Research Guides
Open Educational Resources and Open Textbooks: Open Pedagogy
Adopting and Creating Open Educational Resources (OER)
What is Open Pedagogy?
Open Pedagogy refers to practices that engage students in the creation of information, rather than simply the consumption of it. It leverages the "open" nature of OER to facilitate learning, and emphasizes community and collaboration, sharing resources ideas and power.
Examples of Open Pedagogy
- Students contribute to the creation of an open textbook that is then revised and built upon by students in future courses.
- Students create and/or edit Wikipedia articles to improve content coverage and quality in a subject area.
- Students create openly licensed instructional videos to improve understanding of course concepts for others in the class.
- Students design tests that are used to assess comprehension of course materials.
- Students edit and revise the syllabus for a course.
- Students research and annotate images or texts that are openly licensed or in the public domain.
- Students create and publish a zine to discuss a theory, concept or provide practical guidance on a topic.
- More examples from Open Education Group: OER Enabled Pedagogy.
5 Rs of Open Pedagogy
Using the 5 Rs of OER as a model, these 5 Rs (Jhangiani, 2019) provide a framework for values embedded in open pedagogy:
- Respect for the agency of students and creators
- Reciprocate by contributing back to the commons and building community
- Risk is always present with open pedagogy, and we should be mindful of how risks are higher for some (e.g., women, students and scholars of color, precarious faculty)
- Reach means having an impact beyond the classroom
- Resist destructive forces in order to be antiracist, democratizing, liberatory, and decolonized
Open Pedagogy Tools
- UW Libraries PressbooksPressbooks is an easy-to-use ebook authoring platform that can be used to create and publish OER.
- Hypothes.isHypothesis is a free tool that allows users to annotate and highlight text anywhere online (including PDFs). Students can create and share annotations in response to a prompt, or utilize features for individual note taking and comprehension. Hypothesis is also available as a plugin within UW Libraries Pressbooks.
- StoryMapStoryMapJS is a free tool that allows you to create a story highlighting the locations of a series of events. You can tell stories with images and add text and other content within your map locations.
- GitBookCreated by GitHub, GitBooks is an Open source tool created by GitHub that allows you to create a textbook that is hosted in a GitHub repository. You can create your content in Markdown or embed rich, multimedia content. Free for open source projects.
- Open Pedagogy Resources“Open Pedagogy Resources” by Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey is under a CC BY 4.0 International license.
Resources for Designing Open Pedagogy Assignments
The Open Pedagogy Student Toolkit by This toolkit is intended as a guide for students who are engaging in open pedagogy. The toolkit defines open pedagogy, the benefits of open pedagogy, and the rights and responsibilities that come with being a student creator. Instructors may wish to use this toolkit as a resource to scaffold conversations about open pedagogy with their students and to appropriately prepare them for working in the open. [Version 1.2 updated February 16, 2024]
Open Pedagogy Approaches: Faculty, Library, and Student Collaborations by Publication Date: 2020The term “open” has been heavily used in the past decade or more and can come with multiple interpretations: open access, open source, open textbook, open pedagogy … In general, “open” within these contexts implies unlimited, free, public access with the ability to manipulate and transform the educational content.Within the educational realm, we see even greater nuances of “open” in terms of how the access to and adapted creation work together. Our book aims to shed light on multiple definitions and how they are applied in a variety of learning experiences.Chapters provide case studies of library-teaching faculty collaborations that explore the intersecting roles and desired outcomes that each partner contributes toward student learning in an open environment.
Our Stories, Our Knowledges: Transformative Practices for Building Community Knowledges by Publication Date: 2018This collection of resources is written as a guide to support marginalized communities – including women, people of color, LGBTQI communities, indigenous peoples and others from the global South – in sharing their knowledge online. We hope to inspire the next generation of knowledge-makers to join in this work within their own communities. Whether you’re a member of a marginalized community, or an ally, these resources are here to assist you in centering knowledge from the margins.
A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students by Call Number: https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/ISBN: 9781989014028Publication Date: August 29, 2017A handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other Open Educational Resources. This is a first edition, compiled by Rebus Community, and we welcome feedback and ideas to expand the text.
- Open Pedagogy RoadmapThe Open Pedagogy Project Roadmap was developed by Christina Riehman-Murphy and Bryan McGeary and is licensed CC-BY-NC.
- Practices for Upholding Academic Integrity While Using Open PedagogyThis handout provides practical tips for setting expectations for students in creating and using openly licensed resources. It was created by Madison Hansen and Monica Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
- DOER Fellows Renewable AssignmentsRenewable assignment ideas for teaching in a number of fields including anthropology, Biology, Communication, Psychology and Theater. Created by the Open Education Group's 2017 – 2018 Designing with OER (DOER) Fellows.
- Tools to Promote Open Pedagogy in the ClassroomA 30-page PDF toolkit with 16 distinct teaching methods that promote open pedagogy explained. The beginning of the toolkit explains open pedagogy and its relationship to OER. There is a section at the end with additional resources and next steps if faculty want to implement some of these methods.
- Open Pedagogy NotebookWebsite designed to serve as a resource for educators interested in learning more about Open Pedagogy.We invite you to browse through the examples, which include both classroom-tested practices and budding ideas.
- Hypothes.is Teacher Resource GuideA set of resources from tutorials to sample assignments that can help you get started using the Hypothesis web annotation app in the classroom.
- Examples of Open PedagogyResource from the University of Saskatchewan that includes a table providing examples of open pedagogy activities across a variety of disciplines.
Wikipedia and Open Pedagogy
- Wiki EducationWiki Education provides resources for instructors interested in engaging students in investigating and representing knowledge in Wikipedia. Use this site to find examples of class assignments for creating and updating Wikipedia articles.
- WikiEDU Training LibrariesTraining modules for instructors and students on how to incorporate Wikipedia editing into classroom assignments.
- Wiki Education Types of LicensesThis explains which licenses are compatible with Wikipedia
- "Yeah, I Wrote That!": Incorporating Critical Information Literacy to Build Community Inside and Outside of WikipediaBook chapter by Kristina M. De Voe and Adrienne Shaw that focuses on using Wikipedia in the classroom. in Bridges, L. M., Pun, R., & Arteaga, R. A. (2021). Wikipedia and academic libraries : a global project. Maize Books.
- Web Writing and Citation: The Authority of CommunitiesArticle by Elizabeth Switaj that details the importance of citations within writing for the web. In Web Writing and Citation: The Authority of Communities. In J. Dougherty & T. O’Donnell (Eds.), Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning (pp. 223–232). University of Michigan Press.
- Decolonizing WikipediaThis chapter by Iam Ramjohn describes discusses how some of the policies — and realities — of Wikipedia leave people out. In Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Social Justice
UW Examples of Open Pedagogy
Badass womxn in the Pacific Northwest by Publication Date: 2019"This zine is the collective efforts of the students in my spring 2019 class 'Rad Womxn in the Global South' (AKA 'Badass Womxn in the Global South') at the University of Washington Bothell (UWB). Every student in the class found a badass womxn, femme, or enbie (non-binary person) from the Pacific Northwest to research and had to write a very short essay capturing her/their life"--Preface
Critical Filipinx American Histories and their Artifacts by Publication Date: April 27, 2020The contents of this online book were created by Prof. Rick Bonus and his students as a final project for a course on “Critical Filipinx American Histories” in the Fall quarter of 2019 at the University of Washington, Seattle campus. In collaboration with the UW Libraries, the UW Burke Museum, and the UW Department of American Ethnic Studies, this book explores and reflects on the relationships between Filipinx American histories and selected artifacts at the Burke Museum. It is a class project that was made possible by the Allen Open Textbook Grant.
Telling Our Stories: Student Experiences at UW Tacoma by Publication Date: December 13, 2019Telling Our Stories: Student Experiences at UW Tacoma is a collection of video stories and reflections, created by undergraduate students in TCOM 347: Television Criticism & Application. Students worked in teams to document and produce short digital stories highlighting the experiences of other UW-Tacoma students with regards to one or various aspects of their identity, whether related to race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, disability, place of origin, etc. With the goal of understanding how students' identity, and overall way of seeing the world, affect their college experience. Through this work, students engaged in conversation about their own social identities and their positionality in relationship to the people they are interviewing.
Other Examples of Open Pedagogy
The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature by Publication Date: October 13, 2015This is an anthology of public domain texts from earlier American literature, collected by students, faculty, and alumnae of Plymouth State University as an OER alternative to expensive commercial anthologies. The project is now developing through the Rebus Community, under the direction of managing editor Timothy Robbins, so users are encouraged to visit Rebus online to find additional information about and subsequent iterations of this book:
Environmental ScienceBites by This book was written by undergraduate students at The Ohio State University (OSU) who were enrolled in the class Introduction to Environmental Science. The chapters describe some of Earth’s major environmental challenges and discuss ways that humans are using cutting-edge science and engineering to provide sustainable solutions to these problems. Topics are as diverse as the students, who represent virtually every department, school and college at OSU. The environmental issue that is described in each article is particularly important to the author, who hopes that their story will serve as inspiration to protect Earth for all life.
Contemporary Families by Publication Date: 2020-09-28This openly licensed text, created with students, approaches contemporary families from an equity lens. It asks two questions relevant to the Difference, Power, and Discrimination outcomes at Linn-Benton Community College and Oregon State University: "What do families need?" and "How do society and institutions support or get in the way of families getting what they need?"
Spectacles in the Roman World by Publication Date: September 3, 2020This is a collection of primary sources on Roman games and spectacles in their various forms, created for a second-year undergraduate class on spectacles in Greece and Rome at the University of British Columbia. This book is intended for use in upper-level academic studies.
- Open Pedagogy PortalBrowse case studies/renewable assignments and student work product by discipline, search by keywords, or find teaching and learning resources to further your open pedagogy journey.