This piece was contributed by Adronisha Frazier

When thinking of cross-pollination, we may visualize honeybees swarming near showy petals to acquire nectar and deposit pollen grains on other flowers—leading to genetic diversity in crop development. However, the idea of cross-pollination extends beyond the parameters of scientific inquiry, such as describing overlapping topics in contrasting disciplines. In this post, I briefly express how to transition from utilizing OERs to embedding open pedagogy and open science in the classroom.

Open Pedagogy

Open education has increased resource accessibility¾textbooks and ancillary materials (i.e., lecture slides, question banks, homework platforms, and interactive content)¾to educators, instructional designers, and stakeholders. However, open education extends to different avenues, such as open educational practices emphasizing open pedagogy. Open pedagogy is the implementation of instructional practices that receive learner input for creating and revising open access materials (Hegarty, 2015). Shifting the learning narrative required decentering educators and centering students in the learning environment. Learner input is critical, but seven other attributes of the open pedagogy model are necessary for open pedagogy. 

Some benefits of open pedagogical practices include but are not limited to amplifying diverse or marginalized voices, enriching student autonomy and agency, increasing student engagement, and developing a peer network that provides constructive feedback for enhancing resource quality (Cangialosi et al. 2023; Hegarty, 2015). Nonetheless, open pedagogy centers around teaching and learning in student-centered settings, while open science focuses on open access to scientific research.

Open Science

Open access, open data, open source, and open reproducible research are the foundational components of open science. According to Pontika et al. (2015), the existing taxonomy for open science also includes open science definition, open science evaluation, open science guidelines, open science policies, open science projects, and open science tools. Many of these taxa have subtopics that support the need for open access transparency in scientific research.

Open science does not have a formal definition, but there are numerous ways that researchers, educators, and stakeholders implement open science practices. Vicente-Saez & Martinez-Fuentes (2018) conducted a systematic literature review to establish an operational definition of open science. They determined that open science exists as a theoretical framework acknowledging multiple applications of knowledge.

Open Science aims to broaden accessibility to scientific research publications, databases, repositories, and additional tools by allowing transparency through public access. This post acknowledges existing resources that integrate open science and open pedagogy.

Integrating Open Pedagogy and Open Science

Faculty members are typically engrossed in daily schedules of lectures, advising, mentoring, research (at some institutions), occasional administrative tasks, and supporting student success. These tasks leave minimal time to remix and expand curricula and pedagogical practices. Considering time constraints and limited exposure to pedagogical training in science disciplines, below are some resources for implementing open pedagogical practices and/or open science.

As a community college faculty member, my workload was more teaching-heavy than research-driven. I encouraged research practices by demonstrating small lab activities during lectures and orchestrating field trips that introduced many students to field research. I began allowing the students’ questions to dictate the class flow. During the first semester implementation of the activity, I taught a hybrid introductory biology course for non-science majors. Students watched pre-recorded lectures before class and read the PowerPoint slides associated with our OER; they wrote down two open-ended questions from their reading and submitted the questions in the LMS by the deadline of two hours before class started. I downloaded all the questions, copied them into a word processing document, and printed the document for the lecture. I strategically weaved their questions into the lecture with the originally planned topics. Select student-created questions were included in exams to support the open pedagogical practice. Instructional modifications to integrate open science practices could enhance the students’ experience. 

The Allen Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing open access data and tools for teaching and research in biological sciences subdisciplines. The Allen Institute has six science programs for addressing varying research topics. The Education Materials Library provides lesson plans, publications, experiments, and infographic content. One lesson plan—Understanding Alzheimer’s Disease—focuses on how scientists use tools and techniques to study Alzheimer Disease. The instructional materials included access to an instructor guide and student worksheets. Data visualization software and sequencing datasets are based on brain cell types and tissue samples donated for extensive data analysis. These resources allow faculty to scaffold the activities for students and incorporate appropriate lessons for practice with open data.

The Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES) resources platform provides open access to adaptable teaching materials, reference materials, and datasets on various mathematics and biological sciences content for high school students through graduate graduates—and even faculty. Cohorts of mathematics and biology faculty, instructional designers, and stakeholders developed these materials to exist in a repository for open and accessible teaching resources. There are open science instructional modules, such as using open datasets for statistical analysis of simulated and real data and using the CDC’s National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System to understand human infectious diseases. These modules may contain student handouts, instructor handouts, activities, and rubrics. Faculty can download and implement the modules and then modify and upload their adaptation to the QUBES repository.

As an education researcher, I frequently explore ways to support curriculum innovations. These aforementioned resources are just a select sample for implementation in biology subdisciplines. If you have any additional open science and/or open pedagogy repositories, websites, or ideas to contribute to this post, please feel free to share in the comments.

References 

Cangialosi, K. R., Goller, C. C., Grewe, K., Tang, T., Taylor, R. T., Tyler, D., Ortiz, R. V., & Zenon, E. M. (2023). Reimagining leadership in open education: Networking to promote social justice and systemic change. Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education, 2(1), 46–71. https://doi.org/10.13001/joerhe.v2i1.7865

Hegarty, B. (2015). Attributes of open pedagogy: A model for using open educational resources. Educational Technology, 55(4), 3–11. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44430383

Pontika, N., Knoth, P., Cancellieri, M., & Pearce, S. (2015). Fostering open science to research using a taxonomy and an eLearning portal. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283726973_Fostering_Open_Science_to_Research_using_a_Taxonomy_and_an_eLearning_Portal

Vicente-Saez, R. & Martinez-Fuentes, C. (2018). Open science now: A systematic literature review for an integrated definition. Journal of Business Research, 88, 428–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.12.043