Traditional assignments can often serve very well to encourage students to learn and apply information, gain research and other skills, engage in problem solving, and more. And if done well, they can show instructors the level of mastery students have achieved. However, they often do not provide any further value to the world after they’re completed.
For this activity, take five minutes and decide how you could transform one of the below assignments to be open. How would you change the assignment? What resources are needed? How does this shift change the nature of the activity/assignment? How do you assess the activity?
- Write a 500 word summary of an academic topic related to the course theme. Please include at least three references to academic journal articles.
- Complete the weekly multiple choice quiz based on the readings and lecture from this week.
- Working with your group, explore the UBC Library collections and write a 12 page paper using archival material on the BC Gold Rush.
- Take a 20 point calculus exam. Show your work.
Resources
- Hendricks, C. (2017). “Open pedagogy: examples of class activities.You’re the Teacher.
- Wiley, D. (2016). Toward renewable assessments. Iterating Toward Openness.
- Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. L. (2018). Defining OER-enabled pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning.
Complete this Activity
To complete this activity, please reflect on the questions above and write a short description of the new or changed assignment. Then, please share your ideas below so it can appear with other responses. If your response exists at a public viewable URL, you can add the information in the comment box.
The first option about the 500-word summaries could be adapted to be more public-facing. For example, the professor could set up a blog or website where these short summaries are posted so that the students can read each others’ works (with the provision that anyone uncomfortable with their materials being posted online can alternately submit directly to the instructor). If the course is offered again, people could review previous submissions from fellow students and add/revise them with new citations or knowledge. By providing a public space for their (often severely undervalued) coursework, this would also allow students to refer/link others to their work in resumes, websites, and other online spaces, further contributing to a wider dissemination of knowledge and expertise.
Instead of writing a 12 page paper on the BC Gold Rush, the assignment could instead be done as a podcast. While still relying on the UBC library collections for archival material, the method of translating that information could definitely be altered. Given that recording a podcast can be pretty simple, a few workshops pertaining to script-writing and electronic recommendations could be added into the course, or through offices at the university relevant to this instruction.
I believe that the nature of this assignment would shift in order to make it more accessible to others, and not just the professor or evaluator. Instead, these group podcasts could be shared amongst the class and even the broader community through open access publishing. Ultimately, I would assess the activity based on groups’ ability to translate key research findings and evidence into oral storytelling; consider requirements for an audience (of LIS professionals or whoever the audience is); and balance individual contributions with teamwork.
Instead of a 500 word essay summarizing an academic topic that only an instructor would read, students could be asked to create a wiki page about a topic including their sources. The wiki page would be open to the public (with student permission) and able to be retained, revised, reused, remixed and redistributed by others. The instructor could have future students build upon this knowledge (i.e. add to the topic or add further sources so students are aware they are contributing to a knowledge source that others will be using.
In regards to the third assignment, I would keep the group work aspect and topic but change the deliverable so instead of a 12-page paper, they would develop a presentation for the class on their findings and be encouraged to present at conferences and showcases.
A 12-page paper for the professor to read is not helpful because the professor is already knowledgeable on this topic, but if the ideas were disseminated to the wider academic and public community, it would shift the nature of the assignment to become more accessible to others. Also the UBC Library Collections is only reserved to the current UBC academic community so it would be even better if they shared their work at other universities or communities of interest. The assessment of the presentation will be the demonstrated knowledge the students present and the effectiveness of the audience to engage with the material and discussion.
Rather than a 500-word essay, students could prepare and share a 1-2min YouTube video, including their sources in the description.
It would be interesting to post this on a course blog or a wiki, generating the work using LaTex (since it can easily display math equations) so that it looks professional and everyone can follow along. All steps would need to be shown. The work can be assessed by giving partial points by being able to see the thought process for each question, even if the final answer is not correct. This could be a good learning opportunity as well, since one could see how other people approach certain types of math problems.
Instead of a 12-page paper on the BC Gold Rush, how about students being encouraged to create a series of short videos “Did you know…” that can be posted on YouTube so anyone can learn from?
The 500-word summary activity seems the most appropriate to me that could be made public facing. Students could go on to the course’s blog and post their summaries there (similar to what we are doing here!), and others can comment on their peers’ posts. With the requirement to include at least three references to academic journals, students could also hyperlink to those journals so that others may see where there sources are and how they relate to the summaries.
For my teaching area (Buddhist studies) the first assignment could be adapted and I have tried that out in my course already in a little bit different format and not openly published but within the RRN Research Network:
Write a 500 word summary of an academic topic related to the course theme. Please include at least three references to academic journal articles.
Use the UBC Museum of Anthropology RRN Reciprocal Research Network and describe analyzed one Tibetan material object. Please use three academic journal articles and also discuss aspects of decolonization of museum spaces in the article. Your contributions will be published at UBC Wiki.
In place of a 12-page paper using archival material about the BC Gold Rush, students could create a document or resource that identifies 10 resources held in the UBC archive that together create a narrative describing the BC Gold Rush. This document could be shared with and posted to the websites/blogs/repositories of appropriate historical societies or organizations.
For the paper on the BC Gold Rush, I would have the students create an interactive activity based upon the research that they have done. Then, at the end of the semester we would have the students run the activities in something similar to an “open house,” perhaps with the involvement of the library. This would allow them to present/teach their research to the public. For the students who did not want their work showcased in public, there would also be the possibility of just running the activity for their classmates. When assessing the activity, there could be a component based on the level of interactivity involved. There could also be the possibility of allow those who attend the “open house” to contribute to the grade either through comments or a rating. This would only be a small component of the grade. The students could also grade the other students in the class, and even those within the groups.
Instead of simply completing a multiple choice quiz on readings and lectures, students can design a short quiz (3 questions) on the reading and post it on a website for the class, for example. Subsequent cohorts can answer the posted questions and design their own for the next cohorts. Through this assignment, students will show an understanding of the readings, which is needed to construct good questions on comprehension, as well as contribute towards the future of the course in an open environment.
Instead of writing a 500 word summary of an academic topic, I think it’d be really interested to ask the current Instagram/TikTok-savvy Gen Z students to make videos that are less than 2 minutes in length. You could give them the option of creating the video on Youtube, or create reels on Instagram or Tiktok. Creating a short video can be similar to writing a succinct excerpt. It’s not easy to do and requires a lot of editing to include what you think is the most important information. All of the platforms above can post content that is open to the public, if you’d like to truly make the assignment open for posterity.
I have selected “Take a 20 point calculus exam. Show your work.”. I think a nice version of this would be to give students an exam and have them create something (a video, a walk-through, a flowchart, etc) describing how they would approach and solve the problem. These can then be added (with their permission) to a bank of problem questions for students in the next iteration of the course! Students (in my experience) love having lots of practice problems available and having solutions available (but what if those solutions were provided by fellow students!) On top of this, I like that it brings in the aspect of teaching to learn – which also enhances student learning
To make a weekly multiple-choice quiz fit the OE framework, one could instead have the student create a short weekly video blog, TikTok, Instagram video, or simply video file submitted to Canvas. The topic could be their biggest take-away from the reading, a section they are still unclear on, or an example of a practical application of the content of the reading. You could go further and create novel goals to encourage students to explore different ways of thinking, such as “DIY”, “Philosophical Reflection”, “Unusual Comedy”, “Words of Advice”, “Lesson of the Day” etc. All these videos can be added to a chapter compilation and offer an opportunity for the whole class to learn small tidbits from their peers.
Skills associated with video production (planning, effective communication, attention to detail, creative thinking/problem solving) are hugely valuable in today’s workforce. Even if a video will take twice as long as a quiz, students will gravitate to the opportunity to be creative and focus on, well, themselves!