Open Pedagogy

Open pedagogy is a broad approach to creating assignments and building a curriculum, which means it can easily mold itself to HSU's institutional learning outcomes. Below are the learning outcomes as well as how open pedagogy can help meet those standards.

In the course of achieving competence in a major area of study, HSU students will acquire intellectual skills and knowledge of cultures, history, and the physical and natural world that will prepare them for fulfilling careers, for thoughtful and civic participation in democratic society, and to work for sustainable, just societies.

Specifically, the HSU curriculum ensures that all graduating students will achieve competence in the seven areas of concentration and assessment described below:

1.  Equity and Social Justice – HSU graduates will be able to identify and evaluate the systems of power and privilege and identify methods for creating diverse, inclusive, and racially just and equitable communities.
One of the core principles that open pedagogy is committed to is providing equitable access to education. Opening up a conversation with your students about open pedagogy, the ethics of open access materials, and/or the students' new roles as authorities on the information they choose to share and publish online creates room for students to establish boundaries and build up their self-efficacy as contributors of information. This allows students to interrogate their relationship with power both as students and as knowledge-makers.

2.  Sustainability and Environmental Awareness – HSU graduates will be able to explain how the functions of the natural world, society, and the economy depend on the resilience, sustainability, and conservation of ecological systems.
Open pedagogy typically means working to create knowledge that will be shared with the world, thus creating equitable access to information. Open pedagogy practices often involve tackling real world problems, which include information equity, social justice, or sustainability issues. Here are a list of student projects related to UNESCO sustainability goals.

3.  Information Literacy – HSU graduates will be able to locate, evaluate, and employ information effectively and ethically for a wide range of purposes.
Open pedagogy and information equity go hand in hand. Having your students contribute to an OER textbook or to Wikipedia means sharing the information they learn in class with the wider world at large. It also requires students to parse through repositories of information in order to find key information that may be lacking in order to fill those gaps.

4.  Critical Thinking – HSU graduates will be able to critically evaluate issues, ideas, artifacts, and evidence to guide their thinking.
Successful implementation of open pedagogy's practices means that students are given more autonomy and become in charge of their own learning. They enter the conversation as creators of scholarly material and are thus expected to approach their topics with the rigor expected of that shift in dynamics. Likewise, joining this scholarly conversation also means more meta discussions of those new roles as creators of knowledge.

5.  Written Communication – HSU graduates will be able to develop and express ideas effectively in writing.
There are all sorts of different kinds of projects that can be assigned to meet these requirements. Most Open Pedagogy assignments involve written communication whether it be contributing to a Wiki like Appropedia or creating an OER textbook for future classes to use.

6.  Oral Communication – HSU graduates will be able to effectively communicate orally for informational, persuasive, and expressive purposes.
 Open pedagogy is by its nature a collaborative endeavor that involves larger in-class discussions with the potential for group work as well. Many open pedagogy projects can also more explicitly entail oral communication as well like by having students create podcasts or by giving the project a public speaking element.

7.  Quantitative Reasoning – HSU graduates will be able to apply math concepts and skills to the interpretation and analysis of quantitative information in context.
Open pedagogy can be used to engage math problems as they pertain to real-world issues. Sustainability issues, for example, can be used as a way to frame math problems to solve real issues. Real world projects like this heighten student engagement and demonstrate the critical importance of quantitative reasoning to address world problems.

Below are Humboldt State's six pillars of inclusive excellence developed by The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and how open pedagogy is able to work with and for those goals.

1. A Safe and Welcome Community – Nurture a welcoming and collaborative community that affirms diversity, enhances the well-being and self-actualization of all members, and engages in sustained and transformational courageous conversations around climate, equity, and diversity issues. Enact policies and practices that ensure safety and belonging for all members of the campus community.
Open pedagogy allows students to take charge of their learning. It gives them a platform to develop their voices while strengthening their sense of community. Open pedagogy projects let students' voices be heard in a way that feels genuine and meaningful.

2. Equitable Outcomes – Assess equity of access and outcomes across all constituencies and across diverse backgrounds, with particular focus on minoritized populations; develop intentional pathways to broaden the diversity of the student body, as well as, that of faculty, staff and administrators; develop and implement campus-wide strategies to retain students and employees from minoritized groups.        
Open pedagogy often goes hand in hand with open education resources (OER) which are textbooks and other materials published with an open license for free online. Many open pedagogy projects involve the creation of OER textbooks. This not only means providing free material for future classes and students. It also means that any and all students are allowed to help shape what gets taught. Each voice gets a say in how they wish to contribute to the wider learning communities that they become a part of.

3. Strategic Partnerships – Broaden transdisciplinary collaboration and community partnerships across diverse sectors, thus positioning the institution to co-lead in search of solutions to enduring systemic challenges locally, nationally, and globally.
Many open pedagogy projects involve working alongside librarians as well as with and for community members in a broader sense.

4. Development of Intercultural Humility – Collaborate in leading sustained culturally responsive curricular and co-curricular programming, learning opportunities, intergroup dialogue, and community service, which build capacities for effective cross-cultural communication and mutually affirming interpersonal relationships and cultivate cultural humility.  Support the understanding of our positionalities to increase our agency to transform systems for social justice.          
Open pedagogy is built from the ground up to bring more power to the students and to allow students to enter into conversations about their learning and the systems which with they find themselves in. Students are actively encouraged to determine how their work is distributed as well as to interrogate their role in the processes of meaning-making.

5. Organizational Resources – Facilitate the coherent implementation of institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic goals, leverage existing resources and create new ones to support the development and implementation of inclusive excellence policies and practices that transform systems, elevate student success, and advance racial equity and social justice.
The development of open pedagogy projects means creating new student-centered resources by students for both other students and the larger learning community. These projects may also involve reassessing and reevaluating course and syllabus design to better support the students.

6. Collaborative Leadership and Shared Accountability – Establish a university culture that affirms shared responsibilities, human interdependence, and unity in diversity, cultivate a collective commitment to challenging oppressive power structures, elevate institutional inclusive-excellence planning and accountability across all levels, units and sectors.
At the heart of open pedagogy is a commitment to students that lets them take leadership roles in their own learning and that allows them to work together to create meaningful projects that reinforce their roles as scholars and makers of meaning working alongside a larger community of learner-scholars. This gives them the opportunity to challenge unjust power structures as equals/creators/members of a community.