What is Open Pedagogy and Why Does it Matter?

This presentation is about open pedagogy and why it should be used in current classrooms.

Open refers to things made accessible, collaborative, and free in both senses of the word. Open pedagogy is using OER to support learning and improve teaching practices -- overall improving the education experience.

I will talk about the inputs, the process and the outputs.

The first input is OER. That is the lesson plans that are being used and created or modified. Textbooks, past student work, or even inviting current students to create OER (student creation flows into the process). There's also the input of the time and effort teachers are putting in to their creations. This is going to increase as they create resources that are specifically customized to their class. For this to happen, teachers are going to need to be paid a little bit more. They already don't get paid enough despite their education; so to ask them to do more without an increase in pay is challenging.

The process is all about collaboration. Collaboration among teachers includes sharing lesson plans, best practices, and helping each other adapt to the needs. This will result in innovation. Think about how many times Pluto has changed between a dwarf planet and regular planet. Open pedagogy will allow students and teachers to update those textbooks. And lastly, students are involved in that collaboration as well. Just like real life, they share with each other and they learn from each other.

Because students are involved in the learning process, the first output is more prepared students. This is a result of the improved curriculum. Students are more prepared to enter the real world after whatever level of education. They are also more excited about learning. Learning should be fun and exciting. Being a part of that creation process makes it that way.

This is a new territory. It's going to take time for open pedagogy to get to where we want it to be. So start being an advocate now and be willing to adjust as we go on.

My experience this semester was really exciting. I created resources that were used by 130 ExDM students at BYU. The OER I was creating was being used in real time to help students succeed.

I hope that you enjoy using OER and open pedagogy in your classroom soon.

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Access it online or download it at https://edtechbooks.org/open_education/what_is_open_pedagogD.