An assortment of ‘open’ philosophies and models have emerged as an outcome of diverse motivators, persuaders and impetuses – with sharing freely, endorsing economic efficiencies, foiling replication, evading obstructive copyright practices, and refining access to broad groups of stakeholders.
Many of these advances have been determined by and shaped by people who identify the paybacks to themselves, and sometimes to wider communities. Some of these are Open Design, Open-Source Software, Open Access to Research Results, Open Courseware, Open Data, Open Standards, etc. Quite a few of these movements have somehow impacted the education community both in terms of research on learning and teaching (particularly in the area of educational technology). The open education movement (OEM) is the mounting trend of open education philosophy — a belief that educational resources and experiences must be accessible to one and all.
No doubt the general principles of open education were delineated in 2008 in the Cape Town Declaration, one of the first initiatives to lay the rudiments of the “emerging open education movement” and to advocate for the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute educational resources without restriction but The Open Education movement started around the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER), a term initially devised at a forum arranged by UNESCO in 2002 and then Open Course Ware Consortium (recently renamed as Open Education Consortium) which was launched in 2005. From connectivism through a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2008 at Manitoba University (Canada) to Artificial Intelligence at Stanford in 2011, the Open Education movement is in good vigor today.
The open education movement has ventured its entitlement to a growing corner of academia over the last twenty years. It’s become a dominant refrain in discussions about pedagogy and equity around the globe.
Beyond Open Educational Resources (OER), which are stereotypically created to share openly, for reuse by other educators and to reduce duplication of learning teaching materials over and over again, Open education has progressed over the last two decades to encompass several different facets of openness, that relate to both open access and open licensing. One of the chief pedagogical innovations in this space has come with Open Pedagogy, which is primarily thought to transpire when the learner and facilitator take benefit of the “5 Rs” of openly licensed content (retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute) to expand and extend learning prospects in the classroom. Many academicians precisely describe open pedagogy as an approach to teaching in which learner links the academic discussions of a subject matter by forming course materials which can be shared with an open license. This means creating assignments &projects that are “renewable,” and have efficacy outside the classroom as well. These can range in content from individual writing assignments in Wikipedia to collaboratively written textbooks or open notebooks in Drives.
For some educationists, open pedagogy has a close relationship to diversity, equity, and inclusion, Other scholars have associated open pedagogy with academic learning-teaching approaches, like cooperative learning, experiential learning, and student-centered learning. Briefly, the set of pedagogical practices that comprise charming and engaging learners in content creation and making learning accessible is open pedagogy. Contingent to the source one refers to, open pedagogy might be a sequence of practices, a learning style, or a state of mind.
Open pedagogy is a way to assist learners in contributing to knowledge rather than simply consuming it. Considered a type of experiential learning, open pedagogy permits learners to learn through practice and experiment with their creativity and direction. There are many ways to encompass learners in the creation of knowledge. The facilitator must allow learners to conduct research and then correct or contribute to a Wikipedia page or any web portals like DIKSHA or encourage learners to create blogs or websites describing their learning and experiences or ask learners to learn about a topic and then create problems for other learners to solve. Facilitators must allow learners to annotate and discuss readings with each other and even those outside of the class visibly on the web and teachers must facilitate open chats with students, authors, and experts through Twitter (which is ‘X’ now). Some learners can even produce open, online textbooks that can be used by the larger education community.
Bringing Open pedagogy into practice, learners can create tutorial videos for a particular topic or assignment. These tutorial videos could cover a wide range of topics from ways of understanding to teaching specific skills, from summarizing key concepts to providing worked examples or creating connections to student lives. Learners can also explain how principles studied in class are typified in common media like movies, television, music, or books. Learners can create written voice or video-based presentations that précis key features of the storyline, character, interpretation, symbolism, etc. These summaries could be both used by and improved upon by future learners. Learners can make guides and references to direct other learners through readings or lectures. Learners can create worked examples that provide other students with step-by-step templates of how to solve problems or mathematical equations, precisely in topics that have proven upsetting, laborious or troublesome to previous learners. These are mostly prevalent in mathematics. Learners can create games to be played by future generations of learners to help them prepare for, or deepen their learning on, specific topics. Educators can use gamification and game-based learning as a tool in learning learning-teaching process.
Once created it can be shared on Open Educational Resource portals like Own Websites, Institutional Websites, and Open Educational Repositories like NROER, DIKSHA, e-Pathshala, Swayam Prabha, DTH Channels (Swayam Prabha, Kishor Manch, and Social Networks like Youtube Channel). Besides there are many paid and free open source OER repositories. These repositories are sources for hosting the OERs. There are also websites which allow online development of OERs called Build Online. It is possible to create educational resources in an online environment i.e., the content available at websites can be edited, added and modified online like connexions (http://cnx.org), wikieducator (http://wikieducator.org), Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org), etc. As one adds content, the websites themselves attach open licenses as per their copyright policy.
Open pedagogy (also Known as Open Educational Resource Pedagogy) is a high-impact exercise that empowers learners by providing them a prospect to be involved in knowledge creation through the use of renewable assignments or projects. As creators of information, a learner in these courses advances a greater comprehension of the rights and responsibilities related to information ownership so they can make conscious decisions about their intellectual property. Experts of open pedagogy embrace collaboration, learner action, and authentic audiences while identifying the transformations in honor and development that influence how learners’ equilibrium the profits of sharing and the essential for privacy. This open educational practice challenges traditional teaching protagonists and has the supremacy to transmute the educational experience for both facilitators and Learners.So, educators must understand how to develop open assignments in their classrooms and the attributes like Participatory Technologies, People, Openness, Trust, Innovation and creativity, Sharing Ideas & Resources, Connected Community, Learner Generated, Reflective Practiceand Peer Revieware about outspreading that current practice.
The outline of open education allows facilitators to be assessed or self-assessed on four domains that are Design, Content, Teaching, and Assessment with three layers of integration, individual, small group, and fully open collaboration. Educator’s growth is anticipated to ensue through two interim phases, awareness of and then transformation into an Open Educator. This Open Educator practices openness within four activities, one, how the course is designed, two, what content is used to facilitate learning, three, engaging students as co-creators of knowledge, and four, the way students are assessed.
Educators must become proficient in knowledge, skills and attitudes, to implement open educational practices. The dominant attitude noted is, to be ready to openly share one’s work, to use the knowledge created by others, to improve access, participation, and quality of teaching and learning.
There are a few barriers to bringing open pedagogy into practice, for example, Inaccessible materials could be due to the cost or even the format, time-consuming and change or removal of electronic resources and Teachers can find it devastating to reorder their entire class structure just to implement open assignments.
Disdain these blockades, a commitment to open pedagogy is an important aid to students’ success and educators’ sanity. The growing open pedagogy community means that more and more open materials are available, and no one has to start from nothing. Besides learners can respond well to open assignments. They appreciate the real-world application and the ability to participate in the larger academic conversation. Open assignments add value to the world and students’ academic development. Open Pedagogy increases student retention and improves student performance by reducing costs. It endorses academic freedom to modify or add content to your course.
Open Pedagogy refers to collaborative teaching and cooperative learning practices that help educators to advance a culture of sharing and active learning through Open Educational Resource.
Developing “openness” can be challenging but is necessary, especially in education for example, educators may be uncomfortable sharing their work or inviting peer review in open platforms. Openness refers to how open-minded one is to new ideas or experiences.
Research has connected this trait with creativity and intelligence. So Open Pedagogy does require open-mindedness, a change in mindset to develop openness and work in a specific way; however, most educators already collaborate and share, not just content but to communities, not just assignments but Learner-Driven Education, not just textbooks but access and not just preparation but public contexts.
The author is a senior lecturer in School Education Department