What initially drew me to open pedagogy is the idea of engaging students in content creation.  My students are working to become future educators, and one of the conversations that we often have in our class is how important it is for children to engage in creating work for authentic audiences. For children, those audiences might be their peers, family members, or others in the community. However, in the context of the courses in which my students participate to become educators, the audience for their work is often limited to their peers and their professor.  

Over the years, I’ve been excited, impressed, surprised, and challenged by the ideas, experiences, and overall work that my students have created in the courses that I’ve taught. I have often regretted that there wasn’t an easy way for us to share their collective knowledge with others outside of our class community. I see open pedagogy as a vehicle for our class communities to share their knowledge with authentic audiences outside of our courses.

However, the more I learn and think about the possibilities, I’ve also become aware of the  pedagogical and ethical implications that come with open pedagogy. For example, the need for students to learn about copyright and its implications on their work.  Or the need to think about privacy issues: whether they want to share their work with a larger audience, and if so, how they want to share it.  

I think that one of the key aspects of designing assignments that engage students as creators in the context of open pedagogy is the need to consider what are the scaffolds that need to be in place.  This includes spending time exploring what it means to create work that would be shared outside of our classroom community and what the goals for the work are.