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The OPEN Movements

The basics of the 'Open' philosophy and its varied sub-movements. Plus, relevent resources from the Whittemore Library.

Open Pedagogy is...

...a pedagogical technique which requires openly-licensed 'open educational resources (OER )'.

OER is any form of educational material (text, video, audio, images, units, entire course, question sets, exam questions, etc.) designed for teaching, learning and research, that is

  • available online
  • no cost
  • openly-licensed with one of four Creative Commons open licenses or in the public domain (no longer protected by copyright law)

...only possible due to OER's open licenses that allow the creation of new resources

Licenses are legal tools that allow a copyright owner to give someone else permission to make use of one or more of their copyrights (since copyright is actually a temporary 'bundle' of several rights). Most copyright owners charge fees for these licenses.

Open licenses are a specific kind of license with which a copyright owner can label their works which are available on the internet. These open licenses announce that the copyright owner is giving the public permission up front (without having to ask, or pay any money) to use their work in specific ways.

The open licenses used for OER were created by the Creative Commons non-profit organization:

CC BY
  • This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.
CC BY-SA
  • This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.
CC BY-NC
  • This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
CC BY-NC-SA
  • This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

The list of CC licenses above is modified from the About CC Licenses page of the Creative Commons website,  which (except where otherwise noted) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Worth Learning More About

An Open Education Reader (OA Book)

A collection of readings on open education with commentary.

Open Pedagogy Notebook (Website)

A collaborative website where interesting and promising work, which will be helpful to both advocates of Open and those who are new to these ideas, will be gathered.

What is Open Pedagogy? (Blog Post)

Blog article written by David Wiley, CAO of Lumen Learning.

Open Pedagogy Approaches (E-Book)

This text was itself created via open pedagogy methods; includes a section on OER.

A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students (OA Book)

A handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other Open Educational Resources.

Towards a Working Definition of Open Pedagogy (Journal Article)

Journal article which "analyzes recent literature on or using the term “open pedagogy” in order to distill a working definition."

UN Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellowship

Within this resource, readers will find examples of a wide variety of openly-licensed renewable assignments that can be assigned and applied to a variety of subject areas and disciplines.