Open Education Group

OER-Enabled Pedagogy is the set of teaching and learning practices only practical in the context of the 5R permissions characteristic of open educational resources. Some people – but not all – use the terms “open pedagogy” or “open educational practices” synonymously.

The purpose of this page is to provide a list of concrete examples of how OER-enabled pedagogy, is implemented in the real world. (We appreciate earlier efforts to collect examples like this one by BC Campus). We’ve kept our descriptions brief and, where possible, linked directly to the artifacts students have created or to articles that provide more information on what they did. Please send additional examples to David Wiley and we will add them to this list with a credit.

Please see this article for further thoughts on a definition of OER-enabled pedagogy.

Virginia Clinton-Lisell wrote a systematic review of research evidence on open/OER-enabled pedagogy and developed this Faculty Guide to Open Pedagogy with suggestions and ideas for implementing open/OER-enabled pedagogy.

For guidance on copyright, see this Code for Best Practices by former OER research fellow Will Cross.

Examples from the Real World

Students write or edit Wikipedia articles

• Murder, Madness & Mayhem assigned students to edit (and if necessary create) Wikipedia articles about lesser known Latin American authors.
• Azzam assigned fourth-year medical students to edit and improve Wikipedia articles related to public health topics.
• See additional Wikipedia-based assignments here and here. Also, see this report that 6% of edits to science articles in on Wikipedia in April 2016 were made by students.

Students remix audiovisual materials to both entertain and inform

• Blogs and Wikis combines existing video with new audio to describe the difference between blogs and wikis.
• Rick Noblenski: Blasting Caps Expert and Wiki Advocate combines existing video with new audio to advocate for the use of wikis in the teaching.
• District Policies Regarding Blogs and Wikis combines existing video with new audio to warn teachers about how their desire to use social media may run afoul of school district policies.

Students create or revise/remix entire textbooks

• The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature was created by Robin DeRosa and her students.
• Project Management for Instructional Designerswas created by David Wiley and his students as an adaptation of an existing open textbook written for a different audience.

Students openly license supplemental materials they create for each other

• Teachers at Mountain Heights Academy encourage students to create openly licensed study guides, review games, tutorial videos, and other materials which they review and integrate into their courses.

Students create test banks

• Jhangiani describes a Social Psychology course in which 35 students created over 1400 test questions for a quiz bank.

Students create their own assignments

• DS106 has students create (or remix) and share assignments, together with worked examples, difficulty ratings, and tutorials for how to successfully complete the assignment.

Additional Ideas

Here are some other ideas for engaging in open pedagogy that we haven’t yet seen in the real world. If you’ve seen them, let us know.

Students create tutorial videos

• Students can create tutorial videos for a particular topic or assignment. These tutorial videos could cover a wide range of topics such as teaching specific skills, summarizing key concepts, providing worked examples, or creating connections to student lives.

Students create summaries

• Students can create written or video-based presentations that summarize key aspects of the storyline, character, interpretation, symbolism, etc. These summaries could be both used by and improved upon by future generations of learners.

Students create worked examples

• Students can create worked examples that provide other students with step-by-step templates of how to do problems (these are particularly popular in math), like this one, specifically in topics that have proven troublesome to students in past semesters.

Students connect principles with popular culture

• Students can explain how principles studied in class are exemplified in popular media like movies, television, music, or books.

Students create games

• Students can create games to be played by future generations of learners to help them prepare for, or deepen their learning on, specific topics.

Students create guided notes

• Students createguides to direct other students through readings or lecture.