Category: Open

The Non-Disposable Assignment

Last week I gave you a quick introduction to the concept of Open, in regards to Open Educational Resources, and Open Pedagogy. Now I wanted to give you a short post about one example of open pedagogy in action. Submitted for your perusal: the Non-Disposable Assignment.

The idea of the non-disposable assignment came about from frustration voiced by students who were spending enormous amounts of time completing assignments (like papers) which were graded and filed away, never to be looked at again, and by faculty who spend enormous amounts of time grading said papers, only to never have students look at them again – thus, disposable. A non-disposable assignment, on the other hand, “focuses on personalised learning by allowing students to build new knowledge together around an authentic problem, scenario or situation” (https://wordpress.viu.ca/enhancingpersonalizedlearning/about/ ); they are assessments which students feel connected to, value, and are proud to share with their peers.

In 2013, David Wiley wrote a blog post on Open Educational Resources, and specifically addressed the issues around the “disposable” assignment, and how important it was to address them if you are truly wanting to move into practicing open pedagogy. In other words, OER are not just about free textbooks, they are also about providing students with assessment options that are grounded in the 5 Rs we discussed last week: retain, remix, reuse, revise, and redistribute. He says “[b]ecause the assignment encourages them to work in any medium they prefer, students pick something they’ll enjoy, which leads them to invest at a different level.” And isn’t this something we, as educators, strive for?

Christine Hendricks also notes that using Open Educational Resources to support your teaching gives students options for themselves to remix, reuse, etc. these materials to create their non-disposable assignments, thus bringing the open pedagogy full circle in a course.

Alan Levine takes the concept of non-disposable assignments to task a bit, noting that many examples seem to still echo the old disposable assignment, noting that “[i]t takes a lot of effort to move past the first impulse of writing ones that sound like they are answering a question or a series of questions.” In other words, the concept of the non-disposable seems simple (especially once you see some examples), but it is not necessarily easy (especially in the practice of your own discipline)!

Rather than repeating examples of non-disposable assignments here, I will point you to the website referenced at the beginning of this post (https://wordpress.viu.ca/enhancingpersonalizedlearning/) which supports a Vancouver Island University workshop on creating non-disposable assignments, and contains several examples of non-disposable assignments created by faculty who participated in the workshops. I encourage you to have a look and get some ideas. You can also find specific examples of non-disposable assignments on David Wiley’s, Christine Hendricks’, and Alan Levine’s blog posts, linked below.

If you are already using non-disposable assignments in your teaching, or if you create some after reading this post and the linked resources, I would love it if you would share them with me, either by contacting me directly (schudele@camosun.ca) or by commenting on this post. And, of course, if you ever want to talk to any of us in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning about how you might add non-disposable assignments to your courses, contact any of us – we would love to talk to you!

References and Additional Resources

The Non-Disposable Assignment:  Enhancing Personalized Learning https://wordpress.viu.ca/enhancingpersonalizedlearning/

David Wiley (2013) Iterating towards Openness: https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2975

Christine Hendricks (2015) Non-Disposable Assignments in Intro to Philosophy: http://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/2015/08/18/non-disposable-assignments-intro-philosophy/

Alan Levine (2017) Non-Disposable Assignments: https://cogdogblog.com/2017/02/non-disposable-assignments/

An Era of Disposable Assignments? (2018) https://www.ecampusontario.ca/era-disposable-assignments/

A Conceptual Framework for Non-Disposable Assignments: Inspiring Implementation, Innovation, and Research  (2018) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1475725718811711

A very brief introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER)

One of the big topics in education these days, especially when talking about elearning or online educational resources, is Open Educational Resources (OER) (and generally, Open-ness). I thought I would take a moment today to very briefly give you some idea of what people mean when they talk about OER, and give you some resources you can explore to find out more.

Open Educational Resources

The Camosun Library Open Resources Guide is a great place for you to go to find out more about OER and where to find them. The guide provides a nice definition of OER as well, which I will repeat here for you: “Open Education Resources (OER) include textbooks, course readings and other teaching and learning content available online at little or no cost. These resources are produced by libraries, universities, government agencies, archival organizations and individuals, and can be used, reused and modified depending on how they have been licensed by the creator of the content.” OERs are especially important in today’s high-cost educational market. Open Textbooks in BC have

According to http://opencontent.org/definition/, “The terms “open content” and “open educational resources” describe any copyrightable work (traditionally excluding software, which is described by other terms like “open source”) that is either (1) in the public domain or (2) licensed in a manner that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities”, which are as follows:

  • Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
  • Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
  • Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
  • Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
  • Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

Creative Commons

One of the hallmarks of OERs is that they are licenced as Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/). Creative Commons “are flexible copyright licenses that allow copyright holders to decide for themselves who can share, reuse and build upon their creative works.” (http://camosun.ca.libguides.com/open/OpenCulture)

Other kinds of “open” in education

In addition to Open in OER, you may hear Open being used in other contexts as well, some of these include:

  • Open source (software that is available at little or no monetary cost, but often costs a lot to set up and maintain in terms of people resources)
  • Open access (resources – articles, books, etc. – that are available freely on the Internet)
  • Open culture (the concept that knowledge should be shared openly and collaboratively, free of copyright restrictions)
  • Open pedagogy (a little more complex, but defined briefly at https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2975 as “that set of teaching and learning practices only possible in the context of the free access and [5]R permissions characteristic of open educational resources.” – you can explore its complexities further at http://openpedagogy.org/open-pedagogy/)

A few resources

Now that you know a bit more about what OERs are, here are some great resources for you to explore so you can find out more to help you decide how to integrate OERs into your own teaching!