Disposable and Renewable Assignments

Now let’s talk about how you can actually practice open pedagogy. At the beginning of our trek, you wrote a number of student-centered learning objectives inclusive of social justice. Some were for your OER and others for formative and summative assessments. These assessments represent the work students will perform in your class — their assignments and tests. It is these products of learning that David Wiley quickly eyed as a way to give new life to student learning by integrating their work into OER. In this chapter, you will learn about Wiley’s renewable assignment and its nemesis, the disposable assignment.^[1] You likely have experienced both types to varying degrees throughout your academic career. In this chapter, we will define the terms and outline tools, tips, and processes for redesigning your assignment with new life.

Renewable and Disposable Assignments

Wiley succinctly defined his preference for providing students with authentic and meaningful opportunities to foster each other’s learning and contribute to a common learning commons. Wiley distinguished renewable assignments from disposable assignments as follows: ^[2]

• Disposable assignments are ones which students complete as an assignment. Instructors grade and return the work to students who may read over their instructor’s comments before throwing their work in the trash.
• Renewable assignments also task students with completing an assignment to be graded. Unlike with disposable assignments, though, “student’s work won’t be discarded at the end of the process but will instead add value to the world in some way” when they openly license and share their work.^[3]

There are degrees of separation between disposable and renewable assignments, according to Wiley and John Levi Hilton III.^[4] For instance, they clarify, authentic assessments^[5] can have a deeper meaning than simply supporting student learning. It may be relevant to students’ lived experiences, for instance. Additionally, constructionist assessments can be authentic and shared publicly.^[6] For Wiley and Hilton, a renewable assessment does it all but with the key difference of enabling students to improve upon each other’s learning through the application of an open license. The application of an open license permits the original student author to share their work and subsequent students to iterate upon each other’s works.

How to start?

Begin with the End

We recommend you follow backwards design and design your first open pedagogy assignment with what you want students to know or be able to do after completing it. Your desired learning objectives should be in your team’s OER content and assessment map. You may use your learning objectives to revise an existing assignment, or you may want to start fresh with a new assignment.

Brainstorm a Format

Once you have identified your learning objectives, you will determine either how your students will demonstrate their knowledge or how you will create your digital object. There are plenty of sources of inspiration to help you brainstorm what form your assignment or digital object may take.

• Bali, M., Cronin, C. and Jhangiani, R.S., 2020. Framing Open Educational Practices from a Social Justice Perspective. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020(1).

• Jhangiani, R. and DeRosa, R. Open Pedagogy Notebook.
• McAdams, J. and Hoover, J. Open Pedagogy Learning Outcomes Project.  CC BY 4.0
• Open Education Network. Open Pedagogy Portal.

Digital Tools

Sometimes the format is dictated by the tools we use. Unless there are professional or disciplinary reasons to learn a particular tool, you may consider the ease of use or aesthetic of a tool. There are plenty of additional tools to help you create or co-create with your students:

• H5P [See our extensive H5P guidance]
• Knightlab Tools: Storyline JS
• Knightlab Tools: Storymap JS
• Scalar

If you are unsure of what technology you should implement, review these evaluations of commons education technologies, ranging from Google Suite through Zoom and so many niche tools between:

• An open list of technology tools by activity type and pricing by Abbey Elder
• Technology Tools for Teaching in Higher Education edited by Shaun Ferns; Jordanne Christie; and Caroline Ferguson for eCampus Ontario
• “Choosing the Right Tools for Your OER” in Open Voices, Just Choices: OER for Social Justice Faculty Handbook

Scaffold Your Path with Care

After you have identified the learning objectives you would like to assess and have a format in mind, it is then good to map out your process for implementing your assignment with your students. Amanda Larson, an affordable learning instructional consultant, has traced this scaffolding process in a road map.

Select the arrows to read how you can scaffold open pedagogy assignments for your students. 

You do not need to have your open pedagogy assignment fully fleshed out to plot your path. Consider some of the following while personalizing the roadmap:

• It may be helpful to start at the end of the road and work your way backwards.
• Plan each stop in terms of how you can holistically support your students in their learning and increase their buy-in through transparent teaching practices. See “Yes, and Student Motivation” for more.
• Add additional care-focused pitstops to check in with students or provide feedback. You can consult the following for a framework to structure these check-ins:
  • Rajiv Jhangiani’s 5 Rs for Open Pedagogy
  • Kayla Lar-Son’s 6 Rs of Indigenous OER.