OPEN – 9200
I am now in Week 4 of the second course of KPU’s Professional Program in Open Education. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend it.
In this second course, we have been exploring concepts around OER & associated pedagogies. I have been involved in OER work since about 2018. Although many of the open practices have been part of my personal teaching pedagogy for many years. I did not think about them as OPEN. Still, definitions that are challenging for me to describe to others are the differences between Open Educational Practices and Open Educational Pedagogy.
Cronin (2019) posits that Open depends on the context and is continually negotiated. DeRosa and Jhangiani (2018) describe open pedagogy as a point where multiple educational, technology, and social justice theories come together to inform praxis and are negotiated and constantly in revision. In a simple definition with layers of complexity, I am leaning towards describing Open Educational Pedagogies as a group of pedagogies that combine to underpin the principles of Open Educational Practices. This is congruent with my experience of unknowingly using Open Educational Practices in my teaching pedagogy before I came to think about OPEN as its own discipline.
The assignment that I am sharing today is the accumulation of two projects. I like how it was scaffolded with the first project asking us to think about future aspirations for a future OER project, an annotated bibliography, and a connection to social justice, racial equity or cultural relevance. The annotated bibliography was helpful and, moving forward, something I will do for all my writing projects. Describing the license for each reference solidified my understanding of the creative commons licenses and how I could utilize them in Assignment 4.3: Assessment: Open Pedagogy Plan.
Assignment 4.3 Assessment: Open Pedagogy Plan
This assignment is a plan for a renewable assignment specifically for: Voices from the Community: Enhancing Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators OER project in development. However, the instructions could be repurposed and utilized for other disciplines beyond Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators. Please see below the renewable assignment opportunity. I welcome your comments and feedback.
Renewable Assignment Opportunity: Voices from the Community: Enhancing Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators.
Introduction
In February 2022, Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators Digital Textbook and companion Game Simulations were published. The projects were made possible with funding from the Government of Ontario and through eCampus Ontario’s support of the Virtual Learning Strategy. A new companion resource project is in development, and you may be interested in contributing.
This project is an opportunity to expand upon the Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators collection by inviting educators and learners to share what they would find helpful (when communicating with Health Care Administrators) based on their experiences, cultural expectations, and differing abilities. Health Care Administrators are often the first person that people seeking health care communicate with. That initial communication can influence the success of people seeking health care will have their needs met (Carter, Rutherford, Stevens, 2020).
The Invitation
We invite educators preparing learners for roles as Health Care Administrators to incorporate this project opportunity as a renewable assignment in their classes. A renewable assignment is an assignment, activity, or task where learners are invited to license and share their work in the open (Katz & Van Allen, n.d.). This differs from disposable assignments, where an assignment is submitted, graded, and rarely shared (Wiley, 2013).
Learners must understand Creative Commons’ licensing options and have the choice to not share publicly or openly license their assignment without peer pressure and with no fear of it impacting their grades. Cronin (2019) posits that open is complex; by providing choices when people will share their work, we nurture digital literacy as people consider the implications of sharing their work for themselves. Katz & Van Allen (n.d.) suggests a class discussion with learners about open sharing with options for sharing or not. We recommend inviting your institution’s copy-right and creative commons library specialist(s) to discuss licensing options and answer questions.
The Goals of the Project:
- Create opportunities for learners to have their lived experiences validated, learn from other learners, and then apply what they have learned in the context of their role as Health Care Administrators.
- Provide opportunities to hear from more voices with greater representation than was possible in the first publishing of Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators.
- Maintain a dynamic resource utilizing the Pressbooks Publishing platform where contributions are updated regularly, and that resource becomes part of the Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators collection.
The Value Proposition:
This renewable assessment opportunity is one example of integrating open educational practices with social justice principles. Utilizing Lambert’s (2018) comparison chart, we propose that this project is a form of redistributive justice providing a free resource to those that need one, recognitive justice because it will include diverse experiences, and representational justice as the project will facilitate equal opportunities for sharing and validating experiences for those that may not otherwise have opportunities to do so. These principles align with the importance of enhancing therapeutic communication for health care administrators because people seeking health care are from the same diverse populations as learners and educators.
Project Resources:
To learn more about the project and how you and your learners can participate, please reach out to Kim Carter through email: kcarter@conestogac.on.ca
References
Carter, K., Rutherford, M., & Stevens, C. (2022) Welcome. Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/therapeuticcommunicationforhealthofficeadministrators/front-matter/introduction/
Cronin. C. (2019). Open education: Walking a critical path. In D. Conrad, & P. Prinsloo (Eds.), Open(ing) Education: Theory and Practice. Leiden: Brill.
DeRosa, R., & Jhangiani, R. (2018). Open pedagogy. In Open pedagogy notebook (CC BY 4.0). http://openpedagogy.org/open-pedagogy/
Katz, S., & Van Allen, J. (n.d.) Evolving into the Open: A Framework for Collaborative Design of Renewable Assignments. Open Pedagogy Approaches. Retrieved from Evolving Into the Open: A Framework for Collaborative Design of Renewable Assignments – Open Pedagogy Approaches (geneseo.edu)
Lambert, S. R. (2018). Lambert, S. R. (2018). Changing our (Dis)Course: A Distinctive Social Justice Aligned Definition of Open Education. Journal of Learning for Development, 5(3), 225-244.https://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/290/334
Wiley, D (2013) What is Open Pedagogy? Improving Learning. https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2975
