Alyssa Hamer, an Open Education Faculty Associate at Capilano University, and Darcye Lovsin, an Instruction and Reference Librarian at the Justice Institute of British Columbia. presented at Open Ed 2021 a 25-minute recorded session. Their session was entitled ” Sprinting to Student Empowerment: The Case for a Student-Centered Open Assignment Sprint.” Capilano University is in North Vancouver in BC, Canada with three campuses and 6,000 with a large international student population. In 2019, the campus received an OE Sustainability Grant that provided release time for Hamer. The program they developed encouraged faculty and students to create projects through partnerships in “sprints.” They planned for the Open Assignment Sprint by conceptualizing the structure, setting goals early, and creating an agenda. The materials they developed included an Open Assignment Info Sheet, What is an Open Assignment with student & faculty versions, and a list of open assignments. The open assignment info sheet included information about the assignments and sprints to recruit students and faculty. Before the sprint, they sent a list of open assignments to provide “a little bit of guidelines to get started.” Hamer shared outcomes of the sprints: 40+ unique open assignment ideas to be compiled into an open repository, awareness of Open Education practices and OER across campus, and feedback from both students and faculty that was “overwhelmingly positive.” I thought it was really creative that the sprints focused on courses and their learning objectives to define and align projects. Lovsin shared some of the challenges that included recruitment, conceptualizing the event, the complexity of open assignments, and the online format. Each of the four faculty fellows recruited others. The events were scheduled during winter break. Students were recruited by faculty fellows with a goal of 3-4 per discipline. Faculty reached out to recruit students in courses. All students who participated received a “co-curricular record” for participating. They hosted the event online and were able to reach students and share documents easily. Students were involved in the design and conceptualization: the planning team had access to student perspectives. I think Rabeya and Amy will help us reach more students. Involving students from the beginning helps “spread” the responsibility of finding content, mentioned Hamer. After this sprint, they secured funding for the 2021-2022 academic year and will continue building on the successes. Hamer mentioned that their strategic plan for the institution includes open education as a mandate. They shared their resources at bit.ly/39vEWMb that I will have to visit now!
