Student Perceptions of Open Pedagogy and Community-Engaged Service Learning

Abstract

Open pedagogy is an approach to instruction that places the student as a partner in the learning environment moving beyond traditional methods of instructional delivery that center the instructor as the expert. Open pedagogy allows for student contributions to the classroom that move beyond traditional instructional methods such as disposable assignments and educator led classroom discussions that are created by faculty to provide students with a learning experience. Instead, open pedagogy facilitates a student-centered learning environment that engages students as co-creators of learning and allows them to play a role in the facilitation of the learning environment. This paper focuses on the role of open pedagogy in community engaged service learning and is based on a quasi-experimental research study that explored student perceptions of community engaged service learning with and without an open pedagogical approach. The results report student satisfaction with the experience, perceived value, and the likelihood that they would take a course that combines these pedagogies in the future.

Making the Most of Cognitive Surplus: Descriptive Case Studies of Student-Generated Open Educational Resources

“…In our case study, the OER students produced were aimed at an audience of their peers and in-service professionals, so students were driven to produce resources of quality and utility. This behaviour accords with research (i.e., [34,54]) which found that students are more inclined to share their work when they believe it will create benefits, and it affirms the value of demand-led models of OER recommended by Nikoi et al [32]. Going beyond the consumption of knowledge, students became knowledge producers, taking responsibility for their learning activities [13,24,33], learning about academic integrity, and using course resources, including the course coordinators and teaching academics, to support their learning interests.…”

“…In higher education, academics evaluate resources and peer-review student resources as part of the assessment process, but for open publication, other stakeholders can be involved in this process, including in-service professionals (as in Case study 2), community experts, and users who will view or are represented by the resources. This aligns with studies that recommended working beyond the confines of academia to explore the wider potential of OEP [33,34]. Mechanisms for enhancing resource quality may also be built into the process at other levels, for example, through students' peer review and increased student involvement in the actual publication process, beyond choosing open licenses [17] and preparing artefacts.…”

“…However, teachers should be guided by a clear understanding of how specific technologies aid learning within a discipline area [31], and they are interested in both the technology and 'purposeful learning design in support of openness' [32], signalling the need for models to guide teacher practices. A few researchers have noted the limited available research exploring OEP and communities [33,34], suggesting this is a ripe area for investigation. Moreover, in a review of the literature published between 2009 and 2018 about OER, Luo et al [35] did not find any models or frameworks for OER implementation (also see [36]).…”

Undergraduates’ perceptions of the value of service-learning

“…Our research seeks to build on the limited repository of literature on student perceptions of service-learning to address this knowledge gap. While most of the existing perception-based research seeks student perceptions on the service-learning program or course itself (Currie-Mueller and Littlefield, 2018; Keles and Altinok, 2020;Xavier and Jones, 2021;Williams, 2022), it is also important to ask students about their perceived benefits of service-learning as compared to the benefits of a traditional course. By focusing on student perceptions, it is possible to portray apprehensions and outlooks regarding service-learning to better inform course and program practices (Xavier and Jones, 2021).…”