1. From Resources to Practice:
Leveraging the Power of OER for
Open Pedagogy
Regina Gong, OER & Student Success Librarian
Michigan State University
March 2, 2021
This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) International
License.

3. Slides for this presentation available at
https://www.slideshare.net/ReginaGong/presentations

4. Photo by Allie on Unsplash
Leads the OER program including
the OER Award Program
Manages the MSU Libraries Open
Textbook publishing via Pressbooks
Provides professional development
of faculty, staff, librarians on OER,
open education, open licensing
among others
Facilitates the Open Pedagogy
Learning Community

5. MSU Libraries OER Program
❖ Now on its 2nd year
❖ Full-time librarian leading the program
❖ Team:
➢ Publishing assistant for print-on-demand
services
➢ Copy editor
➢ Accessibility coordinator
➢ Student employees
❖ Institutional member of the Open Education
Network (OEN)
5

6. Goals of the OER Program
★ Affordability, access, equity, student
success
★ Provide expertise and technical support to
faculty in the OER adoption, adaptation,
creation, and publishing process
★ Empower faculty to engage in new
pedagogical models
6

7. Source: https://brocku.ca/pedagogical-innovation/resources/open-educational-resources/

8. Photo by "My Life Through A Lens" on Unsplash

9. Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

10. Open Pedagogy has a long history and is used in many
contexts
 Elliot (1973) describes a tension between “closed” and “open” pedagogies with the former
tending to be more focused on didactic discussion and the latter being connected with
leading informal discussions and students co-creating the context of the class.
 Mai (1978) discusses open pedagogy in the context of creating an “informal classroom
where children might be trusted to learn by exploring according to their own interests,
instead of being bored, demeaned, and alienated.”
 Dufeu (1992) argues that open pedagogy is a philosophy in which the content of the
course, as well as its progression, is determined by the needs and preferences of
participants.
 Daniel (2004) refers to open pedagogy as one “that treats the student as an intellectual
equal.”

11. Open Pedagogy has a long history and is used in many
contexts
 Hodgkinson-Williams & Gray (2009) use the term to refer to “the opening up of
educational processes...enabled by Web 2.0 technologies and argue that open
pedagogy will play a more transformational role than open content.”
 Day, Ker, Mackintosh, McGreal, Stacey, & Taylor (2011) associates open pedagogy with
“learning digital literacies and teaching that is centered on the pedagogy of discovery.”
 Weller (2013) states that open pedagogy “makes use of...abundant, open content (such
as OER, videos, podcasts), but also places an emphasis on the network and the
learner's connections within it.
 Hegarty (2015) defines open pedagogy as a broad range of attributes from
participatory technologies to innovation and creativity.

12. Open Pedagogy
“Open Pedagogy, as we engage with it, is a site of praxis, a place
where theories about learning, teaching, technology, and social
justice enter into a conversation with each other and inform the
development of educational practices and structures. This site is
dynamic, contested, constantly under revision, and resists static
definitional claims.”
-- Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani
Open Pedagogy Notebook

13. Open Pedagogy
“Open pedagogy as a philosophy of teaching and learning
that in its core, has an ethos of sharing and social justice.
These are intentional approaches in teaching that
encourage students to have the will to explore different
perspectives and change one’s mind as new information
is presented.”
-- Suzan Koseoglu
From the book Open at the Margins

14. Lee, K. (2020). Who opens online distance education, to whom and for what?:
A critical literature review on open educational practices. Distance Education,
41:2, 186-200. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757404

15. Open Educational Practices
“Abroad descriptor of practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of
open educational resources (OER) as well as open pedagogies and open
sharing of teaching practices.“
-- Catherine Cronin
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl
/article/view/3096/4263

16. Open Educational Practices
“OEP are defined as practices which support the (re)use and production of
OER through institutional policies, promote innovative pedagogical
models, and respect and empower learners as coproducers on their lifelong
learning path.”
-- Open Education Quality (OPAL) initiative

17. Open Educational Practices
“practices that involve students in active, constructive engagement with
content, tools and services in the learning process, and promote learners’
self-management, creativity and working in teams.”
-- OLCOS (Open eLearning Content Observatory Services) Roadmap 2012

18. Open Educational Practices
 OER production, management use and reuse
 open/public pedagogies
 open learning (including peer-to-peer learning and open accreditation)
 open scholarship (including open research, open data and open access publication)
 open sharing of teaching ideas
 use of open technologies (including social media and digital open tools)
-- UKOER Programme

19. Open Educational Practices
 Technical (interoperability and open formats; connectivity; technical skills &
equipment; availability and discoverability of resources)
 Legal (open license parameters; open license knowledge and advice)
 Cultural (conceptions of knowledge as given or constructed; curricula)
 Pedagogical (student demographics and types of engagement; pedagogic, learning &
assessment strategies; accreditation/certification)
 Financial (costs ranging from free to fees; sustainable business models)
-- CILT (Centre for Innovation in Learning & Teaching), University of Capetown

20. OER-Enabled Pedagogy
 set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible or practical
in the context of the 5R permissions which are characteristic of OER.
 Retain, Revise, Remix, Reuse, Redistribute
-- Wiley & Hilton (2018)

21. Open Pedagogy Notebook (DeRosa & Jhangiani)
“If we merge OER advocacy with the kinds of pedagogical approaches that focus on
collaboration, connection, diversity, democracy, and critical assessments of
educational tools and structures, we can begin to understand the breadth and power
of Open Pedagogy as a guiding praxis.”
“If a central gift that OER bring to students is that they make college more affordable,
one of the central gifts that they bring to faculty is that of agency, and how this can
help us rethink our pedagogies in ways that center on access.”

22. “Throughout my academic career I have
sought the spaces of openness, fixing my
attention less on the ways colleagues are
closed and more and searching for the place
of possibility.”
-- bell hooks

23. Open Educational Practice
Learning Community

24. Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash
This learning community brings together
educators who are using or planning on
using OER and would like to incorporate
practices that leverage the affordances of
openly-licensed materials and open
education more broadly. Specifically,
involving students in the co-creation of
knowledge as well as sharing practices that
demonstrate effective student participation
and engagement.

25. Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash

26. Our Community Norms
 Be respectful
 Be honest and strive for constructive feedback
 Be inclusive
 Understand different perspective
 Listen and engage actively
 Be open to learning with each other
 Make our online community a safe space

27. Guiding Questions
 What are your hopes for education, particularly for higher education?
 What vision do you work toward when you design your daily professional
practices in and out of the classroom?
 How do you see the roles of the learner and the teacher?
 What challenges do your students face in their learning environments, and
how does your pedagogy address them?

28. “An open access platform for connecting with
other scholars, sharing your work, and
developing your online presence.”
All files and meeting notes will be stored in
our Open Pedagogy MSU Commons Group
More info found in the MSU Commons for
Learning Communities document.
Allows you to annotate and highlight texts, as
well as respond to others’ comments.
All monthly readings will be linked in our
Hypothes.is group
Consider the ‘What is a Good Annotation?’
questions in the Annotating with Hypothesis
document in our Commons group.
MSU Commons Hypothes.is

29. MSU Commons – Open Pedagogy Group

30. Group Activity
In advance of our next meeting, please read and annotate using Hypothes.is:
 Year of Open’s “What is Open Pedagogy?”
When annotating “What is Open Pedagogy?” consider: what definition of
Open Pedagogy do you most relate with? Highlight that definition and explain
why.
We will also be discussing examples from The Open Pedagogy Notebook

32. http://openpedagogy.org/

33. https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/openpedagogyapproaches/

34. Equity Unbound
http://unboundeq.creativitycourse.org/

35. Equity Unbound
http://unboundeq.creativitycourse.org/about/
Mia Zamora Maha Bali Catherine Cronin

36. Wild Networking (Mad Tea)
Originally from Maha Bali
https://onehe.org/eu-activity/wild-tea-mad-tea/
Photo by 五玄土 ORIENTO on Unsplash

37. Spiral Journal (LS in development)
Calmly prepare for the work ahead while sharpening observational precision.
Inspired by Lynda Barry

38. Annotate the Syllabus
Originally from Maha Bali & Remi Kalir
https://oneheglobal.org/2020/08/24/annotate-the-syllabus/
Photo by siriwan arunsiriwattana on Unsplash

39. Learner-Created Assignments
DS106 Assignment Bank
• Stems from assignments
created by/for Digital
Storytelling students at the
University of Mary Washington
in spring 2010
• DS106 is crowd sourced,
student created, and
remixable
39
Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

40. Learner-Created Assignments
Activity
1. Break into groups (roughly by discipline)
2. In your groups, navigate to DS106:
https://assignments.ds106.us/
3. Search for assignments that fit the criteria posed on your
groups’ slide. It’s ok to not find assignments that fit all
criteria.
4. Return to the large group chat in 20 minutes
40 bit.ly/FebOPLC

41. https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/

42. https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/

43. Photo by Perry Grone on Unsplash

44. Takeaways so far…
 Our faculty who are using and creating OER appreciate the
community
 Collaborative learning about open educational practices
 We are comfortable with the ambiguity and the not-yetness of
our open pedagogy practice
 Small, baby steps are important to start
 We are a learning community and we learn together and with
each other

45. Photo by Jules Bss on Unsplash
Regina Gong
gongregi@msu.edu
Follow me on Twitter @drgong