The Open Syllabus: A Practical Guide to Open Pedagogy in Your Course

OpeningYour Syllabus

Robin DeRosa

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

OERPedagogical Drivers Support Learning

concrete ways to incorporate open pedagogy into your teaching

Open Pedagogy Community and collaboration

over content.

Connects the university with the wider public.

Treats education as a learner-developed process.

Is skeptical of hoops, products, end-points, experts, & gatekeeping.

Syllabus:Key

Components

Required TextsLearning Outcomes

Schedule of WorkAssignments

Grading Criteria

Required Textsmoney can’t buy learning

Required TextsWhen you use OER, you change the

relationships among you, your students, and your course materials.

Non-OER OER

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-54440-0001 / CC-BY-SANenyedi CC BY-SA 3.0

Example of OER Interaction

Project Management (Business/Instructional Design)

http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2629

Critical Theory (English)

Class Blog: Students Help Each Other

Learning Outcomesrethinking beginnings and endings

What message does it send that we routinely craft ALL of

our course learning outcomes and objectives before a single student is in the course?

What message does it send that we routinely delete ALL of the student content

out of our LMS at the end of each semester?

CCBYNCND txmx2 flic.kr/p/dAPsnq

Curricular Map

CC BY SA: EMC, Central Michigan

U - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nutrition.

gif

The Rhizome

The Rhizome“The rhizome pertains to a map

that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable,

connectible, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and

exits and its own lines of flight.”

~Deleuze & Guattari

Image by Daniel Lynds, @daniellynds

TechnoRhizomatic

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CCBYNCND Andrew Purdam flic.kr/p/3dCSg1

“We haven’t been nearly imaginative enough with outcomes. I want outcomes like for us to have an epiphany or for students to do something I couldn’t anticipate.”

~Jesse Stommel

5 Minute Brainstormtweet to #USNHshare

A learning outcome that honors student contributions.

CC

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Remixed by me

Schedule of Workcollaborative content

Schedule of WorkFunction of CONTENT:

for students to learn to identify what matters to them.

The shelf-life of discipline-specific content is short. The shelf-life of learner-centered inquiry is forever.

CC BY Gayle Nicholson flic.kr/p/5wuqSd

CONTENT as Dynamic

“The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is [now] doubling every 18 months…To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”

~Cathy Gonzalezwww.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1692/decrease-in-knowledge-shelf-life-makes-performance-support-

mandatoryCCBY Kevin Dooley flic.kr/p/5ttM97

Schedule of Work

Collaborative Drafting

What do students want to learn? Brainstorming in

groups.

Essays about why they are taking the course.

Choosing textbook together.

Choosing from content lists.

Students schedule assignments, craft assignments, choose from multiple options.

CC BY SA 2.0 Rob Newman www.geograph.org.uk/profile/60859

Assignmentshoopless in Seattle

Some ideas from Peter Suber: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2975

Open Assignments

Eliminate disposabilityMake use of OEREngage course with public Empower students to contribute Leverage digital networks Contribute to greater good

CC BY Oakley Orginals flic.kr/p/7x2Spp

Blogs & WikisBlogs

Bust out of your LMS!

The value of audience

Ability to involve their immediate communities

Globalizing learning

Sharing learning practice

Developing digital citizenship

Wikis

Link collaboration to research

Emphasize writing as a process

Engage with real-world problems

Increase access to knowledge

Diversify knowledge

Non-disposable research papers

Blogs & WikisBlogs

Individual blogs that can be continued after the class.

Class blogs that can roll over to the next semester.

Class blogs as OER.

Wikis

Google Docs for peer workshops.

Wikipedia Editing

existing entries.

Adding new entries.

Other Open Ideas (DON’T FORGET THAT OER!)

Twitter: recursive class hashtags

Curation Social media collections (Storify) Virtual museums

Mapping

Emotions of LondonStanford University

Gradingopen assessment ideas

Grading Training peer graders like we train standardized test

graders (the @Chris_Friend model)

Open p2p Badges (the BC Campus model)

Grading by contract and crowdsourcing (the @CathyNDavidson model)

Grading by guided, frequent self-evaluation (the @Jessifer model)

Grades that emphasize effort/engagement (the @davecormier model)

“Every study of peer review among students shows that students perform at a higher level, and with more care, when they know they are being evaluated by their peers than when they know only the teacher and the TA will be grading” ~Cathy N. Davidson

Course Descriptionthe changing definition of “course”

What is a COURSE? No longer a closed set

of enrollees

No longer clear division between teacher and students

No longer set start and end points

No longer stable content from section to section or semester to semester

No longer aimed at measuring learning

Proprietary

Open to the public(s)

Collaborative learners

Students bring experiences in and continue learning afterwards

Content responds to learners and contexts

Aimed at engagement, inquiry, dialogue

Shared

OPEN Your SyllabusDescribe your “course” in open terms

Create open/rhizo outcomes

Collaborate on your schedule

Engage with students on OER

opensource.com

Create open assignments

Open your grading processes

Help the course transcend its own ending

CC BY www.gotcredit.com

Q & Q