Transitioning to Open Pedagogy in First-Year Experience Classes

This presentation describes one university’s move from disposable assignments in first-year experience courses to a resource created and curated by students. Students design projects from essays to short films addressing issues they face when entering the university, or in their first semester on campus. In order to prevent cognitive overload, the project was broken into three parts. In doing so, students engaged in the attributes of Open Pedagogy that Hegarty (2015) outlined, including peer-to-peer learning/peer-review, learner-generated content, and reflective practice. Projects are published under open licensing and form a solid foundation for future classes while eliminating the need for commercially-produced materials. This also allows students to be at the forefront of current information in their chosen topic, as students work on and update existing OERs (Wiley, Webb, Weston, & Tonks, 2017).
The inaugural run of this project was introduced in conjunction with research assessing students’ engagement in the course and faculty perception of the impact of Open Pedagogy on the teaching-learning dynamic. Presenters will share data from research on Open Pedagogy and its impact on student engagement and motivation.