Redesigning your Course to be more Open

With Emily Schudel and Monique Brewer

This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

Learning outcomes�

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Define what Open might mean in your context
• Make one small change to your course(s) towards Open
• Know where to get help!

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Some of the content for this workshop adapted from UBC Teaching in the Open

Agenda

• Introductions
• Defining Open (reminders)
• What it can mean to teach in the open
• Ideas
• Actions

Introductions

• Name
• Where and what you teach
• Is there something you don’t know you would like me to define, review, etc.?
• What you would like to walk away from with after this workshop

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Defining Open (reminders)

• Open Education
• Open Educational Resources (OER)
• Open Pedagogy
• Open Educational Practices

Open Education

Tony Bates:

• education for all: free or very low cost school, college or university education available to everyone within a particular jurisdiction, usually funded primarily through the state;
• open access to programs that lead to full, recognised qualifications. These are offered by national open universities or more recently by the OERu;
• open access to courses or programs that are not for formal credit, although it may be possible to acquire badges or certificates for successful completion. MOOCs are a good example;
• open educational resources that instructors or learners can use [and adapt] for free. MIT’s OpenCourseware, which provides free online downloads of MIT’s video recorded lectures and support material, is one example;
• open textbooks, online textbooks that are free for students to use;
• open research, whereby research papers are made available online for free downloading;
• open data, that is, data open to anyone to use, reuse, and redistribute, subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share.
• [I’ll add open access - scholarly work available for free online, typically open access journals]

Open Educational Resources (OER)

• BCcampus: “teaching, learning, and research resources that, through permissions granted by their creator, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to them.”
• David Wiley: The terms "open content" and "open educational resources" describe any copyrightable work (traditionally excluding software, which is described by other terms like "open source") that is either (1) in the public domain or (2) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R (retain, reuse, remix, revise, redistribute) activities
• The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC): “teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by the use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt, and share the resource—anytime, anywhere.”

Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources was written by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/ .

Open Pedagogy

"Open pedagogy is an access-oriented commitment to learner driven education. It is also the process of using tools and building architectures for learning that allow students to shape the public knowledge commons of which they are a part. Open pedagogy might look like co-creating course policies, rubrics, or even schedules of work with students or replacing traditional course assignments in which only the instructor may see the student's work with assignments that have a larger audience, impact, and legacy. This could involve students writing or editing articles in Wikipedia, writing op ed pieces instead of another research essay, creating brief instructional videos instead of giving another classroom presentation, or annotating, updating, or even authoring open textbooks. To explore a diverse set of examples of open pedagogy in practice, visit the Open Pedagogy Notebook." Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Open Educational Practices

• Teaching and learning practices where openness is enacted within all aspects of instructional practice; including the design of learning outcomes, the selection of teaching resources, and the planning of activities and assessment. OEP engage both faculty and students with the use and creation of OER, draw attention to the potential afforded by open licences, facilitate open peer-review, and support participatory student-directed projects (Paskevicius, 2017).
• Creation and/or use of open educational resources; adoption of open pedagogies; use of open source and/or free software and tools; and/or open sharing of scholarly practice and knowledge with others (Harrison and DeVries 2019).

These views of open educational practices consider opening up many parts of education, including content, tools, learning objectives, activities, assignments, and peer review.

Open educational practices could include:

• Engaging students in designing learning objectives and activities/assessments to fulfill them
• Inviting and incorporating feedback on the course and its open resources, whether instructor-produced or student-produced, from people inside and outside the course
• One could open an entire course to participants from outside the institution (such as in a MOOC), ensuring that the course elements are openly licensed

Teaching in the Open

What it can mean to teach in the open

“Teaching in the open means that you are making some or all aspects of your learning environment available and accessible to the public. For some, this may mean the adoption of an open text or learning resource, or contributing open educational resources created by you and/or your students. For others, it may mean adopting a set of open practices – related to all aspects of the course including planning, learning, assessment and reflection on the process. As evidenced in the great work that faculty and students are engaged in at UBC, there is no one right way to “do open.” Teaching in the Open

What might teaching in the open mean to you?

• some materials out there could entice people to come in the direction Camosun could offer
• sharing resources openly
• ​

Opening your course

Spectrum of Open Practice – Working Draft – CC by 3.0

Make a Plan

• Identify gaps
• Identify pain points for students
• Search for options
• Work with colleagues, CETL, librarians
• Feedback feedback feedback

Activity: Reflection - Identify a problem or gap and consider a potential open solution/idea to address the problem or gap

This is the pre-activity to the Troika Consulting Activity which follows.

Take 2-3 minutes to think about your context and how you might use Open Education, OER, Open Pedagogy, Open Practices to support your course(s) and students.

Activity: Troika Consulting (getting feedback on your potential solution/idea)

In groups of three - no cameras on - Take turns being the instructor and colleagues

10 minutes for each round, 3 rounds total - the key is Active Listening!

1. Decide who goes first (Emily will cue the beginning, etc. using Everyone Chat)
2. Instructor shares problem and idea, with colleagues on mute, listening (two minutes)
3. Colleagues ask clarifying questions (two minutes)
4. Colleagues brainstorm as many ideas as they can while the instructor is on mute, listening and taking notes (three minutes)
5. Instructor shares a highlight or two of what they got from their colleagues and graciously thanks them (two minutes)
6. Switch roles until everyone has had a turn being the instructor
7. When you return to the main room, be prepared to share some highlights

Sharing back, and how will you start?

• students to take more ownership of activities and learning, asking them to share their experiences and learning, gamification - create questions for the class (Kahoot)
• 10% rule for text (fair dealing), reaching out for colleagues at other institutions to see what they are doing/using
• collaborate with other colleagues not only in your discipline - see things differently
• different tech - infographics, youtube videos, how do you bring them together in a way that is meaningful (and fun)
• BCcampus connections

What challenges might you/we face when opening our courses?

• Bureaucracy
• Time!!
• being courageous
• “closed” colleagues
• ​

Challenges

• Privacy
• Students sharing and open assignments
• Time
• Tools and technology
• Support
• Choosing course materials for a multi-section course … challenge programmatically or for term faculty

Resources

• BCcampus
• Camosun College Open Libguide
• Program for Open Scholarship and Education (UBC)
• Introduction to Open Educational Practices (USask)
• Teaching in the Open (UBC)
• The Implications of Open for Course and Program Design ( Teaching in a Digital Age)
• Open Education and Learning Design: Open Pedagogy in Praxis
• Open Educational Resources: Integrating OER into Your Course
• Create your Own Open Course Design
• OER by Design: Planning a Course with Open Educational Resources Webinar
• Best Practices in Designing Courses with Open Educational Resources (OER)
• Instructional Designers and Open Education Practices
• Course Design in an OER Environment
• Course Design Resources
• Open Course Design Challenges

Questions?

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Or ask me later…I’m happy to meet with you in June, and I will follow up with all of you in the fall!