This year, students at USask will save about $1.95 million. While our provincial government, administration, and students focus mostly on student savings (it helps when tuition and housing costs continue to rise), open isn’t just about cost savings or even access.

For an open pedagogy project, students in our College of Pharmacy and Nutrition created brochures for community organizations to provide valuable nutrition information for those who may not have access.

Students in Women and Gender Studies have been working on an open pedagogy project. They are building a website where members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community can find information about various supports for them throughout Saskatoon.

Our Faculty Fellowship focused on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) also included teaching those faculty members about OER and other open educational practices and how to use them to integrate the SDGs into their courses. This was an easy match since the use of OER aligns with several of the SDGs. Our Faculty Fellowship focusing on EDI and Indigenization is now doing the same.

Yes, all of this work helps to save students money (more than $9 million overall at USask), but it also increases their engagement through experiential learning and by making strides to improve students’ sense of belonging.

When OER is used to increase the representation of learners from traditionally marginalized groups, students are more likely to feel like they belong. When OER is used to integrate Indigenous ways of knowing, we improve the chances that Indigenous students and instructors feel like they can learn and work there, and we take needed steps toward reconciliation.

When OER or open pedagogy are used to help learners feel like they can address some of the challeges the world is facing, particularly climate change, which is one of, if not the top, concern learners have these days, they are more engaged.

USask has a lot to celebrate in what I’m unofficially calling the USask Year of Open, and I’m excited, but I’m also troubled by what I’m seeing from many in the open community.

David Wiley, who for a long time, too long was looked at as the Dean of OER, is giving a talk at the University of Regina next month titled: Why Open Education will Become Generative AI Education. The description reads:

For over 25 years, the primary goal of the open education movement has been increasing access to educational opportunities. And from the beginning of the movement the primary tactic for accomplishing this goal has been creating and sharing OER. However, using generative AI is a demonstrably more powerful and effective way to increase access to educational opportunity. Consequently, if we are to remain true to our overall goal, we must begin shifting our focus from OER to generative AI.

This is in addition to the large number of sessions on the schedule for OpenEd 2024 in which presenters will discuss using GenAI to create OER.

Everything I’ve learned about open, everything I’ve ever believed about what the OER movement stands for is the antithesis of what GenAI is and does.

Open is about improving access to education and the lives of learners worldwide, not just for those in privileged countries or communities. GenAI is used to create papers and images for the privileged, harming many of the very people we’ve said open is trying to benefit.

While open aligns with several of the SDGs, GenAI is an environmental nightmare, from the energy needed to run the growing number of servers to the immense amount of freshwater needed to cool them (by the way, the same is true for cryptocurrency).

While open is being used to integrate EDI and Indigenization into curriculum, GenAI, programmed by those of dominant groups, often fails to represent or misrepresents members of marginalized communities. Maha Bali noted in her recent keynote at The Digital Pedagogy Institute that she had asked several GenAI tools to give her examples of terrorist attacks. Almost every single example gave Muslims as the perpetrators.

While open has always called for recognition of the work’s creators and contributors and gratitude for their willingness to share it openly, any such gratitude toward GenAI-created work that was taught on copyrighted works against the copyright holder’s permission will ring hollow.

Taking what isn’t yours to create something new without giving credit, having permission, or considering the impact on others isn’t innovation or acting in the spirit of open. At the least it’s theft, at the worst, It’s colonization.

During my comprehensive exam, a committee member asked me what the difference between OER and Napster was. At the time, that was easy to answer. Most OER was created by authors who willingly released their work with an open license. Napster was the sharing of music without the artist’s permission. If I were asked that question now, it would be a lot harder to answer.

How can something be the future of a moment that has held such promise for bringing positive change to the world, that will instead hasten the advancement of climate change, further disenfranchise the already disenfranchised, and allow us to simply force creators to give up their rights while saying to them, “it’s not really your’s anymore because a machine changed it?”

GenAI may be fun to play with and make some tasks easier, but the cost to the values of open, the planet, marginalized groups, and humanity as a whole are far too great. Those who truly care about the principles of open, the soul of open, need to speak up and say, “no, you don’t get to wash over or destroy the work we’ve done and the great work still to come within the open movement.” If those encouraging the use of GenAI for open or for GenAI to replace open want to play a new game, that’s fine. We can’t stop you, but get off our field.

This coming academic year, more than 10,000 students here at USask will benefit from the use of OER and open pedagogy. It all started with that poster.

Yesterday, I posted a picture on Twitter of a new poster we developed here at the GMCTL to promote OER and open pedagogy. Almost immediately, Cable Green (long a leader in the open movement) responded.

Oh – that's really good! Could you please share the editable file so others can remix this for their institutions? I'd love a copy too.

— Cable Green (@cgreen) August 8, 2022

There were other tweets with this request so here are the files (CC-BY-NC license):

• PDF
• Adobe Illustrator

1. Reuse
2. Revise
3. Remix
4. Redistribute
5. Retain

We’re also familiar with the inability for us to come to an agreed upon definition for open pedagogy.

• Do we have to start the work by using existing open materials?
• Does the work the students produce have to be shared openly and with a Creative Commons license?
• Is there a particular way it needs to be assessed?

While reading a journal article recently I realized that I don’t have a clear definition of open pedagogy that I can point to for myself. The more I thought about it, I realized that while I don’t have a definition, I do have some pretty clear thoughts on the components of it.
I jotted down five words in the margin as I read the article:

1. Aligned
2. Authentic
3. Achievable
4. Accessible
5. Agency

My explanations below are initial thoughts and not comprehensive, so please don’t bite my head off if I’ve missed something.

Aligned

I’m an educational developer and as such spend a lot of time talking with instructors about learning outcomes / competencies, assessments, and teaching strategies and whether they all align in the design and delivery of their courses. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of constructive alignment, here’s a simple video about it from our teaching and learning centre.

An open pedagogy activity should fit in the alignment of the course. Are you using it for assessment? What is it the students need to demonstrate? Does it align with the learning outcomes or competencies in the course (whether those are outcomes you wrote or the student indicated they’re trying to meet)? If not, that’s not good pedagogy so shouldn’t count as open pedagogy.

Authentic

Will the activity allow students to experience using what they’re learning in a way they would do beyond the class? Open pedagogy provides great opportunities for learners to apply the knowledge and skills in the course, but only if they could use it that way beyond an assessment in school. This is something that a multiple choice exam can’t do, but a well designed open pedagogy activity certainly can.

Achievable

Can the students in the class complete the activity? Do they have the foundation for doing it? Do they have enough time? Do they have access to any needed supports, materials or technologies?

Accessible

This builds on Achievable. Are the materials needed for this activity accessible to all students regardless of economic status, ability, gender, or cultural background? Commercial textbooks that work with screen readers aren’t accessible if students can’t afford them or only presents the history or point-of-view of one group of people. Open resources that are free aren’t accessible if they don’t work with screen readers, or students don’t have reliable Internet, or again only presents the history or point-of-view of one group of people.

Agency

Do students have any choice in the topic? Do they get to contribute ideas from their background, particularly if such ideas have traditionally been left out of learning resources (see Accessible)? Do they have a say as to what Creative Commons license they want to apply to their work or even if they want to release their work openly?

As a result of all of this work, the U of S has saved students more than $1.8 million since the 2014-2015 academic year, produced several new and adaptations of open textbooks and ancillary resources, and interest in open pedagogy continues to grow. With all of this in mind (plus the 47 percent increase in the number of students using OER instead of commercial textbooks since this year compared to last), I realized that it was time to create a brand new strategic plan because, frankly, we’d exceeded our wildest expectations, plus we have a new Learning Charter.

While nothing about open is directly mentioned in the Learning Charter, I realized that OER and open pedagogy enable much of the commitments the university makes within in. I’ve been drafting a new broad plan for open at the U of S, tying the components within it to specific commitments in the Learning Charter.

I started by going through the Learning Charter and writing on the white board in my office the commitments I thought linked well to open. I then invited Wendy James, our Manager of Professional and Curriculum Development (my boss) and Stryker Calvez, the Manager of Indigenous Education Initiatives to come to my office separately (it’s not a big space) and I talked through the connections that I saw. They agreed with what I was saying, gave me some initial advice and I went to work on the plan.

I built it in a Google Doc with the intention of, once Wendy gave me the go ahead, to share it openly to get feedback from throughout the open community.

You can leave comments within the document, on this blog post, or in-person if you’re going to be at OpenEd in Phoenix next week.

Image courtesy of Tracy Roberts under a CC-BY license.

There’s something kicking around in my head right now and I often find that it helps to write it out, thus this blog post.

I’m working on a few open pedagogy related projects right now, while simultaneously working with an amazing educational developer in our office whose expertise is Indigenization and decolonization. I’m learning a lot from her as we collaborate on a short course we’re developing for instructors on handling difficult conversations with students, whether in class or one-on-one. We’re emphasizing the need to create a safe-space where those difficult conversations can happen and all students feel like they can safely contribute.

This has me thinking about how we can create such safe spaces for students to engage in open pedagogy. We’re asking them to put themselves out there, which for some might be terrifying.

In the book A Guide to Making Open Textbooks With Students, Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani ask instructors to consider whether students who may be undocumented can safely take part in an open pedagogy project if it requires them using online tools that may collect information about them. This is a legitimate concern, but I think we need to be thinking more broadly and deeper about whether all of our students feel like they can contribute.

Our institution is trying to move forward with Indigenizing and decolonizing curriculum and teaching methods, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how open pedagogy aligns with some of that work. Ideally open pedagogy invites in many voices to gain many perspectives, but what if some of those voice, the ones who historically have not been heard, and especially not in higher education, don’t feel like they can speak, or try to speak and are shut down by fellow learners or the instructor?

Indigenous students are very often less likely to speak up in class, to ask questions, or seek help from an instructor. They have been taught, either through their own prior educational experience or their parents or other family members experiences in residential schools that they are not allowed to speak up or ask for help. How do we ask them now to not only speak up, but to openly share their knowledge and experiences, keeping in mind that for many Indigenous peoples knowledge must be earned?

How do we create a safe space so that our female students feel comfortable contributing to Wikipedia when so few women’s voices are heard there?

How do we create a safe space so that students for whom English (or whatever language is spoken in class) is not their first language and we’re asking them to contribute in a written form?

How do we create a safe space for the refugee who fears that what they post online may endanger for their family still residing in war-torn countries?

How do we create a safe space for the woman fleeing an abusive relationship?

Open pedagogy opens so many doors to improved engagement, learning, access, and the sharing of many perspectives, but what are we doing to make sure that all of our students feel like they can walk through those doors?

This article initially caught my eye because I’m co-leading the development of a information digital literacy initiative here at the U of S, and I was wondering if I might find some ideas to consider related to this topic and both international and indigenous students coming to the university. I don’t know if it’s that I set out looking for these connections that resulted in what stood out for me in the article, but here are the questions and comments that I jotted down through reading the article:

Radicalization

The author states (page 8) “… our argument here is that indigenous critical digital literacy would be a key component in the response to Internet radicalization but only within a comprehensive digital literacy curriculum embracing skills, culture, ethics and learning.” While the section right before this in the article talks about the use of the internet by groups such as Isis to recruit and spread fear. My note in the column was, “What does this ‘comprehensive digital literacy curriculum’ look like if the radicalization we’re trying to counteract is from white supremacy groups in North America and Europe?

Language

On page 9, the author says, “Users of speech recognition and dictation software, for example Siri or Dragon Naturally Speaking, find a linguistic bias since some non-standard dialects of English are rendered more accurately than others and most other languages are not rendered at all?” My first question was is this true? Do these tools really not work for Spanish or French or German? My next question was, is there a viable way that indigenous languages including Cree, could eventually be included?

Teacher Shortages, Technology, and a Lack of Access

The author goes on to note (page 11) that UNESCO has recognized that Palestinians face a significant and ongoing teacher shortage, something that is also true in many indigenous communities (and a growing number of non-indigenous communities) in North America. Furthermore, he adds “the state of infrastructure” as a barrier to access to technology, something that is also a problem for North American Indigenous communities (one computer in the administration / band office, is not the same as having a computer lab in a school). The reasons for these challenges might not be the exactly the same in all areas, but the results lead to a decrease in access to quality education.

Culture and Homogeneity

Finally, and this is key, the conclusion of the paper summarizes that “This paper outlines the ambitions and objective encapsulated in the ideas of digital literacy and critiques any implicit assumptions that the digital environment is global, homogeneous, neutral or benign.” (page 17). This is similar to the conversations that have been happening around OER as well. I don’t have the answers on how to address  all of these issues in relation to either information digital literacy or OER, but we all need to be talking a lot more about these issues how they relate to learners.

I’m again offering a workshop on open pedagogy, but I wanted to do some significant revisions to what I did last time. A few weeks ago Christina Hendricks from the University of British Columbia shared her slides and handout from a workshop she gave on Open Pedagogy and Open Educational Practices, all of course CC-BY licensed. Yesterday I went to work trying to integrate her slides and handout into my existing slides, and sprinkled in some new ideas for activities.

I’ve uploaded my revised slides and the handouts to get any feedback that anyone wishes to provide, and to of course share the new resources, all CC-BY licensed.

• Slides
• Handouts

This year, however, the host University of Saskatchewan asked the other institutions if we could make a change to make the TLT stand for Teaching and Learing Today, to which they agreed. Presenters are coming from at least ten institutions in five provinces. The theme for this year is laid out in this brief summary on the conference website:

Are you interested in building, driving, and supporting indigenization and open pedagogy? During our two-day conference, professionals from across Canada will come together to tackle two of the most important paradigm shifts in Canadian higher education—indigenizing and opening academia.

When I mentioned this conference to Cable Green he suggested that I write a post highlighting what’s happening at the conference related to open, so here you are:

The keynote speaker for TLT is Kory Wilson, the Executive Director of Indigenous Initiatives and Partnerships for British Columbia Institute of Technology. We invited Kory to be the keynote after seeing her keynote at the Open Textbook Summit in Vancouver last year where she spoke about brining Indigenization and OER together.

Mary Burgess, the Director of BCcampus and David Porter, the CEO of eCampus Ontario will be party of a round-table discussion (along with lucky me) with Kory Wilson, cultural advisor Maria Campbell, and educational developer (Indigenization) Rose Roberts about how we can bring Indigenization and OER / open pedagogy together to improve pedagogy, support champions, and push for real change in higher education in Canada.

Concurrent sessions related to open include:

Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge and Open Pedagogy into a New Chemistry of Food and Cooking Course for Non-Science Majors

Presented by: Stephen Cheng (University of Regina) and Vincent Ziffle (First Nations University)

A Chemistry of Food and Cooking course is being developed for Fall 2018. The course applies basic mathematics, fundamental chemistry, and comprehension of biochemistry to food and cooking. Students will perform experiments to understand chemistry using food and cooking followed by making real food using proven recipes. The course will explore food preparation by Indigenous people allowing students to expand the scope of chemistry and food. Open pedagogy will also be used to engage students to collaboratively create new free-access recipes.

Invisible Paywalls: Recognizing Information Privilege in Academia

Presented by: Diane (DeDe) Dawson (University of Saskatchewan)

Academic libraries work hard to make access to online journals as seamless as possible for their campus communities. So much so that students (and some faculty) are typically unaware that paywalls to this content exist for those outside of academia – and those at less wealthy institutions. Open Access to the scholarly literature has the potential to democratize access to information, and include marginalized groups in the conversation. But first we need to recognize our information privilege.

Best Practices in Licensing and Attributing Open Works

Presented by: Karla Panchuk and Joyce McBeth (University of Saskatchewan)

Best practices in licensing works for open use should consider both practical and ethical issues. Practically, Creative Commons licenses (e.g. CC-BY) are unambiguous, but other considerations are flexibility of use and whether the license on derivative works is consistent with restrictions on the use of component materials. Ethical considerations should include the impact of license permissions on people or groups who share personally or culturally sensitive materials or a body of work.

Building a Collective to Create Open Educational Resources in Indigenous Studies

Presented by: Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation)

The Rebus Community is building a collaborative approach to publishing open textbooks. What would a cross-Canada initiative to create open resources in Indigenous Studies look like? This session, presented by Rebus co-founder Hugh McGuire, will give an overview of how the Rebus Community has approached open textbook creation to date, and solicit input and feedback from the audience on ideas for approaching creation of open textbooks on Indigenous Studies.

Teacher Education Without Textbooks

Presented by: Jay Wilson (University of Saskatchewan)

The session will benefit instructors in post-secondary who are looking for ways to not only replace or update existing resources but to engage their learners in the creation of material to further their learning. This session discusses efforts made in a number of teacher education courses to use online course tools to replace traditional textbooks. The work addresses the implementation of a mix of current resources, student questions, and a range of delivery tools such as blogs and wikis.

Overcoming Barriers to the Growth of Innovative Teaching Practices

Presented by: Heather M. Ross (University of Saskatchewan)

The use of open educational resources (OER) and the integration of open pedagogy have grown considerably at the University of Saskatchewan since 2014. There is strong interest among instructors to engage in open practices, but barriers are hindering a “tipping point”. This session will explore those barriers as well as how higher education might address them to not only support the growth of OER and open pedagogy, but also the integration of other innovative practices in teaching and learning.

In addition, while not yet listed on the website, the following workshop will be part of the sessions on the second day:

This workshop will give participants the opportunity to learn from and add to the discussions about key considerations for using open licensing when working with indigenous knowledge. Among the questions that will be pondered are:

– What constitutes general knowledge and what constitutes sacred knowledge?
– How do you openly license something that belongs to a community?
– How can open licensing potentially help Indigenous communities regain access and some control over Indigenous knowledge now under copyright by universities.

The conversation will be facilitated by:
Mary Burgess – Executive Director at BCcampus
Maria Campbell – Cultural Advisor
Rose Roberts – Educational Development Specialist (Indigenous Engagement and Education) at the University of Saskatchewan
Heather M. Ross – Educational Development Specialist (Digital Pedagogies) at the University of Saskatchewan

Participants should leave with some guidelines to take back to their institutions for approaching the use of OER when working with Indigenous knowledge and Indigenization initiatives.

If you haven’t already done so, you can register here. Also, please share this information with others you think may be interested.

We’ve put a lot of brain power and into this and something seems to be taking shape, but we’d appreciate any thoughts or suggestions for resources for this. Keep in mind that any resources would need to either be a link to something accessible to anyone without needing to login or openly licensed so we can modify it to meet our local needs.

Here’s where we’re at.

The home page of the website would include our currently planned tagline – “Are you information savvy?” and a video introduction to the site. Below that would be links to 6 sub areas – one on each of the 6 components of digital literacy:

1. Searchers
2. Consumers
3. Curators
4. Creators
5. Collaborators
6. Communicators

Each of those sub pages would include:

• A heading related to that page, but playing off the tagline (e.g. “Are you search savvy?)
• A definition of what that means
• A self-check so they can see if they’re as savvy as they think?
• A video exploring that topic
• An activity related to the page topic

For each topic there would also be a section of the site for instructors with ideas for integrating the components into courses (with an emphasis on integration instead of along side.

Throughout the site would also be links to getting support through various department at the university for both students and instructors related to the six components (e.g. searching the University Library website to find learning materials, requesting a blog for a course, etc.).

So that’s where we’re at. Thoughts?

Both of these resources are openly licensed, but I’m sorry I only have a PDF version of the handout right now. We’re working on a Word version, but are struggling with some of the formatting.

Introduction to Open for Students (Slides)

For Students: What Does Open Mean for Students? (Handout)