Textbook Affordability Project

• Make a tutorial video over a topic or assignment from class.

• Worked examples that provide other students with step-by-step templates of how to do problems.

• Collaborative Syllabus or Blank Syllabus Assignment

• Create games to be played by future generations of learners to help them prepare for, or deepen their learning on, specific topics.

• Create guides to direct other students through readings or lectures.

• Written or video-based presentations that summarize an idea.

• Blog posts
  • The Recipes Project Undergraduate Series

• Social annotation
  • Social Annotation and the Pedagogy of Hypothesis.is
  • Using Hypothes.is in the Classroom

• Test Banks: students create test bank questions

• Diversity and Inclusion: Add diverse points of view to existing OER.

• Textbook Adaptation: Turn a general studies OER into a content-specific text.

• Key Terms: Create a glossary of key terms for an OER that does not have one.

• Wikipedia Contributors: Update or create information on a course topic.
  • How instructors are teaching with Wikipedia

• Student Stories: Curate content around the unique perspective of students whose voices are traditionally underrepresented.

• Historical Perspectives: Have students collect historical artifacts from their family or community library and write about the history of the artifact. This can also be used to make TEKS history lesson plans. (Example: Rio Grande Valley Primary Souce Guides)

• Contribute to Existing Projects: Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature

• Student-authored Open Textbooks: La lingüística hispánica: Una introducción

Often, open pedagogy includes the creation, use, or revision of Open Educational Resources. Robin DeRosa and Scott Robison (2017) suggest that “when we think of OER as just free digital stuff, as products,... we largely miss out on the opportunity to empower our students, to help them see content as something they can curate and create, and to help them see themselves as contributing members to the public marketplace of ideas.” 

DeRosa, R and Robison S. 2017. From OER to Open Pedagogy: Harnessing the Power of Open. In: Jhangiani, R S and Biswas-Diener, R. (eds.) Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. Pp. 115–124. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc.i. License: CC-BY 4.0 

Single-use (or disposable) assignments are assignments that a student spends hours creating, a teacher grades it, and then the student likely reviews feedback and throws the assignment away or deletes it. Even though these are the kinds of assignments and assessments students are used to, if they really stopped to think about all the work they put into the assignment only to discard it, they might begin to resent the system. Renewable assignments, on the other hand, involve an understanding that the student’s work won’t be discarded at the end of the process, but will instead contribute to collective knowledge in some way. (Towards Renewable Assessments)

You can find disciple-specific renewable assignment templates with rubrics here.

Any time you want to use student work-- whether for research or for pedagogical purposes-- you must ask for student permission. We recommend setting aside time at the beginning of your course to inform your students about exactly how their work will be shared if they opt-in to participating in public-facing open pedagogy projects. During this time, you can distribute FERPA waivers, if applicable, and offer alternative assignments or ways to share their work without attaching their personal information to it if this is a concern. It is also good to clearly define on your syllabus how and where student-created course content will be shared.

Students should also be given instructions about how to remove their names from public documents in the future if they ever decide they no longer want to be associated with the work.

For more information on the subject of student privacy rights and examples of how instructors have protected student privacy in their open pedagogy projects, check out these resources.

• The OER Starter Kit: Considerations for Using Open Pedagogy
• A Student Collaborators’ Bill of Rights
• A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students: Privacy & Anonymity

It’s important that students who are creating items that might be published and shared openly can understand what open means. If you are uncomfortable about discussing copyright and citation with your students, schedule a consultation with the University Library, and a librarian will happily visit your class to make the process easier.

It’s also worth mentioning that students are used to talking about “citing their sources” when writing academically, however in the OER world citing openly licensed materials is usually referred to as “attribution.” Citation and attribution accomplish the same goal of crediting authors for their content and ideas, so it’s important that students know exactly how and when to cite their sources. It may be helpful in an open pedagogy project to have your students practice both forms of citation (i.e. MLA + Attribution) because they may benefit from practice with both. When citing openly licensed materials, you can direct students to this Open Attribution Builder or teach them the TASL (Title, Author, Source, License) method which is explained here. Additionally, Indiana University created in-depth student-oriented plagiarism modules that help students learn how to recognize plagiarism and avoid it in their writing.