Students and Open Education: From the What to the How and Why (and When Not)

Editor's Notes

• #4: Open pedagogy icon created from icons purchased through a subscription to The Noun Project: thenounproject.com
• #12: Posts by Robert Schuwer, Maha Bali, Arthur Gill Green, David Wiley, Rajiv Jhangiani, Heather Ross, Devon Ritter
• #14: Renewable assignments: using OER, then releasing as OER Students contributing to OER falls under “open pedagogy” more than students doing things that add value to the world but are not OER, I think…but this could be disputed by others. eCampus ontario student experience design lab, exponential learning project: https://sxdlab.ecampusontario.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Exponential-Learning.pdf Exponential Learning: How many courses use the same assignments year after year, requiring students to do the exact same work over and over? How many assignments have you done that were looked at once, then never again? How often have you felt like you were working just to get a grade, instead of doing something of value? This project tackles the issue of meaningless work, by inviting students to explore new ways to make sure everything they do has value. Instead of “throwing away” the work of students, Exponential Learning captures it and makes it available to other students. Then, when students do an assignment, they build on all this previous work and do something new that future students will be able to use. This will make assignments more meaningful and useful, which will increase engagement and expand our collective knowledge on every topic. This initiative is led by three student Project Designers: Anne Filion, Danielle Cruz, and Eric Chung . For more information about the project and/or to add comments or suggestions, please visit sxdlab.ecampusontario.ca or tweet us @SXDLa
• #16: Blog posts with discussions of these aspects, which are gathered from many others’ views (the first post in particular lists all those views and gives hyperlinks; the second post adds a few readings to the list) http://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/2017/05/23/navigating-open-pedagogy-pt2/ http://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/2017/10/25/open-pedagogy-shared-aspects/
• #18: Link to course on the slide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/UBC/ENG470D-003_Canadian_Studies_(2017) Assignment for this course (from above link) As a group, choose a topic relevant to our focus on Canadian literature (e.g., an author, text, or institution) that you argue is currently underrepresented in and symptomatic of systemic bias on Wikipedia. ... Importantly, your Canadian literature topic must meet the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability">Wikipedia community’s criteria of notability</a>, “a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article”. There are specific notability guidelines relevant to our CanLit project: books:  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(books)">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(books)</a> people:<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)"> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)</a> organizations:<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)"> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)</a> Then together, draft and publish an article that begins or strengthens this representation by synthesizing existing scholarly and public knowledge. As well, write a group reflection of what you learned during this project. See Part One and Two below. Also courses in: Human Ecology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/University_of_British_Columbia/BIOL_345_Human_Ecology_(Term_2) -- Human Ecology is a participatory project-based course for upper-level students who are not biology majors. Each student designs and carries out three projects:. a short talk for YouTube, a small community project, and creation or enhancement of a Wikipedia page about a Canadian topic in ecology, climate change or sustainability. The Wikipedia work is done by teams of two students. Food, Nutrition and Health: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/University_of_British_Columbia/FNH200_Exploring_our_Foods_(Summer_2017) -- pick an article that needs some work and add to it Quotes from FNH course on Wikipedia at above link: Milestones: A 'good' topic for this FNH 200 project should have minimal coverage on Wikipedia. Foods that have been explored in details may not be a good topic for this 2nd-year food science course.For examples:Maple syrup is a good topic as it represents Canada. However, it has been covered quite extensively (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_syrup) and there may not be much left for you as students with only introductory level background in food science.Soju, a Korean beverage, may be a good candidate for this project. Though there is quite a bit of info on soju on Wikipedia, the information are limited to history and consumption pattern of soju. Little information on processing is available. As students in FNH 200, you may want to expand on fermentation techniques, processing requirements, packaging needs, and Canadian regulations (if any) of soju on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soju
• #19: The following is from Rebus’ Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students: https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/chapter/case-study-antologia-abierta-de-literatura-hispanica/#footnote-81-2 Dr. Julie Ward, an assistant professor of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin American literature at University of Oklahoma…. In the fall 2016 semester, she embarked on a project in her Spanish-language literature course, Introduction to Hispanic Literature and Culture, in which groups of four to five students selected ten texts from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century to include in a critical edition. The included texts span different genres of literature, with authors ranging from Christopher Columbus to Horacio Quiroga. Ward and a graduate student “research guide” had pre-established lists of texts students could review and choose from. For each work, the student groups compiled context in the form of an introduction, at least ten annotations on the text about style, references and colloquialisms, an image and a biography about the author–their style, milieux and how the work relates to the rest of their works, and a bibliography. The texts, introductions and all other contextual elements of the book are all in Spanish. The content of the critical edition was developed in the class, but the work on the text didn’t end there. In the subsequent semester, two students were paid to take the critical edition, verify the facts and public domain licenses, and format it using Pressbooks. This one is from same book: https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/chapter/case-study-frank-lloyd-wright-and-his-madison-buildings/ Anna Andrzejewski, an art history professor and director of graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was looking for a hands-on learning project for her Frank Lloyd Wright art history course. The class was an upper-division, research course designed for art history majors or grad students, but also open to other disciplines. Andrzejewski had arranged access to seven historic local Frank Lloyd Wright houses for the course. At each home they visited, students all had the same shared experience, but two or three took ownership to document that home for a chapter of the book. Those students asked the others for feedback during and after the site visit on what they found most interesting and what they should write about. Students got to pick a theme for each chapter. First and foremost, the assignment specified that each chapter must include a theme appropriate to the home featured. For instance: preservation, a period of Wright’s career, modular design, a style of architecture. In addition, the assignment specified that each chapter should include three different sections: An introduction, a one- to two-paragraph overview of the house and thesis statement of the chapter to follow An architectural description of the building, to include three to five paragraphs of description and complementary images An interpretive thematic section, which was a minimum-three-paragraph, “abundantly illustrated” narrative that was to demonstrate evidence that they listened to their classmates at the class discussions at the site and that they had done additional research outside of class. (Sources for this research could include anything from oral histories to archival research, book research or interviews.) Students did all the writing, image collection and uploading, editing, book styling and footnotes as they built the book.
• #20: University of Kansas game: The Digital Storytelling Project on Library Anxiety is a student-designed, interactive game intended to introduce first-year students to KU Libraries’ resources and services. It adopts a fun yet informative tone to lower library anxiety among incoming freshmen and illustrate the benefits of library use. Description The Digital Storytelling Project on Library Anxiety began as a project in a service learning course offered by the Film and Media Studies Department at the University of Kansas (KU). In spring 2015, three undergraduate students enrolled in the course collaborated with KU Libraries to create an interactive, digital game addressing experiences of library anxiety among undergraduate students that could be integrated into first-year-experience courses offered by the university. The original student team created the game’s branching pathways within Twine, wrote the game text, and drafted a small number of animated GIFs that established the tone for the game. In spring 2016, after receiving funding to support production of the game’s missing elements, KU Libraries contracted one of the student team members to create the remaining illustrations and ensure their integration into the Twine file. Type-specific handouts were created to supplement the game, which was integrated into KU’s University 101 courses beginning in fall 2016. Additional authorship information is located in the Read Me. URI http://hdl.handle.net/1808/21508 Collections Libraries Scholarly Works [362] Citation Reed, Michelle, and Alaine Caudle. 2016. “Digital Storytelling Project on Library Anxiety.” University of Kansas Libraries. https://hdl.handle.net/1808/21508 See also: UBC Geography student-created projects: http://environment.geog.ubc.ca/ University of Edinburgh undergrad med students revising content from MedEd portal to create module on LGBTQ health: http://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/?p=461 “We identified a set of teaching resources on the MedEdPortal – an open resource tool for teaching and assessment resources – specifically designed to support a two hour session with medical students on this topic. … we wanted to make two key changes. Firstly, the original teaching package was designed for a US audience so we updated the literature review and presentation slides to reflect a UK context. Secondly, we wanted students to use this project as an opportunity to undertake patient interviews and record digital stories that could be used as resources for future teaching, for example when a face-to-face panel discussion might not be possible to organise. We had six dynamic students who took on this project (see picture). They worked with the LGBT Health and Wellbeing centre in Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh student societies and a range of other networks to identify LGBT volunteers willing to share recorded experiences of healthcare. So far, the students have undertaken a number of interviews with these volunteers and digital stories have been recorded and transcribed. In March 2016, the team organised and ran an ‘LGBT Healthcare 101’ event for nearly forty of their peers using the updated teaching resources and with a panel of LGBT individuals, community representatives and medical practitioners.”
• #21: From Rajiv Jhangiani’s blog: https://thatpsychprof.com/why-have-students-answer-questions-when-they-can-write-them/ Here’s how it went: The students were asked to write 4 questions each week, 2 factual (e.g., a definition or evidence-based prediction) and 2 applied (e.g., scenario-type). For the first two weeks they wrote just one plausible distractor (I provided the question stem, the correct answer, and 2 plausible distractors). They also peer reviewed questions written by 3 of their (randomly assigned) peers. This entire procedure was double blind and performed using Google forms for the submission and Google sheets for the peer review. For the next two weeks they wrote two plausible distractors (the rest of the procedure was the same). For the next two weeks they wrote all 3 plausible distractors (the rest of the procedure was the same). For the remainder of the semester they wrote the stem, the correct answer, and all the distractors. … although I wouldn’t consider this a polished question bank ready for use by other instructors, I still consider this assignment to have been a success because the questions steadily improved over the semester (the experience of serving as peer reviewers was especially useful to the students when constructing their own questions). The students were also buoyed and motivated by my practice of including a few of their best questions on each of the three course exams. Maha Bali on Content Independent Teaching: http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/content-independent-teaching/62493 Instead of assigning them readings, I encourage them to ask important questions about the course, then work together to find sources to help them answer those questions, crowdsource a set of links (from Google or Twitter) onto a shared document, and then choose a number of those articles to read and blog about. Students end up reading different things and learning different things, so when they sit and work in their groups for the final course project, each one of them brings something different to the table. Sure, they don’t always find the most credible sources (and that could be a gateway to discussing information literacy), but they usually find sources I hadn’t thought of, and occasionally also teach me something I did not know. Which is pretty awesome. Later talking with her on Twitter: I use it in educational game design and now in a digital literacies/intercultural learning course. I think any course that is not like "basic science" or a prerequisite to others can be flexible this way...where the process/skills are more important than any particular canon (or really, no canon exists; I'm really anti-canon). Alsoooo any course where learners may have different interests to begin with. Robin DeRosa’s blog post: http://robinderosa.net/higher-ed/extreme-makeover-pedagogy-edition/ First Year Seminar: 25 students “After we had some basic plans in place for how we would communicate and where besides our classroom we would work, we started talking about content. What should we learn in the course? I presented the latest version of learning outcomes that I had collected from the leadership of our campus-wide FYS program, and brought them to the table. We talked about them, and whether or not we should use them all (thank you, tenure– more about that later). Students wanted to use most of them, though we tweaked a few words here and there. Then I asked students to contribute their own learning outcomes, on the basic principle that learning outcomes for the course should not be cemented without participation from the learners. After making some brainstormed lists together, students blogged a bit about what kinds of outcomes were important to them. They ranged from highly skills-oriented, like this one from Jordyn Hanos, to those that leaned more toward connection and engagement, like this one from Skyla Dore. We put all the outcomes we came up with into a GoogleDoc and students tweaked and revised and ultimately voted on them. I opened the online syllabus live at the front of the class when we finished and we updated the learning outcomes based on what they had created and chosen to upvote. … Some of these I love. Some of them I would probably never have included myself. There are others I would have liked to have seen in here, but my suggestions were outvoted…. We set about designing assignments to correspond to learning outcomes. … We built all of this week by week, with a syllabus that started almost completely blank and got filled in as we went along. In OpenSem, I decided to let students design the grading process.  It took a couple of weeks (while we simultaneously did other things as well) to hammer it out. Basically, they designed a competency-based model where they would have unlimited time within the confines of the course to improve each assignment if it initially they did not “achieve the competency.” Achieving the competency would require them to meet all of the parameters of the rubrics, which were often designed by the students as they crafted the assignments.