in addition, will be encouraged to present their learning and experiences in online webinar series, conferences and other activities related to OER, open pedagogy and engineering, with course instructors facilitating these activities and covering their registration and other fees. They will also be credited as contributors in the OER materials produced by Co-DREAM OER.

Collaborative textbook writing officially begins in January 2022. Co-DREAM OER plans to write and develop its three textbooks and ancillary materials one at a time, starting with the undergraduate textbook. Each textbook has an 8 month development period. ESED 3990, which will involve Clemson students, along with their peers at Tuskegee and Trident in the design and development of the undergraduate textbook will begin in the spring 2022 semester, with the possibility of the course being extended into the other semesters lastling the entire duration of the development of the textbook if students are interested. Similar courses involving students in the design of the associate and masters level textbooks will be developed over time as the project progresses to other textbooks. 

Works Cited

CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. http://udlguidelines.cast.org

Chew, S., Houston, A., & Cooper, A. (2020). Anti-Racist Discussion Pedagogy Guide.  https://sph.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/112/2020/08/Anti_Racist_Discussion_Pedagogy__1.pdf

Cronin, C., & MacLaren, I. (2018). Conceptualising OEP: A review of theoretical and empirical literature in open educational practices. Open Praxis, 10(2), 127-143. https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.10.2.825

DeRosa, R, & Jhangiani, R. (2017). Open Pedagogy. In Mays, E., Rebus Community, BC Open Textbook Project & BCcampus (Eds.), A guide to making open textbooks with students (pp. 7-20).

Quintana, C., Carra, A., Krajcik, J.S., Soloway, E., Fincher, S., Grinter, B., Gross, B., Lehder, D.Z., Marmolin, H., Moore, B., Potts, C.M., Skousen, G., & Thomas, T. (2001). Learner-Centered Design: Reflections and New Directions. In Carroll, J. (Eds), Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium (pp. 606-626).

Rajeh, H. S. Learner-Centered Design Theory. In Egbert, J. & Roe, M. (Eds.), Theoretical Models for Teaching and Research. 

Sobel, D. M., & Taylor, S. V. (2011). Culturally Responsive Pedagogy : Teaching Like Our Students’ Lives Matter. Brill.

Ultanir, E. (2012). An epistemological glance at the constructivist approach: Constructivist learning in dewey, piaget, and montessori. International Journal of Instruction 5(2), 195-212.

Wiley, D. (2017 April 4). “How is Open Pedagogy Different?” Improving Learning. https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/4943

Dr. Yang Wu is the Contributing Blog Editor of OER & Beyond and the Principal Investigator of the CO-DREAM OER project.

Dr. Matthew Boyer is a Research Associate Professor at Clemson University and the educational researcher for the CO-DREAM OER project. His scholarly interests involve how people learn with technology, with a focus on how they capture and model knowledge and experience using digital technologies.

This post is by Yang Wu & Matthew Boyer and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, except where otherwise indicated. Please reference OER and Beyond and use this URL when attributing this work; for more information on licensing, see our Open Access Policy.