Students Authoring OER through Renewable Assignments

Renewable Assignments

One method of engaging in open pedagogy is the development of renewable assignments, assignments that students create for the purpose of sharing and releasing as OER. These can range in content from individual writing assignments in Wikipedia to collaboratively written textbooks.^[1][2] 

Wiley & Hilton compiled the criteria in Table 2 to distinguish between different kinds of assignments, from least to most open.^[3] You can explore more examples of open pedagogy in action in the Open Pedagogy Notebook Links to an external site..

Table 2: Wiley & Hilton’s (2018) Criteria Distinguishing Different Kinds of Assignments

	Student creates an artifact	Artifact has value beyond supporting its creator’s learning	The artifact is made public	The artifact is openly licensed
Disposable assignments	Yes	No	No	No
Authentic assignments	Yes	Yes	No	No
Renewable assignments	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

 

Before jumping in with open pedagogy, you should keep in mind how you will support students through the changes you plan to make. Ward (2017) discussed some of these considerations in an interview with Rajiv Jhangiani, a leader in the field of open pedagogy:

“When taking that approach, [Rajiv] said, it is important to give students control over their work. Let them choose Creative Commons licenses they are comfortable with. Allow them to later remove online work they decide is inferior. At the same time, scaffold assignments so that students gradually build skills and improve their ability to produce high-quality work.”^[4]

If you are interested in utilizing open pedagogy in your courses, first consider how this will affect your students.

Understand your Tools

You don’t have to use a snazzy tool or technology to make open pedagogy work. Make sure that you are choosing a tool or technology that your students can easily learn and– if it is not already familiar to them– that you have included time in your course for teaching students how to use your chosen tool.

Scaffold Learning

Not all students will be familiar with technology or able to engage with OER quickly. It’s important that you scaffold technology support into your teaching so all students can be on the same page when it comes to using the tools you’ve created or adopted.^[5]

Some methods for scaffolding learning are provided below:

• Integrate interactive exercises into your class to help students work through new concepts.
• Create tutorials on how to use any technology or tool unique to your class.
• Use blogs and discussion posts to introduce the concept of writing for a public audience.
• Give students the choice between set assignment types to accommodate learners with different technical competencies.

Educate Students about Copyright

It’s important that students who are creating items that might be published and shared openly can understand what that means. If you’re uncomfortable about discussing copyright with your students, university librarians can visit your class to make this process easier.

Student Privacy

Some students will be energized by the idea that their homework can be seen, used, or even improved upon by future students in the class. Others may feel uncomfortable with this step. Allow students to opt out of making their materials public if they are uncertain about doing so and give them the option to remove their name from public documents if they are uncertain about this for any reason.

These are only a few concepts to keep in mind when exploring open pedagogy in your course. You can learn more about this topic in the Open Pedagogy Notebook Links to an external site..

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