On March 9, 2021, Iowa OER held a webinar featuring Dr. Evrim Baran, Associate Professor of Educational Technology in the School of Education at Iowa State University. Dr. Baran teaches courses on online learning, instructional design, and evaluation. At March’s webinar, Dr. Baran shared her experience researching and participating in open educational practices, such as open pedagogy.
The summary provided here cannot encapsulate the entire presentation, so please watch the video embedded below or review Dr. Baran’s work on her website to learn more: https://faculty.sites.iastate.edu/ebaran/
COVID-19 and Crises in Education
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact not just on society but on the ways we approach education. While many issues we have had to deal with over the past year at our colleges were exacerbated by the pandemic, the inequities that fueled many of the problems we experienced (lack of Internet access, no plans to account for microphone or laptop access, daycare support for instructors) were already present beforehand. The frenzied response to the pandemic simply unearthed problems that were already there. As UNESCO proclaimed in their Call for Joint Action: Supporting Learning and Knowledge Sharing through OER [pdf]:
“The Covid-19 crisis has resulted in a paradigm shift on how learners of all ages, worldwide, can access learning. It is therefore more than ever essential that the global community comes together now to foster universal access to information and knowledge through OER.”
Dr. Baran’s work builds on this idea that open educational resources, and the teaching practices surrounding them, can support a more equitable and better education for learners, but she reiterates throughout her presentation that this work must be supported. As she states,
“I am an optimist scholar. I think all problems can be solvable in education as long as we identify the problems together and as long as we have this optimist mindset and approach this [work from a problem-solving view].”
To address the issues that arose during the pandemic, Dr. Baran adapted a frame for human-centered teaching to account for the specific issues surrounding online teaching during the pandemic. With her co-author, Dana AlZoubi, Dr. Baran emphasizes empathy-building in the classroom, making content relevant to students, and building a community of inquiry around the course (Baran & AlZoubi, 2020). This might sound like a traditional model for higher education scholarship, but as Dr. Baran states, the ideas present within it reflect the same values that can be found in open pedagogy work.
From OER to OEP
Here at Iowa OER, we like to stress that the use of open educational resources (OER) can help increase access and equity in the classroom by removing the price barrier from students’ access to course content. True equity cannot be created through the use of different materials alone, but open educational practices (OEP) can fill in those gaps. OEP are defined as “collaborative practices which include the creation, use, and reuse of OER, and pedagogical practices employing participatory technologies and social networks for interaction, peer learning, knowledge creation, and sharing and empowerment of learners” (Cronin, 2017, p. 18). Today, “open pedagogy” is the term more commonly used to refer to these practices.
One example of how open pedagogy can be implemented is through the use of renewable assignments. Renewable assignments are framed in opposition ton “disposable assignments,” which are thrown away at the conclusion of a course or module. Instead, renewable assignments use (or even create) OER to benefit the wider academic community. Students work to create or adapt content that will benefit themselves and future learners. Dr. Baran has used this approach in her classroom for years now, and has seen tremendous payoffs by connecting her course and her students to a broader community of practice online.
Phases of a Renewable Assignment
To help explain the process of planning for the use of open pedagogy in the classroom, Dr. Baran shared a model that she published in the journal Distance Education last year:
- Ideate: Identify the topic of interest for projects
- Explore: Explore and research available resources about the topic
- Conduct Workshops (OER and open pedagogy)
- Develop: Develop the OER
- Revise: Revise the OER using peer and instructor feedback
- Present Instructor Guidelines (objectives, deliverables, evaluation rubric)
- Reflect: Reflect on learner experiences
- Share: Publish, present, share, and disseminate the final products (Baran & AlZoubi, 2020)
These phases for planning an open pedagogy project scaffold in student learning through workshops and the use of guidelines for peer feedback, both of which can help students feel more sure of themselves as they approach this more active role in the classroom.
Dr. Baran’s Work
In addition to providing background on open pedagogy, Dr. Baran’s webinar also shared specific examples of how she has supported open pedagogy work at Iowa State University through her own courses and the courses of her peers. A few of these projects are summarized below. To learn more, please visit the project websites or contact the authors.
Learning Environments Design
The Learning Environments Design Reading Series is an online book wherein graduate students taking the online course, “Advanced Learning Environments Design,” have written the chapters. In addition to being compiled by past students, future students taking the course first study the chapters written by past students, and then contribute their own chapter to the book. This is an ongoing project where student work is reused each year, and a great example of a renewable assignment. (Evrim Baran, OER Trailblazers)
Online Learning Toolbox
Online Learning Toolbox, likewise, is a collection of seminal readings on topics related to online learning, which have been summarized and commented on by students taking the course, “Principle and Practices of Distance Education.” Having books that are continually updated like this is particularly useful in fields like distance and online learning, where the field is constantly evolving.
Perspectives of Aquatic Toxicology
Perspectives of Aquatic Toxicology is a Wikibook developed by students in Animal Ecology 444/544X, a course that flipped to an open pedagogy approach with Dr. Baran’s support in 2019. The course is taught by Boris Jovanovic at Iowa State University, and Dr. Baran helped coordinate the open pedagogy approach with the course’s instructor. (Boris Jovanovic, OER Trailblazers). This project was funded through support from the Miller Open Education Mini-Grant Program at Iowa State University. This book’s project differs slightly from Dr. Baran’s other works, as the course contains both graduate and undergraduate students.
Additional Projects
- Online Education Practitioner Series (video series)
- Online Learning Toolbox (Google Site)
Open Pedagogy in Action Model
More than just doing the work, Dr. Baran also wanted to explore the impact that open pedagogy had on her students. Her research resulted in the creation of an Open Pedagogy in Action Model, a model for examining the affordances, challenges, and the perceived impact of open pedagogy on student learning.
The model shows the components of an open pedagogy assignment which are critical to student success, such as reflection, development, content curation, peer-feedback, and community engagement, all of which are scaffolded into the course to (Baran & AlZoubi, 2020). As Dr. Baran states in the webinar, though, this model can and will change over time. Online learning is a constantly evolving process, and the models surrounding it will need to adapt and change over time as well.
Recommendations for instructors
- Connect with your librarians. Locate any resources or support that might be available for your work, such as professional development programs for teachers.
- Look for models of successful programs that you can base your own work upon.
- Develop students’ open access literacy. Teach students about open licenses and what it means to make their work open. This will ensure that students are providing informed consent when licensing and sharing their work.
- Scaffold peer feedback. Have clear protocols and guidelines for providing peer feedback. Having clear guidelines can help you avoid confusion or worry from students, and it can nurture a sense of ownership and agency in students’ work.
- Build trust and confidence. With trust in your experience and trust in the process laid out before them, students will be more motivated to participate and provide peer support.
- Address inequalities by creating inclusive spaces for collaborating and participating in learning, sharing knowledge and experience, and pursuing trust and respect.
- Provide options for engaging and disengaging in public conversations. Allow students to opt out of sharing their work, or from sharing their name on their work. There are many reasons why a student might not want their name to be published online, and respecting those boundaries is important when treating learners as peers in the open pedagogy classroom. (This note was added post-webinar)
- Share and celebrate student work.
Open Pedagogy Examples
You can find examples of renewable assignments and open pedagogy in action at the following websites: