This year I combined a traditional “readings course” approach with ongoing efforts to reject disposable assignments and engage in open pedagogy. I spent a great deal of time selecting the readings that would communicate what I felt was most important for this semester’s students to learn. (Though there would certainly be some overlap, I do not doubt that your preferred list of readings would differ significantly from my own. That’s terrific! I hope you’ll email it to me.) Rather than have students write response essays they would hate writing and immediately throw away after grading, I challenged them to create a textbook that could be used by students in future Introduction to Open Education courses.
As the semester drew to a close, the students worked collaboratively to organize and synthesize all the notes they had taken on each of the readings and our in-class discussions. These combined, synthesized notes became An Open Education Reader. For each reading, we have tried to provide you:
- a Link to an open access version of the article,
- a brief Background,
- a summary of Key Points,
- Discussion Questions for you to consider as you read the article, and
- Additional Information that may be of interest.