Open Education Global 2022

Mapping a Course for Open Pedagogy Success
05-23, 16:20–16:40 (Europe/Paris), Salle 200


Abstract

Open pedagogy can be an exciting way to reinvent the learning experience; however, making the shift can seem daunting at first. Because an open pedagogy project’s scope typically looks beyond the confines of a traditional classroom learning space, these projects are multi-faceted and require a project management plan to be sustainable. In this session we will discuss the Open Pedagogy Project Roadmap, an openly licensed, step-by-step, module-based, discipline-agnostic project management guide for instructors to think through the process of scoping, implementing, sustaining, and sharing their own open pedagogy projects regardless of its size or scope (Riehman-Murphy and McGeary, 2021). The four modules of The Roadmap guide faculty through the 5 Ss of open pedagogy projects: Scope, Support, Students, Sharing, and Sustaining.

Open Pedagogy projects invite students to be collaborators, contributors, and creators who shape public knowledge. They are designed with the intention of sharing them openly with future publics — be that with future students, or out on the web — to be reused, revised, or remixed. Open pedagogy projects also invite students into a different relationship with instructors and with knowledge. They invite students to be collaborators and creators instead of learners and consumers. Thus, there are additional considerations for both instructors and students alike. While there are case studies detailing open pedagogy projects and useful handbooks to guide faculty who are interested in exploring open pedagogy projects (Clifton and Hoffman, 2020), a review of the literature revealed that there was a space for this type of practical open pedagogy project management guidance. Drawing from our collective experiences and the literature, 5 Ss of open pedagogy projects emerged as essential tenets to consider when planning for and sustaining one.

Developed by two academic librarians, the Roadmap walks instructors through a process of identifying core elements of their project in order to create a customized, sustainable, and actionable implementation plan, work that is critical to success but is often set aside in the interest of time. The Roadmap asks instructors to consider the values they bring to their project, the collaborations that may be involved beyond the classroom (e.g., librarians, instructional designers), the resources they will need, and their plans for sharing and sustaining the project. The Roadmap also encourages them to consider issues like student agency, assessment, and the role of open pedagogy in fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

In this thematic session, we will discuss as our experiences as librarians with supporting the creation and dissemination of two open pedagogy projects and how this work informed the creation of the Roadmap.

See also: Open Pedagogy Project Roadmap Slidedeck (721.1 KB)

Christina Riehman-Murphy, Assistant Librarian, is the Penn State Libraries Sally W. Kalin Librarian for Learning Innovations and the Open and Affordable Educational Resources Librarian at Penn State Abington College. She is the co-program manager of a faculty open and affordable resources (OAER) adoption grant at Abington, which supports faculty in transitioning their courses to OAER course materials. The endowment funded program, now in its third year, has impacted hundreds of Abington students, saving them over $90,000 and ensuring they have permanent access to their educational materials from day one of their classes. She was awarded a grant to fund her work as an embedded librarian in an upper-level English class where the faculty and students are collaboratively authoring an open textbook on early modern literature.
She also has an interest in global humanities and open initiatives and works closely with an undergraduate research project on a historical recipe manuscript transcription project. That project inspired a collaboration with Monash University Library to enhance Penn State’s global partnerships by starting the award-winning annual international “Great Rare Books Bake Off.” In addition, she is a faculty co-lead for a short-term study abroad program to Ghana. She has her M.S. in Library Science from Clarion University and a BA in English and Secondary Education from The Catholic University of America.

Dr. Bryan McGeary is the Learning Design and Open Education Engagement Librarian at Penn State. In this role, he helps advance the University’s initiatives that support the creation and use of open and affordable course content and associated teaching practices. He co-leads the Affordable Course Transformation (ACT) grant program, which supports faculty in creating and adapting open educational resources, and he previously started a grant program at Ohio University to support student creation of OER. He is also a member of the advisory and review board for PA GOAL, a program funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education that offers mini-grants to create open and affordable learning projects at institutions across Pennsylvania. Additionally, he is a SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellow, a member of Affordable Learning Pennsylvania’s steering committee, a graduate of the Open Education Network’s Certificate in OER Librarianship, and co-editor of the peer-reviewed open access journal Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice. Prior to joining Penn State Libraries, he worked in libraries at Dickinson College, Ohio University, and the University of Pittsburgh. He earned a PhD in American Culture Studies and a graduate certificate in Public History from Bowling Green State University, an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh, an MS in Journalism from Ohio University, and a BA in Journalism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.