Amanda Marquez, a Professional Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and Jennifer Epley Sanders, an Associate Professor of Political Science also at TAMU presented at Open Ed 2021. The session was entitled “Creating Connected Communities and Histories through Open Pedagogy and OER” and was full of murals painted by local artists. Marquez is a first-generation college student along with Epley Sanders. The student population they interact with includes a mix of traditional and non-traditional students. Epley Sanders quoted Hegarty 2015 and the arc-of-life learning as “a seamless process that occurs throughout life when participants engage in open and collaborative networks, communities, and openly shared repositories of information in a structured way to create their own culture of learning.” They described “connected community” as the “primary driving force for how we as faculty think about and apply open pedagogy in our respective courses.” Connected community involves shared collective use of resources and the student as a whole person. Marquez mentioned that by creating open educational resources, students realize that “learning is not only facilitated by the teachers, it is facilitated by the students.” They felt that open pedagogy and OER require pedagogy of kindness, navigating multiple and diverse cultural identities and spaces, and learning communities as a high-impact practice. Marquez explained the notion of a pedagogy of kindness by citing bell hooks and Teaching to Transgress. Pedagogy of kindness was described as:
- seeing students as collaborators,
- learning through consensus, and
- investing in a student’s personhood and development.
These points really resonate with me. Marquez said, “when we make an effort to build relationships with students […] it enables learning to take place.” Marquez emphasized that centering community and “a hospitable environment for student learning and make meaningful connections.” The practical implementation that was shared included lots of teamwork that was not restricted. They concluded by stressing the importance of care and compassion for community building. During the question and answer session, the presenters spoke about the local community and projects that connect back to local and regional history.
