7 Open Pedagogy Assignments

Overview

Now that you have learned all about open pedagogy and related tools, this chapter explores how you can create your own open pedagogy assignment.

Redesign

You could design a brand new assignment using open pedagogy principles covered in this guide.  Another impactful approach is to redesign an existing “disposable” assignment in your course and transform it into a renewable assignment.

Below some criteria to help you identify a disposable assignment to redesign. Refer back to Chapter 2 for a deeper exploration of disposable vs. renewable assignments.

Criteria for Disposable Assignments

  • Adds no value / has no longevity
  • Only seen by the student and instructor and then quickly forgotten
  • Not scaffolded or transparent
  • Feels like busy work

Examples of Disposable Assignments

  • Deliverables that literally get thrown away (ex. printed posters)
  • Discussion Board assignments that follow the post and reply X number of times
  • Reflection Assignments that lack transparency as to why they matter or connection to the course materials
  • Creating Learning Objects (images, voicethreads, videos) that only instructors engage with

Implement

The Renewable Assignment Framework is a step by step process for to help instructors develop open pedagogy practices. Read more and follow this framework step-by-step at Evolving Into the Open: A Framework for Collaborative Design of Renewable Assignments.

Process arrow showing the 5 steps of the collaborative design framework. Step 1: Analyze and Classify Current Assignment Step 2: Consider Meaningful OER Contributions Step 3: Select Tools and Repositories Step 4: Design Intentional Negotiations for Openness Step 5: Finalize and Reclassify Assignment

“Renewable Assignment Design Framework – Figure 1” by Stacy Katz and Jennifer Van Allen is licensed under CC BY 4.0

 

Reflection Questions

  1. How am I feeling about this transition?
  2. What outstanding questions do I have on making this transition?

 

 

Further Resources

The Open Syllabus Project  – Open Syllabus is a non-profit research organization that collects and analyzes millions of syllabi to support novel teaching and learning applications.  They have a corpus of over nine million English-language syllabi from 140 countries.

How to Ungrade – An article from Jesse Stommel on How to Ungrade.

So, you want to take the grades out of teaching? A beginner’s guide to ungrading – an article that takes a look at the idea of implementing ungrading in the classroom.

 

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Open Pedagogy Learning Guide by PALSave: PALNI Affordable Learning Program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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