Of course being ‘open’ entails the idea of sharing and where would we be without sharing? Something I read or heard recently (sorry, can’t remember where) talked about how Wikipedia can only exist because individuals are prepared to share. No private (or even public) enterprise could ever create such an all encompassing ocean of content.

About 25 years ago when I first started working in education the idea of sharing was non existent. However the situation today has changed, where teachers are now expected to share with each other and often have an LMS (learning management system) to enable this. Although there are LMSs that encourage sharing (e.g. Unikum) I guess most LMSs are closed, i.e. that the materials within cannot be directly shared. In other words, if you want to share, then you have to do double the work by copying your resources somewhere else on the internet.

So the question is, how else can you be open? A nice place to start is David Wiley’s ”What is Open Pedagogy?” (https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2975). Here David Wiley uses the design of assignments to illustrate ‘open pedagogy’. He describes an effective assignment that allows students to produce work that can be used by future students, instead of traditional ‘disposable assignments’,. The use of effective assignments leads to motivated students working at a higher level, as well as the institution benefiting through teachers investing more in feedback and encouragement. Last but not least, student work can be used as an (open!) educational resource in the future!