Messy & Proud of It: Open Pedagogy with History Undergraduates
Channel: Open Education Southern Symposium
Date: 2021-09-22

This presentation will showcase an open pedagogy project in which undergraduates in a cross-listed history and women's and gender studies course worked with librarians to write and produce an open annotated primary source reader on gender & sexuality issues throughout history. Students engaged with the university's Special Collections & Archives and primary source databases to identify a primary source on their topic, researched the topic and their source with help from the history liaison librarian, and ultimately worked with the Digital Pedagogy librarian to choose a Creative Commons license for their work and publish it on PressBooks. The resulting text was printed with department funds, released to some fanfare in a book release party and student panel, and is now being used as an OER in subsequent iterations of the course, both as an example of the form of an annotated primary source reader for examination and critique, and as a core piece of course content to be built upon and improved. The professor reports complex but profound changes in his course evaluations and his pedagogy as a result of the project.

The presentation will discuss the goals, challenges, results, and future of the project after two iterations, including how it affected student motivation and buy-in, how it allowed the professor to re-center his teaching on process rather than product, how it is driving interest in open pedagogy on campus, and how the conversations around openness in teaching have led to more complex conversations around grading and student agency.

Presenters:
Kyle Denlinger
Mir Yarfitz
Kathy Shields
Megan Mulder