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Open Pedagogy Train the Trainer Workshop

Tanya Grosz and Jamie Witman

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How to Join Menti Slide

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Territory Acknowledgment

Good morning, I’m Tanya Grosz, and I’m the Director of Educational Programs for the OEN.

Before we begin, the OEN is housed at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities which is located on traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. The University resides on Dakota land ceded in the Treaties of 1837 and 1851. We acknowledge this place has a complex and layered history. This land acknowledgment is one of the ways in which we work to educate the campus and community about this land and our relationships with it and each other. We are committed to ongoing efforts to recognize, support, and advocate for American Indian Nations and peoples, and we thank the Dakota people for their persistence through a violent history. Please feel free to acknowledge the indigenous people to whom the land you are situated on belongs in the chat if you feel so inclined.

Localize (from where are you presenting?)

The land grant acknowledgement map

The why of acknowledging land

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Suggested Citation

Open Education Network. “Open Pedagogy Train the

Trainer Workshop.”

Principal Open Ped Train the Trainer Slide Deck. June 2023. Available at https://z.umn.edu/trainthetraineropenped.

This slide deck is available under a CC BY 4.0 International License.

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Agenda:

Introductions/Territory Acknowledgments
Establishing an Open Foundation
Intro to Open Pedagogy Workshop
Small Group Breakout
Break
Facilitating & Experiencing an Open Pedagogy Learning Circle
Break
Examples, the Curriculum, Getting Started & Lessons Learned
Small Group Breakout
Questions

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Who Are We?

Research universities
Community colleges
4-year universities/colleges
State-wide systems
Consortia

Tribal colleges
HBCUs
Hispanic-serving institutions
Australian
Canadian

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Tanya

The OEN is focused on action that advances open education in ways that are shareable, collaborative, and sustainable.

We do this by sharing the experiences and expertise of our community in ways to support our members.

As a community, we are working together to help everyone in higher education. The best example of our efforts to support the common good is the the Open Textbook Library (open.umn.edu/opentextbooks), a comprehensive library of open textbooks, reviewed by faculty, that make open textbooks freely available to anyone, anywhere, and at any time. Yet ultimately, we are thinking of and trying to address something even bigger and that is the advancement of educational equity through resources and practices that are more affordable, more accessible, and more inclusive.

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Who Are You?

Please add your name, title, where you are from, and why you are here in the chat.

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Tanya

Please make yourself comfortable. While we invite you to have your cameras on, feel free to leave them off if you prefer. You can unmute yourself or place a question in chat - whatever you prefer. While we do have two scheduled breaks, if you need to refill your coffee or run to the restroom, please just take care of yourself.

Also, we want to let you know that this is the first time we are giving this workshop, so we really value and appreciate your candid feedback. You all kept telling us you needed more support around open pedagogy, so this year, we rolled out a certificate program in open educational practices, we created a faculty workshop which is encompassed within this workshop, and we also offered open pedagogy learning circles, which we will share with you today. We want to meet your needs, and we thank you in advance for honest feedback.

Thank you for joining us today!

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Speaker Introductions

Tanya Grosz

Jamie Witman

Tanya

I’m Tanya Grosz, and I’m the Director of Educational Programs for the Open Education Network. Prior to this role, I was a dean at a small liberal arts university where I started and ran an open education initiative. My Ph.D. is in Education and Online Teaching and Learning, and I still teach online literature every semester. I have two grown daughters, a husband of 30 years who is a basketball coach, and I have two schnauzers that are extremely spoiled.

Jamie

Hi I’m Jamie Witman and I use she/her pronouns and I’m the Open Educational Practices Specialist for the Open Education Network. Prior to this role, I was the Online Learning and OER Librarian at a community college in Baltimore, MD. While there I established the Affordable Textbook Grant Program and led the Open Pedagogy Fellowship Program. When I’m not working I love to hike with my kids, husband, and dog.

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How are you feeling? Menti

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Favorite Summer Activity Menti

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Our Focus Today: Open Pedagogy

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open = free + permissions

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Copy
Mix
Share
Keep
Edit
Use

The 5Rs:

Retain
Reuse
Revise
Remix
Redistribute

5Rs: David Wiley, 2014

15

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Open Pedagogy

“OER-enabled pedagogy” is the set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions that are characteristic of OER. (Wiley and Hilton, 2018)

https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/onlinelearningtoolbox/chapter/wiley-hilton-defining-oer-enabled-pedagogy/

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Questions to Ask of Open Ped

Are students asked to create new artifacts (essays, poems, videos, songs, etc.) or revise/remix existing OER?
Does the new artifact have value beyond supporting the learning of its author?
Are students invited to publicly share their new artifacts or revised/remixed OER?
Are students invited to openly license their new artifacts or revised/remixed OER?

Jamie

Are students asked to create new artifacts (essays, poems, videos, songs, etc.) or revise/remix existing OER?
Does the new artifact have value beyond supporting the learning of its author?
Are students invited to publicly share their new artifacts or revised/remixed OER?
Are students invited to openly license their new artifacts or revised/remixed OER?

And for several years now, we have been hearing that our members wanted more resources around open pedagogy. As a librarian myself, I needed and wanted more support around open pedagogy so I could turn around and provide that same support to my classroom faculty colleagues - and open pedagogy can be kind of a scary, nebulous space to enter. So while we will DEFINE it as we walk through the Intro to Open Pedagogy workshop, we’ll also look at a few really cool things that open pedagogy DOES.

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But we realize it’s not enough to know open pedagogy can be transformative.

How do we best help faculty understand what open pedagogy is and how to get started with it?

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The Introduction to Open Pedagogy Workshop

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Introduction to

Open Pedagogy

Open Education Network

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Suggested Citation

Open Education Network. “Introduction to Open

Pedagogy.” Principal Open Pedagogy Slide Deck. March 2023. Available at https://z.umn.edu/oenopenpeddeck.

This slide deck is available under a CC BY 4.0 International License.

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Who Are We?

Research universities
Community colleges
4-year universities/colleges
State-wide systems
Consortia

Tribal colleges
HBCUs
Hispanic-serving institutions
Australian
Canadian

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Tanya

The OEN is focused on action that advances open education in ways that are shareable, collaborative, and sustainable.

We do this by sharing the experiences and expertise of our community in ways to support our members.

As a community, we are working together to help everyone in higher education. The best example of our efforts to support the common good is the the Open Textbook Library (open.umn.edu/opentextbooks), a comprehensive library of open textbooks, reviewed by faculty, that make open textbooks freely available to anyone, anywhere, and at any time. Yet ultimately, we are thinking of and trying to address something even bigger and that is the advancement of educational equity through resources and practices that are more affordable, more accessible, and more inclusive.

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Who Are You?

Please add your name, title, where you are from, and why you are here in the chat.

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Problems Facing Higher Education

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Cost Remains a Problem

Average federal student loan debt is $37,574 per borrower
Private student loan debt averages $54,921 per borrower
Average student borrows over $30,000 to pursue a bachelor’s degree
45.3 million borrowers have student loan debt; 92% of have federal loan debt
20 years after entering school, half of student borrowers still owe $20,000 each on outstanding loan balances

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Course Material Costs are Still a Problem

The price of textbooks increases by an average of 12% with each new edition.
Between 1977 and 2015, the cost of textbooks increased 1,041%.
The increase in the cost of textbooks outpaced currency inflation by 238% from 1977 to 2015. From 2002 to 2012, textbook inflation outpaced consumer price growth by 192.9%.

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Cost Problems Affect Students of Color Disproportionately

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Retention and Completion Rates Are a Problem

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Sense of Belonging

in the Classroom

“Racially minoritized and first-generation students at four-year institutions are less inclined to feel that same sense of belonging compared to their peers at two-year institutions” (Gopalan and Brady, 2019).

Tanya

SENSE OF BELONGING:

“Racially minoritized and first-generation students at four-year institutions are less inclined to feel that same sense of belonging compared to their peers at two-year institutions” (Gopalan and Brady, 2019).

We’ve talked a little bit about students having to shoulder the burden of tuition costs and textbook costs as well as the disproportionate effect those barriers have on students of color, but I also want us to consider, for example, the psychological messages we send to students in terms of who belongs and who does not belong based on the need to pay expensive tuition and buy a $100 textbook that likely does not reflect any faces that look like theirs.

These financial barriers and inability to see themselves in the curriculum can have a direct impact on students’ sense of belonging, particularly those who come from historically marginalized backgrounds.

These students may feel like they aren’t being seen in the classroom.

So that’s just a brief overview of the problems, and I’m aware that I’m just skimming the surface! Now let’s turn to one possible solution to making education more inclusive, more affordable, and more equitable. It’s a solution, not the solution.

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A Solution: Open Pedagogy

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open = free + permissions

copy	mix
share	keep
edit	use

Tanya

Because of its Creative Commons licensing, we can see where an open book that you can do all of these different things with (as opposed to a traditional, proprietary book) might address some of the issues earlier, affordability, culturally-inclusive curriculum, etc. When we enable users to engage with the content in many ways through this licensing, we get closer to achieving more equitable learning outcomes. We will unpack some examples of this later as well.

So, again, because of the openness of whatever resource we are working with, we are moving beyond what we call the disposable assignment where students do something to achieve an educational objective, and whatever has been created is thrown away, and it’s onto the next objective. With open licensing, we can create something that gives back to future students of whatever class we are in, we can take something and make it better; in short, we can do better than a disposable assignment.

Basically, these permissions allow us to think outside of the box.

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“An access-oriented commitment

to learner driven education”

5 R’s for Open Pedagogy graphic by Rajiv Jhangiani is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Tanya

I like how our friend Rajiv Jhangiani suggests that open pedagogy is at the center of these 5 R’s of pedagogical practice, so moving beyond the traditional definition of the 5 R’s of OERs which are really just a different way of saying copy, share, edit, mix, keep, and use.

Rajiv’s 5 R’s invite us to respect each other, to reciprocate, to consider the risk some instructors and learners might face, to resist traditional pedagogical norms, and to reach for something better.

I also really like the brief definition of an “access-oriented commitment to learner driven education.” Another friend of ours, Will Cross, suggests that, at its core, open pedagogy is “the stuff you can do with an open educational resource” - so you can retain, redistribute, revise, reuse, and remix it because of the licensing.

So that’s the open part.

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Tanya

You will find that there are many definitions of open pedagogy, pedagogy meaning the method and practice of teaching. Bronwyn Hegarty helpfully laid out the attributes of open pedagogy. Robin deRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani helpfully acknowledege that Open Pedagogy shares common investments with many other schools of pedagogy such as constructivist pedagogy, connected learning, and critical digital pedagogy. In addition to defining open ped as an access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education, they also suggest it’s a process of designing architectures and using tools for learning that enable students to shape the public knowledge commons of which they are a part.

Open pedagogy is a wide open space. Open science folks say that open science is science done well. In the same vein that open education needs to be more than just free textbooks in order to convince educators to engage, open pedagogy at its core is pedagogy or the method/practice of teaching done well or done better. Open educational practices and open pedagogy are about sharing in community, about centering student agency.

So we started with a simple definition of open ped: An access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education. Now let’s look at one that’s a bit more pointed. . . .

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What is Open Pedagogy?

Open pedagogy, an open educational practice (OEP), is the use of open educational resources (OER) to support learning. When you use open pedagogy in your classroom, you are inviting your students to be part of the teaching process, participating in the co-creation of knowledge.

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Another Definition

Open pedagogy is "the practice of engaging with students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it. It's a form of experiential learning in which students demonstrate understanding through the act of creation. The products of open pedagogy are student created and openly licensed so that they may live outside of the classroom in a way that has an impact on the greater community."

Tanya

University of Texas, Arlington Libraries. (2022, December 9). Introduction to Open Pedagogy. Retrieved from https://libguides.uta.edu/openped/intro

Another definition from the University of Texas, Arlington Libraries that centers students is that, “Open pedagogy is ‘the practice of engaging with students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it. It's a form of experiential learning in which students demonstrate understanding through the act of creation. The products of open pedagogy are student created and openly licensed so that they may live outside of the classroom in a way that has an impact on the greater community.’

So, we have seen a few definitions of open pedagogy, but you as teachers might be saying, but what do students think of it? Well, there is definitely room for growth and additional studies about this, but we do have a start!

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Student Perceptions/Experience with Open Pedagogy?

Open ped is a positive learning experience
Appreciate developing artifacts that can be used by others
Feel agency as scholars
Developed better critical thinking skills
Reported better perceptions of OER

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353351341_Open_Pedagogy_A_Systematic_Review_of_Empirical_Findings

Tanya

According to several studies, students find that

Open ped is a positive learning experience

Across studies, students generally perceived open pedagogy as a positive and meaningful learning experience.

They Appreciate developing artifacts that can be used by others

Students expressed appreciation in developing artefacts that could be used by others. This appeared to foster pride in their work likely because they knew it would be seen and used by others (Al Abri & Dabbagh, 2019; Hollister, 2019; Zhang et al, 2020).

Feel agency as scholars

In addition, students reported feelings of agency as scholars—that they were contributing to a body of knowledge rather than simply consuming what is already known (Baran & Al Zoubi, 2020).

Developed better critical thinking skills

Students reported developing better critical thinking skills through open pedagogy than traditional pedagogy (Hilton et al, 2019, 2020). This is likely because students had to evaluate sources and synthesise ideas when creating their artefacts in addition to giving and receiving feedback to improve

their work (Cargas et al, 2017). Evaluating sources and peer feedback are not unique to open pedagogy but these techniques may be important for successful open pedagogy (Hegarty, 2015). This development of critical thinking through open pedagogy could explain one of Tillinghast and

colleagues’ (2020) findings.

Reported better perceptions of OER

Students in course sections with OER without open pedagogy reported better perceptions of the OER textbook than did students in the open pedagogy sections using the same OER. Given that the open pedagogy task was to improve the OER textbook, students in the open pedagogy section may have been more skeptical of the existing textbook. Rather than accepting the textbook as being authoritative and complete, students who were tasked with improving the textbook realized that it, like all textbooks, was imperfect (e.g., Woodson, 2015)

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Is there anything in this overview of open pedagogy that really resonates with you as an educator? Menti

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Examples of Open Pedagogy

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Students Edit a Wikipedia Page

“By contributing to the visibility of women on Wikipedia, and the internet at large, the assignment demonstrated to students how writing can move beyond the confines of the classroom and become a political act.” — Amanda Koziura; Jennifer M. Starkey; and Einav Rabinovitch-Fox from Teaching Wikipedia: A Model for Critical Engagement with Open Information

Image Credit: “Wikipedia”, Giulia Forsythe, Public Domain

Jamie

This first example is a Wikipedia assignment that was developed for a course on Gender and Technology at Case Western Reserve University.

Part of what motivated the instructors to engage their students this way was the fact that women, and especially women who have made notable achievements in the STEM fields, are underrepresented on Wikipedia (Harrison, 2019).

This assignment was a perfect opportunity to not only provide students with experience in public writing, but also to tackle hands-on the questions of gender inequality and social justice concerns that the course addressed.

This assignment centers inclusivity in that it highlights an underrepresented class in this field and engages students as co-creators in knowledge. Additionally, because, as we know Wikipedia is widely available, the students’ work was able to be shared with a huge audience and really have a global impact beyond just this course.

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Students Design Their Final and a Showcase

From “A Celebration of What You Know” - A United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellowship Project.

Assignment instructions: You will choose how you will demonstrate your knowledge for this course by designing and completing your own final assignment. In the last few days of the semester, your work will be showcased to your peers.

Image Credit: “Woman Draw a Light bulb in White Board” by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels. Licensed in Public Domain

Jamie

This next assignment from Maricopa Community College titled: “A Celebration of What you Know” was created to give students the choice of how to complete their final project for their course. The format option was left up to the student to ensure it aligned with their skill set and this process was scaffolded to allow students the opportunity to think critically about how they will present their mastery of key aspects of the course in a meaningful way. Additionally, students participated in a peer review process which allowed them to explore other topics from the course.

This assignment design centers student agency and choice, while also creating active participants in knowledge creation by giving students the opportunity to showcase their final projects for all students to see. In addition, assignments like this get at that sense of belonging; they say to students that the instructor cares about their opinions and values their voice.

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Students Create an Annotated Work

Image Credit: “The North Star.” Accessible Archives. Used under Fair Use guidelines.

Students from different courses work together to annotate an issue of the newspaper “The North Star” using Hypothes.is. At the end of the project, the institutional repository will be able to upload a fully annotated version of this historical newspaper.

Jamie

The assignment from Kennesaw State University titled ‘Annotating “The North Star”’ gives students the opportunity to move away from a traditional discussion board call and response assignment, to participating in social annotation. Students work together to create meaningful annotations for “The North Star”, creating a more vibrant and accessible version of this historical newspaper. Students from different disciplines contribute to the annotations which adds additional layers of context and discussion within the margins of “The North Star”.

This assignment design gives students the opportunity to be active participants in knowledge creation. Additionally, new students will continue to work on this semester over semester to create a fully annotated version of this historical newspaper which is housed in the institutional repository. This type of far-reaching assignment builds students’ enthusiasm and increases meaningful participation.

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Students Co-design a Syllabus

Jamie

https://openpedagogy.org/course-level/collaborative-syllabus-design-students-at-the-center/

In this example, students co-designed their syllabus with their instructor. While the instructor still wrote the preliminary syllabus with the approved course description and objectives, the class collaboratively generated student learning outcomes and expectations for themselves and the instructor. Co-creating the student learning outcomes helped the instructor understand several things: what students were interested in; what they thought was important; and how limited their sense of the material was.

This instructor is intentionally centering the student experience, and highlighting their agency by giving them the chance to shape their own learning outcomes. In addition, by inviting them into the process at such an early level, she is demonstrating that she values their contributions, and she is creating a more engaged community of learners. By leaning in and paying attention to students’ areas of interest and lack of understanding, she is making for a more inclusive and engaging learning environment.

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Students Write Multiple Choice Questions for a Question Bank

35 students
10 topics
1400 questions

Jamie

https://libguides.uta.edu/openped/examples

This next example has students writing questions for a question bank. Prof. Rajiv Jhangiani had students write multiple choice questions for his Social Psychology class. Wanting to encourage the kind of deep learning that would allow students to both synthesize and understand the subject matter well enough to write multiple choice questions was the main reason, but also for the pragmatic purpose because the open textbook he was using didn’t have a ready made question bank. By asking his students to craft and then peer-review multiple choice questions and by scaffolding that process throughout the semester, Prof. J experienced students who were encouraged and motivated.

Furthermore, this assignment contributed to the discipline because now this open textbook did include a question bank. Students in other courses could use this question bank to practice their own skills and prepare themselves for exams. Renewable assignments like this one, create higher levels of intrinsic motivation in students which often leads to higher levels of success (Clinton-Lisell and Gwozdz, 2023, 10.1080/87567555.2023.2179591 ] Assignments like this help to deconstruct those traditional power structures, telling students that they are smart enough to write test questions, and centering their sense of agency and belonging.

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Students Co-Create a Textbook

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Benefits of Open Pedagogy

Centers student agency
Deconstrues traditional power structures
Allows for deeper learning
Invites students in to be co-creators in knowledge
Contributes to knowledge beyond this assignment (renewable vs. disposable)
Creates a more inclusive learning environment
Demonstrates transparency on the part of the instructor

Tanya

So, as you’ve seen from these examples, open pedagogy has many benefits. Here are a few in review:

It centers student agency; it gives students the opportunity to shape their own learning and participate in the learning process on a more equal and individualized basis. In these examples, students are editing wikipedia to make it more inclusive and truthful, determining what a syllabus looks like, writing questions for their exams, and actually writing a textbook that will help other students!
It deconstructs traditional power structures; instead of the “sage on the stage,” the professor is facilitating a learning experience with students’ interest and choice and background in mind.
It allows for deeper learning; certainly, in order to write quiz questions, students have to synthesize the information and understand it well enough to write the questions. And the students who co-wrote the textbook on obesity and eating disorders, they had to understand the information well enough to write coherently about it! Talk about deep and active learning!
It invites students in to be co-creators in knowledge; the students actually got the experience of the form and structure and process of writing a textbook. They can put that experience on a resume or CV and carry it forward!
Open pedagogy contributes to knowledge beyond an assignment or classroom (renewable vs. disposable) - as opposed to assignments that are completed, graded, and thrown away, the examples we’ve shared all are contributing to a body of knowledge that will be used long after the particular class is over. It’s real world and renewable as opposed to disposable.
We saw how open pedagogy creates a more inclusive learning environment; students are invited to use their background and cultural contexts as they participate in creating a textbook or updating wikidpedia or constructing a syllabus.
And finally, open pedagogy demonstrates transparency on the part of the instructor; it encourages us as faculty to rethink what learning should look like. It opens up new doors of collaborating with our students, inviting them into the learning experience. It can be transformative. It can also help us in our attempt to put into practice principles of social justice.

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Tanya

In addition, I want to suggest that open pedagogy furthers our goals of educational equity because open pedagogy encourages us to actionalize Lambert’s social justice framework for open education.

Redistributive Justice. In that all of these projects were openly licensed, OER as content helps us apply redistributive justice, ensuring that all students have free and perpetual access to the learning materials.
Recognitive Justice. We know that not all learning materials are of the same quality, particularly when it comes to presenting socio-cultural diversity in materials, perspectives, and experiences. As we’ve seen, open ped allows opportunities for faculty and students to be co-creators of culturally affirmative learning materials by revising and remixing existing OER or by encouraging learners who have been historically underserved and underrepresented by higher education to contribute their own experiences, perspectives, and stories to the learning materials.
Representational Justice. Finally, there is power in authorship and in construction of learning resources, and open pedagogy suggests that it’s not just the professor who should be constructing the curriculum. Instead, we are inviting students in and centering their agency and their voice for a more inclusive classroom.

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Next Steps with Open Pedagogy

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Watch Getting Started with Open Pedagogy

https://youtu.be/wkgV5fprvhY

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Sign up for our Open Pedagogy Learning Circle Interest List

https://z.umn.edu/learningcircleinterestlist

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https://open.umn.edu/oen/certificate-in-oep

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Check out our website for more helpful resources

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Questions? Thank you!

grosz045@umn.edu

witma008@umn.edu

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Menti: After seeing the Intro. to Open Pedagogy workshop for faculty, how do you feel about your ability to offer it to faculty? (answers with Gifs)

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Menti: Please list a challenge you think you will likely face as you engage faculty in open pedagogy.

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Small Group Breakout (10 min)

In your small group, please choose two or three barriers, and brainstorm solutions for these barriers.

*Consider sharing solutions with the whole group.

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Whole Group Sharing

Share barriers/solutions.

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Let’s take a break!

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Facilitating an Open Pedagogy Learning Circle

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How to join Menti

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Why a Learning Circle?

Facilitates community formation
Low-stakes, high engagement
Nature of open pedagogy
Commitment to “teaching you to fish”
It’s accessible

Tanya

There are many reasons we chose to have our OEN fellow for 2023, Amanda Larson from The Ohio State University, devote her time to this. We piloted an 18 person learning circle with faculty, instructional designers, administrators, and librarians this spring.

We know that a facilitated learning circle experience can help to form community. During our pilot, we loved how the people stepped in to answer others’ questions, and the different experiences and roles really complemented each other.
Because we used slide decks and had someone facilitating, it was a pretty low-stakes environment. You didn’t have to talk if you didn’t want to, but we hoped participants wanted to engage, and they did.
The nature of open pedagogy is collaborative. It is an intentional centering of student agency and experience, so taking time to talk about the key issues surrounding and involved in open pedagogy hopefully made participants more confident about trying it out in the classrooms or talking to their colleagues about it.
The OEN wants to equip others to do what we do, so all of our curriculum is openly licensed. We know you have your own institutional setting, and you may want to use some of our curriculum but adapt or not use other pieces of it. That’s why we openly license it and give it to you with some tips and tricks; learn from us, but then go make your own learning circle the way you want to!

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Goals for the Learning Circle Experience

Create curriculum for the Learning Circle featuring open pedagogy topics.
Create a scaffolded assignment that allows folks to “do” open pedagogy.
Build a community learning about open pedagogy comprised of instructors and instructor support roles.
Create training that will help others facilitate a learning circle at their own institution.

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Learning Circle Considerations

Cohort size (12 - 15)
Application process
Make up of participants
Making time for community
Encouraging engagement
Tools chosen
We took time to engage in research on learning circles so we could understand more about what could be done

Tanya

As you consider running your own learning circle, we want to make you aware of some things to consider ahead of time.

As we were researching best practices for learning circles, we kept seeing the numbers 10 - 12 people. We decided to allow 18 in because we thought there would be attrition, and we were right. During most synchronous sessions, 8 or 9 people attended and participated.
We had a very simple application process that we will share with you, but we wanted to make it clear that attendance and a final product (either a renewable assignment or a digital learning object relating to open pedagogy) were expected in order to get the digital certificate.
We intentionally wanted faculty AND staff to participate, and we were happy we decided to do that because of the cross-talk and rich sharing of ideas between our faculty and staff participants.
There was a LOT to get through in seven hours/weeks. We were thankful for Menti, which aided engagement and community formation, and at times, we wished we would have had more just “open mic” time for participants to speak.
We modeled and utilized some carefully chosen tools, and while we will share all of that with you, you may very well want to choose different tools to support the practice of open pedagogy on your campus.
We took some time to research about 12 different resources on learning circles (We will share!) which provided some foundational thoughts on best practices.

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Learning Circle Foundation

Consistent opening/closing activities
Flipped model with pre-work before discussions
Integrating tools for open pedagogy throughout
Opportunities to reflect
Creating something practical for future use
We offered 30 min. consultations with our Open Educational Practices specialist
7 one-hour long Zoom sessions

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Experience the Learning Circle

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Goals

Experience the learning circle as a participant
Get a feel for the way polling works in the learning circle
Community Building

Jamie

The goals here are pretty simple, we really want you to get a feel for what the learning circle was like for participants and how we centered community building, engagement, and communication through the use of polling and share-outs. We hope that experiencing a learning circle session for yourself will help you determine whether this type of activity fits your institution and your own goals centered around open pedagogy.

Each learning circle session follows the same structure. It begins with Opening Activities, followed by Discussion Activities and a presentation on that week’s topic and learning tool, and ends with Closing Activities and What’s Next. The first session of the Learning Circle focuses on What is Open Pedagogy?, definition building, and community norm setting. Since we have already covered the basics of that during the Intro to Open Pedagogy Workshop, for today, we will demonstrate Session 2: Disposable vs. Renewable Assignments.

Okay, I’m going to switch into starting the Learning Circle.

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Open Pedagogy Learning Circles

Session 2: Disposable vs. Renewable Assignments

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AGENDA

Opening Activity
Disposable Assignments
Renewable Assignments
Flip
Closing Activity
What’s Next / Learning Circle Projects

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OPENING ACTIVITIES

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Menti: how are you feeling?

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Menti: fun question( favorite…)

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DISCUSSION ACTIVITY

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Menti: how would you define a disposable assignment?

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Disposable Assignments

“Student assignments are often very transactional in nature, seen only by the instructor for the purpose of demonstrating content mastery and achievement of learning objectives. This closed feedback loop between the student and instructor has been coined “disposable” by scholars Wiley and Hilton” (2018).

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Menti: why might students be resistant to disposable assignments?

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Menti: what are some examples of disposable assignments?

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Disposable Assignment Examples

Discussion boards where students have to answer a question and reply to X number of their peers.
Deliverables that just get pitched after class (printed posters).
Reflections without connections to course materials or ones that lack transparency for why they matter.
Essays only the student and instructor will ever see or that aren't scaffolded or don't see peer review.
Creating media learning objects - images, voicethreads, videos - that only teachers see.
Assignments that feel like busy work.

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Menti: how would you define a renewable assignment?

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Renewable Assignments

Renewable assignments provide students with opportunities to engage in meaningful work, add value to the world, and provide a foundation for future students to learn from and build upon. Renewable assignments are possible because of the permission to engage in the 5R activities (retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute) granted by open educational resources (OER).

Renewable assignments are an alternative to traditional, disposable assignments, which students throw away after they are graded.

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Menti: what are some examples of renewable assignments?

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Renewable Assignment Examples

Social annotation of a shared reading
Creating anthology excerpts
Contributing to an open textbook
Writing quiz questions
Creating tutorials or other “learning objects” for their fellow students and/or the public
Creating a topic website
Editing Wikipedia entries
Creating lists of “common problems” or advice for writing, after doing peer review of other students’ work and self-reflecting on their own

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Renewable Assignments - Tips for Getting Started

Start Small - just change one assignment to begin with.
Consider using a framework to get started.
The goal is to create active authentic assessments that provide students with choice and the option to “do”.
How does this assignment meet your learning outcomes?
What do you want students to get out of the learning experience in this assignment?
Is there a tool that might be useful for the assignment?
Make sure to scaffold any new tools, concepts, or assignments and then build in opportunities for knowledge transfer.

Jamie

Moving from disposable to renewable assignments can have a large impact on your pedagogical approach and design to a course, so it’s important to think about how you can get started with renewable assignments.

First remember, that is it okay to start small. Just changing one assignment or one aspect of an assignment is a great way to start. You don’t have to overhaul your entire course. And these types of assignments exist on a spectrum, you might start small by just offering students the opportunity to pick the format they submit the assignment in, and as you get more comfortable with open pedagogy you shift the needle further towards a full-blown renewable assignment.

The main goal is to create active authentic assessments that provide students with a choice and the option to “do” something. Some key pieces to keep in mind are how does this assignment meet your learning outcomes and objectives, what do you want your students to get out of this learning experience, and maybe whether there is a tool that might be useful for the assignment.

Even when starting with just a single assignment, it is still so important to think about how you will scaffold it. This will likely be very new to your students so you’ll need to consider how you will build in the support structures that your students will need for any new tools or concepts that you’ll be using. Your renewable assignment should bring to the center opportunities for knowledge transfer.

Let’s look at some examples for how to start small with moving from disposable to renewable assignments.

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Disposable

Renewable

Discussion Board Posts

Post a response to the assigned reading
Respond to 2 classmates

Social Annotation

Annotate a portion of the text you struggled with this week
Seek and Share - find a piece of media (image, video, gif) that relates to a passage you read

"Open Pedagogy: Supporting Faculty and Students with Remote Learning" by Lindsey Gumb and Amanda Larson is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Jamie

One small step would be to take your typical discussion board post assignment and turn it into a social annotation assignment. When we think about a typical discussion board post assignment, we know that they are pretty prescriptive and there is no real choice for students built in to posting, and it usually feels like busy work. From personal experience, I can say I never really felt like my students were totally engaged with this type of assignment, nor was I when I was a student.

Converting the discussion board to a social annotation assignment is one way you can go from disposable to renewable. Now social annotation can be done in a couple of different ways. One way would be to use a tool like Hypothes.is to have students annotate directly in their assigned reading. Students could annotate a portion that they might have struggled with or a portion that they found meaningful. One really neat way to do this is a Seek and Share. Students find another piece of media like an image, video, song, gif that relates to the passage. It’s a really fun way for students to engage with the material and share in a way that gives them some choice and agency.

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Question Bank

1400 questions authored by 35 students over 10 weeks �

Students wrote multiple choice questions instead of having an exam throughout the course.�
The entire process was scaffolded. �
Students learn subject content and transferable skills.

From Why have students answer questions when they can write them? By Rajiv Jhangiani

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menti: what do you think students would appreciate about renewable assignments?

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Tool Talk: Flip (previously Flipgrid)

Flip is an app that allows educators to create safe, online groups where students can express themselves in multiple kinds of media - video, text, or audio. Check out the documentation in the Open Pedagogy Learning Circles Tool Documentation for use cases and helpful links to get started.

Jamie

I’m going to break from the learning circle experience for just a moment, so I can provide a little context about the tool talk slide. Each week of the learning circle includes exploring a learning tool that can be used to create renewable assignments or digital learning objects. During the prework for each session there is built in time for the participants to play around with each tool and think about how they might use it in their own work. There will be some questions about using the tool, so feel free to participate whether you have used Flip before or not. This is just so you have an idea of what the Tool Talk section of the session looks like. Okay, back to the experience.

The tool for this week is Flip. Flip is a free app and learning tool that allows educators to create safe online groups where students can express themselves. Flip is mostly used for creating short videos, but it can also be used as audio only, or just text. Don’t forget to look at the Tool Documentation for all the links to get started and for some example use cases.

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menti: have you used flip?

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menti: how have you used flip and what was your experience? If you haven’t used flip how could you see yourself using it in the future?

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CLOSING ACTIVITIES

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menti: how are you feeling after today’s session

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menti: what is one thing you are taking away from today’s session

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menti: what excited you about the topics we covered today

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Next Steps

Do the Prework for Week 3
Instructor Participants will select a disposable assignment to revise into a renewable assignment this week, and use Step 1 of the Renewable Assignment Framework to assess that assignment.
Instructor Support Participants will identify the audience for their digital learning object this week.
Explore Hypothes.is

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Learning Circle Session Overview

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Learning Circle Session	Session Overview
Session 1	Kickoff: Learning Circle Structure & Collaborative Definitions of Open Pedagogy
Session 2	Disposable vs. Renewable Assignments
Session 3	Caring for Students in the Open
Session 4	Designing a Course with Open Pedagogy
Session 5	Open Pedagogy and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Session 6	Tools Showcase
Session 7	Show and Tell

Tanya

Here is what was covered in each session:

Session 1: Kickoff: Learning Circle Structure & Collaborative Definitions of Open Pedagogy: We wanted to provide a foundational understanding of open pedagogy to be expanded upon through activities that allow for a collaborative definition of open pedagogy.

We also wanted to showcase what open pedagogy does as well as how it can be incorporated in the classroom through exposure to a variety of open pedagogy assignments.

Session 2: Disposable vs. Renewable Assignments: We wanted to prepare participants to create a renewable assignment OR create a digital learning object that might explain what a renewable assignment is. The lightning in a bottle realization that renewable and disposable assignments are on a spectrum versus being in discrete objects that are not interrelated.

Session 3: Caring for Students in the Open: We strove to provide an overview of how consent functions in a classroom using open pedagogy as well as to \ provide an exploration of how to build a brave space for students to participate in the open AND to demonstrate how to engage in care in a classroom using open pedagogy.

Session 4: Designing a Course with Open Pedagogy: We tried to develop an understanding of how important it is to start building open pedagogy experiences that are accessible, scaffolded, and that use Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to ensure student success and engagement in the classroom.

We also wanted to underpin the importance of ensuring open pedagogy experiences are appropriately scaffolded, accessible, and built with universal design principles in mind.

Session 5: Open Pedagogy and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: The goals of this session are to explore the synergy between open pedagogy and social justice as well to show how open pedagogy can increase diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the classroom. We strove to provide a brave space where people can discuss using open pedagogy and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom through concrete examples.The takeway was that starting small and building with intentionality when incorporating social justice and DEI in open pedagogy projects is okay.

Session 6: Tools Showcase: We wanted to provide a showcase of tools commonly used in open pedagogy assignments to enable practitioners to build their own open pedagogy “toolkit.”

We strove to equip participants with tools they can use to build out open pedagogy assignments and experiences for their students. The Takeaway was to expect robust discussion when covering tools in a session. Participants loved sharing their favorite tools and what they use them for.

Session 7: Show and Tell: We provided a space for participants to showcase their renewable assignment redesign or learning object. We also distributed the learning circle assessment.

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Participant Expectations

Attend all seven sessions
Complete pre-work each week (readings, videos, tool exploration)
Create a renewable assignment or digital learning object
Share what you made in Session 7

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Final Project for Instructors

Objective: To redesign an existing assignment in your course that meets the criteria to be disposable and transform it into a renewable assignment.

Criteria for what counts as disposable:

Adds no value / has no longevity
Only seen by the student and instructor and then quickly forgotten
Not scaffolded or transparent
Feels like busy work

Examples of Disposable Assignments:

Deliverables that literally get thrown away (ex. printed posters)
Discussion Board assignments that follow the post and reply X number of times
Reflection Assignments that lack transparency as to why they matter
Creating Learning Objects (images, voicethreads, videos) that only instructors engage with

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"Renewable Assignment Design Framework - Figure 1" by Stacy Katz and Jennifer Van Allen is licensed under CC BY 4.0

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Final Project for Instructor Support Participants

Objective: To create a digital learning object that explains an open pedagogy topic for the audience of your choice.

Participants are asked to choose an audience for their object:

Instructors
Students
Administrators
Librarians
Instructional Designers

And they are given some topic examples for their object:

Consent in the Classroom
Scaffolding / Universal Design
What is Open Pedagogy?
Renewable Assignments vs. Disposable Assignments
Creative Commons Licensing
Student Intellectual Property Policy
Why Work in the Open?

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Assessment

Weekly check-ins through Mentimeter in the closing activities.
Final check in during last session through Mentimeter.

Favorite session tied between: Caring for Students in the Open, Open Pedagogy, Social Justice & DEI, or a combination of multiple sessions.

Survey at the end of the learning circle experience.

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Reactions to/Questions about Learning Circle

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Let’s take a break!

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Learning Circle Project Examples

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Examples of Open Ped. Projects

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History of Science

Students complete a project on either an astronomer or ancient culture that isn’t typically covered in major textbooks. This renewable assignment offers many ways for students to have agency and choice over their projects including both licensing and submission format. It also gives students the opportunity to provide a meaningful impact on future students, and the body of work in astronomy, by making contributions to the textbook.

Image by Enrique from Pixabay

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Reflective Seminar

Students create a 2-3 minute video for potential new students describing how you achieved one of the program goals. Your video must include a) the specific program learning outcome that was important to you b) one of the learning theories introduced in this course that most appealed to you, and c) the transformation you underwent after you entered the program as a freshman.

Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay

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The Curriculum

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The Curriculum

Designed to be modular, customizable
Pick and choose what pieces work for your context or run the whole learning circle
While the topics covered here relate to open pedagogy, it is possible to drop any topic into the basic structure of the learning circle for facilitation.

For example, it would be easy to take the components of the first session (opening activities, discussion, closing activities) and center it around the topic of OER Definitions

Photo of “Dangerous Kitten” from Know Your Meme.

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What do you get?

The Canvas Course

https://z.umn.edu/OENlearningcircle

The Curriculum (in a Google Folder)

https://z.umn.edu/learningcirclecurriculum

Tools Documentation

https://z.umn.edu/openpedtools

https://z.umn.edu/OENlearningcircle

Jamie

And here is how you access and can use the curriculum. First there is the Canvas Course which is broken down into the seven session modules, as well as modules on how to use the curriculum, and facilitator resources. The Facilitator resources then links out to the Google Folder which contains all of the curriculum. This is where you will find the slide decks, the participant handouts, instructions for the final projects, email templates, and pretty much everything you saw in the learning circle session we just did. The Tools Documentation is also linked in the tools section of each module and the google folder but we also have a separate link here as well. The Tools Documentation covers all of the weekly tools discussed plus more that fit into the different use cases determined in the learning circle. Each tool is also rated on a difficulty scale of 1 - 5 and has links to getting started documentation.

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Getting Started with an Open Pedagogy Learning Circle

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Considerations

Read How to Use This Curriculum and Facilitator Handouts.
Browse the Canvas curriculum.
Decide upon your audience.
Put together your Call for Participants
Decide how large your learning circle will be (ideally between 12-15).
Decide whether you’ll meet virtually, in person, or hybrid, and when the sessions will be held.
Decide whether you’ll have participants complete a learning circle project and if you’ll be offering a certificate of completion.

Tanya

Read through the How to Use This Curriculum document and the Facilitator Handouts.
Browse the Canvas curriculum.
Decide who your audience is - a mixed audience worked really well for us.
Put together your Call for Participants

This might be targeted to a specific department or college, or it might be a general call.
How many sessions will you have? How long will you meet?
Figure out your selection criteria.

Decide how large your learning circle will be (ideally between 12-15, remember to account for attrition over sessions).
Decide whether you’ll meet virtually, in person, or hybrid, and when the sessions will be held.
Decide whether you’ll have participants complete a learning circle project or if you’ll be offering a certificate of completion.
Release your call into the wild!

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Polling and Tools

Identify what tools are available at your institution.

e.g.: Zoom? Hypothes.is? H5P? Google Suite? Mentimeter?

Build your sessions around what is readily available at your institution because you’ll have centralized support for the tools.
Pick your favorite way to poll participants.

You’ll use polling throughout the sessions to do opening, closing, and discussion activities.

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What’s in a Session?

Temperature Check
Opening Activity
Presentation of Concepts
Discussion Activity of Concepts
Temperature Check
Closing Activity: Takeaways
Wrap up - details for next week, assignment reminders, and pre-work information.

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Lessons Learned

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Lessons Learned

Make expectations about cameras, chat, and taking care of yourself evident at the outset.
Attrition is real.
Certificate of Completion for completed final projects.
Participant group - only instructors, only instructor support, or mixed?
Institutional context - Make it your own!

Jamie

First, setting community norms in the first session is really important. Make sure everyone knows what is expected of them and how to kindly and compassionately take care of themselves and interact with their colleagues.

Attrition is real. Expect drop off in attendance so take that into consideration as you decide how many folks you will accept into your learning circle.

Also decide what will be required to obtain a Certificate of completion, if you choose to offer one. In our case, certificates were offered as long as the final project was submitted and showcased, regardless of attendance at all sessions.

For us it worked really well to have a mixed group of instructors and instructor support folks. Both groups were able to contribute to discussions and engage with each other by offering different perspectives and experiences. Especially in the Tool Talk section of each session.

And finally, as both Tanya and I have mentioned all of this material is openly available for you to use as is, or adapt and remix in any way you see fit for your institutional context. You may want to change the learning tools you talk about based on what is available at your institution or maybe you need to start with some more basic definitions of OER before moving into Open Pedagogy by adding an extra session. Or maybe you want to have a free session where your participants can bring up any topic to discuss. With this curriculum you can really make it your own. And again we want to take a second to thank our OEN Fellow Amanda Larson for creating this really excellent curriculum for the Open Pedagogy Learning Circle.

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Menti: how are you feeling

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Small Group Breakout: (5 min)

Why are you feeling that way?
How might you use these materials?
What have we missed that you know you will need to successfully implement open pedagogy?
Something else you want to share or ask.

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Whole Group Sharing: Please feel free to share anything that might be interesting or helpful.

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Open Pedagogy Resources

Open Pedagogy Workshop with speaker notes
Learning Circle curriculum with explanation

Learning Circle Canvas Course
Learning Circle Video

This Slide Deck with speaker notes

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https://oen-openpedportal.pubpub.org/

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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Thank you!

https://z.umn.edu/trainthetraineropenped

grosz045@umn.edu

witma008@umn.edu