Open Pedagogy in the Trades: Instructional Resource

Excerpt from the Open Pedagogy in the Trades: Instructional Resource by Bruce Neid – Welding Instructor, Coast Mountain College, Terrace, British Columbia, and Nicki Rehn – Acting Dean, Centre for Learning Transformation, Coast Mountain College, Terrace, British Columbia

Expanding Open Education in the Trades

To create this resource, BCcampus allocated funding for release time for Coast Mountain College (CMNT) welding faculty member Bruce Neid. Bruce, in cooperation with CMNT’s Centre of Learning Transformation, created a resource to improve engagement and deepen learning in the foundations and apprenticeship welding programs. Nicki Rehn, an instructional designer at CMNT, partnered with Bruce on the project and enthusiastically provided support and expertise to ensure the right approach and the right emphasis on engagement and assessment. This kind of collaboration helps raise the standard of resource development.

Open Pedagogy Definition

“Teaching and learning practices where openness is enacted within all aspects of instructional practice; including the design of learning outcomes, the selection of teaching resources, and the planning of activities and assessment. Open educational practices (OEP) engage both faculty and students with the use and creation of open educational resources (OER), draw attention to the potential afforded by open licenses, facilitate open peer-review, and support participatory student-directed projects.”
—Michael Paskevicius, Vancouver Island University

Purpose

The purpose of this resource is to provide a collection of activities that meet the criteria to be open pedagogy. While most of the examples given were welding-focused, the activities can be easily adapted for any of the trades. For the purpose of this project, we identified a variety of characteristics that would make an activity or project “open.” These include:

Students using open education resources (OER);
Students creating content;
Students sharing their learning and the artifacts or resources they create beyond class;
Non-disposable assignments;
Using participatory technology, such as Google Drive, H5P, and Wikipedia;
Work that is connected to the wider community;
Peer critique;
Reflective practice; and
Collaborative and team-based learning.

Why use open pedagogy?

Open pedagogy empowers learners through autonomy, responsibility, and contribution. Students who work on open projects and activities report being more engaged and find the learning more meaningful. For a thorough explanation of how open pedagogy improves learning, see the Open Pedagogy Notebook’s section on Open Pedagogy.