An Introduction to Open Andragogy Practices

Best practices for engaging in Open Andragogy Projects:

• Anytime you want to use student work for research or as course materials, you must ask for permission. They have copyright over their own work and their can be FERPA concerns as well. It's advisable to set aside time to talk to students about licensing and FERPA, and to get FERPA waivers and/or Memorandums of Understanding to use their work
• It's also advised to give students a way to contact you in the future should they ever decide that they would like to remove their name from the materials
• Encourage your students to apply their experience
• Build course policies, outcomes, assignments, rubrics, and/or schedules of work with the students
• Include lessons about Open Education and licensing terms
• Allow your students to choose whether or not to openly license their product(s), and what license to use
  • Do the students need to come to a consensus, or can each choose an individual license?
  • If they choose a restrictive license, will their work still be included in the end product?
• To protect student privacy (under FERPA), consider the following options:
  • Allow students to publish their work using a pseudonym
  • Make the end resource open and credit the students, but without identifying that they were part of a specific course
  • Get FERPA waivers from each student
• Consider the students' level of digital literacy when designing activities
• Consider building a partnership with one of the librarians to help develop student research skills and/or connect the librarian with the students to support their work

It's important to give students agency over how their work is displayed or shared. Allowing students to choose the license type of their work (including to not share their work at all), is important. As a part of this, when having students contribute work intended to be published in your course, textbook, or other areas; it's important to have them sign a copyright agreement or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

Creating Renewable Assignments: A Process

Step 1:

Analyze and classify the current assignment

• Are students asked to create new artifacts or revise existing content? Does that artifact have value beyond the learning of its author?

Step 2:

Consider meaningful OER contributions that your students can develop

Step 3:

Select tools for creating content and repositories for storing content

Step 4:

Design intentional negotiations for openness of student-created content

• Allow students to choose their license and/or whether to publish their content openly; consider using a worksheet that helps students identify the best Creative Commons license

Step 5:

Finalize and reclassify the assignment

Key Challenges to Keep in Mind

• Students have varying levels of digital literacy
• It can be difficult to generate buy-in from some students
• Open Andragogy isn't about reducing workload. It is about exploring education in a different, more student-centered and open method. As such, it doesn't necessarily save time
  • It can take time to explain and get signatures for Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs)
• Creating renewable assignments can require the instructor to plan for providing tools, technical skills, and support for students

Example Challenges from Real Open Andragogy Projects

• Assignment: Students creating video presentations as a final project
  • Challenge: Students were initially left to independently learn how to incorporate sources and evidence into the video, resulting in confusion and uploading of excessively large files. 
  • Solution: Revise assignment to include instructions on incorporating sources and training materials were provided on utilizing video-recording software and tools.
• Assignment: Developing student science skills through student-created OER resources
  • Challenge: Students needed additional training on scientific databases
  • Solution: Partner with librarians to provide research instruction
• Assignment: Honors Research Practices course with students developing research presentations
  • Challenge: Found that students had different perceptions of research and misunderstandings about what it is; with many students thinking research was only in STEM fields. There was resistance from some students, to updating their definition of research.
  • Solution: Work to incorporate activities and content to illustrate the varieties of research across disciplines.

Just because a student is creating work for your classroom does not mean it is not their own published work. The creator of a work has legal copyright protections unless they sign those away via a licensing agreement, copyright agreement, etc. While a Memorandum of Understanding is not necessarily legally binding, it demonstrates student intention to have their work be displayed and/or shared.

The purpose of an MOU is to outline the expectations, responsibilities, and commitments involved. It also helps demonstrate the students' understanding and intentions with regards to the sharing of their work. Below, I have provided a simple example MOU that could be used in your courses (once adapted for your projects):

Agreement to Contribute to Open Textbook

I, _______________________________, agree to participate in the creation of _______________________________, an open textbook, in collaboration with my professor, _______________________________. This work will comprise [part of] my coursework for _______________________________ [class/course name].

I understand that inclusion of my work in the final text is conditional upon my willingness to license my contributions under a CC-BY license.

I have read the Guide to Creative Commons Licenses and understand that a CC-BY license allows others to share, use and adapt my work so long as they attribute me as the original author.

I understand that I have the right to request that my name and/or work be removed from the original text, or change the license on my contributions at any stage prior to publication.

Signed: _______________________________ Date: ____________________

I, _______________________________, agree to work with my student _______________________________ on the creation of _______________________________, an open textbook in [partial] completion of _______________________________ [class/course name].

I commit to supporting ____________________ throughout this project, and ensuring they have the knowledge and resources they need to be an informed contributor.

I agree that the student may request that their name and/or work be removed from the original text or change the license on their contributions to this work at any stage prior to publication of the work.

I confirm that the student’s decision to change the license they place on their work or to not participate in the project will not impact on their course assessment.

Signed: _______________________________ Date: ____________________

Comments and Alterations

In the above example, I have highlighted a number of areas that would likely need to be amended based on your project or assignment. For instance, in the first highlight, you might not be creating an open textbook. The students might be creating videos to be used in the course, or creating translations of readings to create a course reading packet. For the second highlight, you might give students the option to choose the type of license they want to use. In which case, you would need to reword it to allow for this. For example:

"I understand that inclusion of my work in the final text is conditional upon my willingness to license my contributions under a ____________________ license.

I have read the Guide to Creative Commons Licenses and understand that a Creative Commons license determines how others are able to access, share, and/or edit my work."