Open Design for Equity and Innovation

I am tired today. It has been a long week. I wanted to end with something about open pedagogy and design. I have on my watch list several Quality Matters (QM) webinars. I am working on another QM course that started this week and enjoying it. I learn as much from the materials and activities as from the participants! Importantly, QM helps me review important design concepts, learn from the experience of master educators, and review my own course design decisions. Along with QM, Open Pedagogy has been pushing me to change, reflect, and teach differently!

Steve Kaufman from The University of Akron shared how they use Open Pedagogy to promote course design with equity. Kaufman shared a link: bit.ly/QM-LearnerEquity full of resources and an Open Terminology document that is very useful. Kaufman’s objectives for the session were to: (1) identify individuals on campus that can help support an open initiative, (2) contribute ideas to a shared document on how best to move forward with OER adoption, and (3) evaluate assignments that can be flipped to utilize open pedagogy principles. I reproduced Kaufman’s learning objectives because they do highlight key steps and practices to “do open pedagogy” that resonate with me.

Kaufman talked about the cost of textbooks and state funding for higher education. Presenting data from the 2012-2018 Florida Virtual Survey, Kaufman showed the impact of required textbooks on student choices. From issues with financial aid checks to sharing books with peers or downloading copies from the internet, textbook costs are often a barrier. Kaufman played a video of student interviews at their student center responding to questions about textbook costs. It was hard to see and hear the struggles and extra complications students have to endure for “required textbooks”… Kaufman pointed out that a no point students interviewed said books were not important. In a way, we are fortunate to teach lab-based courses without textbooks! This also provides an opportunity to teach differently, I think. After showing costs for textbooks per semester for a general course, Kaufman said that we should all own this challenge.

Kaufman talked about the balance between design and delivery, and how design and QM training has made instructors more aware and better face-to-face instructors. Presenting a Venn diagram of the intersection of publishers, library resources, and open, Kaufman introduced a model of course design that includes creation of open accessible resources.

Kaufman listed several reasons for open. The ones that I focused on from the list were: removing financial barriers for all students, facilitating the free exchange of knowledge, and can be used to innovate pedagogy. Open textbooks were discussed, and the attendees mentioned how open textbooks are a complete body of knowledge tailored to a course. Kaufman presented several examples of open textbooks that were adapted to, for example, the Canadian sociology perspective, different software, or for another hemisphere! I had never thought about how some open textbooks may be focused on one group or audience. Using PressBooks, Wiley wrote a book on Project Management for Instructional Designers! The Open Pedagogy Notebook and Marginal Syllabus projects were discussed. Another example Kaufman shared was a non-majors science class in which students work on websites on topics and then the following class improves the resources. A study from the University of Georgia that Kaufman discussed, showed that courses that adopted OERs had better outcomes for students. Kaufman’s showed the savings from the Affordable Learning Initiative they started. The student survey data shared was inspiring: students appreciated the initiative and listed numerous benefits of open textbooks. To wrap up, Kaufman shared a GoogleDoc with a master list of open resources.

I am grateful for all the resources our Libraries have shared with me. Their time, training, and willing to help implement new ideas has helped me dive into open pedagogy. I agree with Kaufman, and believe that Open Pedagogy does drive course innovation. I love this. As Sam D. said the other day, OER and Open have reached a tipping point! It is up to instructional designers, educators, and libraries to work with students to use and create together.