Open pedagogy assignments benefit students in many ways and provide a means of expression for students that can be different from the mainstream. Open pedagogy assignments enhance transferable skills with digital tools for authoring and sharing content. Assignments in which students create presentational knowledge or knowledge checks involve active learning. They engage learners with course topics in a way that goes beyond listening to lectures, note-taking and traditional tests. Students explore their interests and synthesize new knowledge. By offering students choice and voice within a limited set of parameters, the instructor creates an environment conducive to constructionist learning.
In this article we demonstrate the use of digital authoring tools for open pedagogy assignments in the 100 and 200-level gateway courses Introduction to Theatre, Introduction to Geography, and Introduction to Historical Studies courses. These assignments include student creation of knowledge checks, interactive learning objects, in-depth explorations of geographic locations and their meanings, student narratives using historical images as primary sources, and press releases written on significant history publications. Digital authoring tools used by the students include Pressbooks, H5P, Google Sites, Creative Commons images, and digital cameras to produce one’s own images and video.
Keywords: open pedagogy assignments, H5P, Pressbooks, Constructionism, project-based learning, digital humanities
Suggested citation: Bernd, L., Rose, S. E., Caprette, H. (2024). Open pedagogy assignments in theatre and history courses to promote constructionist learning and digital skills. In T. Tijerina (Ed.), Pedagogy opened: Innovative theory and practice (pp. 49-78). University of North Georgia Press. https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/pedagogy-opened-v1-a2/.
Cleveland State University (CSU), a public land-grant institution, is an urban campus in downtown Cleveland. The city has a poverty rate of 31.4%, which is 2.7 times the official national average (U.S. Census Bureau, 2021). We have a diverse student body. Approximately 25% are underrepresented minorities (CSU Institutional Research & Analysis Administrative Dashboard, 2022). 78% of full-time, degree-seeking undergraduate students were determined to have financial need in 2021 (CSU Institutional Research & Analysis, CSU Common Data Sets, 2022). In 2014, library director Glenda Thornton started an affordable learning initiative by partnering with the provost and other offices to support the development and use of open educational resources. Professional development talks, a Textbook Affordability Grant, and technology were implemented to encourage participation. One of the technologies was the installation of Pressbooks for CSU. Pressbooks provided an avenue for not only faculty to author open educational resources (OER) but also students to publish their own works.
Faculty within the Department of Theatre and Dance and the Department of History assign open pedagogy projects for introductory and mid-level undergraduate courses with good engagement and academic results. Introduction to Theatre is a general education humanities course and a gateway course at the university, meaning that it is a 100-level course that has more than 100 students enrolling over a calendar year. Its sections are almost always filled. It is an important course for Theatre majors because it contributes to the knowledge and skills necessary for further study in the department. It also draws diverse students from all over the university. Students in the course frequently did not buy the traditional publisher’s textbook because of cost or because it was not their major area of study. Some students would have to wait until their financial aid was secured before they could purchase the textbook. This meant that students began the course already at a disadvantage because they would not be prepared for classes or assessments. Frustrated students would drop the course or stop coming, consequently failing the course. For these reasons, the instructor switched to using the open textbook, Theatrical Worlds (Mitchell, 2014). The use of an open textbook improved student success rates and retention.
The Department of Theatre and Dance is housed at Playhouse Square, the country’s largest performing venue outside of the Lincoln Center. While CSU promotes a liberal arts education, students in the department also receive a practical education working with Equity actors and union stagehands and participating as production leaders in all areas of theatrical work. Students in this program go on to work professionally in Cleveland as well as around the country or go on to graduate school. While pursuing their degree, 86% of majors hold jobs. Approximately 70% of white students with Pell Grants graduate from the department while less than 60% of Black or African American students with Pell Grants graduate. This is to say that theatre students’ limited time and economic resources present challenges to creating a learning environment that is equitable and inclusive. In addition, theatre students’ goals, passions, and drive are fundamentally different from other disciplines in that they need to express themselves creatively, often at a high cost to their confidence. Our society and educational system present enormous challenges to emerging artists because the systems undervalue their talent and their contributions to the community. In the classroom, this influences them in several ways. Some are unable to purchase books, and lack of access to course materials and outside commitments affect performance on traditional assessments such as quizzes and tests. Many students lack enthusiasm for traditional academic exercises and modes of delivery. Yet, theatre students must master an enormous amount of academic material in addition to their hands-on training. Theatre history, script analysis, and dramatic theory are all intense areas of study. The goals of this curriculum are to foster the development of intellectually engaged artists and citizens, competent critical thinkers, students with the “soft skill” set necessary in theatre and other professions and the ability to communicate clearly.
Introduction to Geography is a 200-level course for history and social studies education students. It is a comprehensive survey of the field of geography as it relates to the study and teaching of social studies and history and is required for all Early Education and Social Studies majors. The course investigates the core concepts of space, place, and environment and everyday uses of geographical knowledge and skills. Students practice using web-based GIS tools such as Google Maps, StoryMaps, and Google Earth. Introduction to Historical Studies is a gateway 200-level course tailored to history and social studies students. Considered the beginning bookend of the history and social studies majors, Introduction to Historical Studies prepares students with a foundation in historical thinking and research that is a prerequisite for the capstone research seminar. Students develop an understanding of the history discipline and how the transferable skills they will learn as history and social majors will apply to a variety of careers. It is particularly relevant for social studies students to master skills in the digital humanities because they will be teaching them to our youth. Assignments apply skills in communication, application of technologies, critical analysis of information, archival research, and historical thinking.
Seymour Papert was a mathematician, computer scientist and educator who developed constructionist learning theory in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Two tenets of constructionist learning theory are that we learn best when we are “actively engaged in constructing something that has personal meaning to [us] – be it a poem, a robot, a sandcastle, or a computer program,” and learning “happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity (Harel and Papert, 1991).” Theatre students were given a choice of what course topic interested them the most and could use any presented in class to create their interactive learning content with the H5P plugin in Pressbooks. History students, also, were given a choice of book/author, primary source image, and location they wished to create content for within the criteria of their assignments.
Open pedagogy assignments can build digital skills and require synthesis of knowledge about an academic topic. Moreover, they can be an outlet for a student’s voice, expressing interests and concerns on topics not condoned by law makers in charge of higher education. I believe this could be one interpretation of what Harel and Papert were talking about. In Situating Constructionism (Harel and Papert, 1991), Idit Harel and Seymour Papert said, “The presence of computers begins to go beyond first impact when it alters the nature of the learning process; for example, if it shifts the balance between transfer of knowledge to students (whether via book, teacher, or tutorial program is essentially irrelevant) and the production of knowledge by students. It will have really gone beyond it if computers play a part in mediating change in the criteria that govern what kinds of knowledge are valued in education.” Publication of our students’ voices supersedes restrictions on expressing and sharing valuable information about our nation’s history. It also provides a means of representation through participation for minority groups, including LGBTQ+ students.
The digital authoring tools used for the open pedagogy assignments provide a public outlet for the students’ values, ideas, and creativity. It is a path to sharing knowledge that is free of the traditional barriers to access. The increasing threat of discriminatory and inequitable laws and educational policies, such as Florida’s recent ban on The 1619 Project in K-20 education (C.A. Bridges, 2023), along with anti-LGBTQ curriculum laws, means that instructors are looking for methodologies that do not rely on state-approved primary sources while creating a student-centered pedagogy. Developing outlets where students can create their own content to share with the class or publicly express opinions can serve as an alternative to repressive pedagogies. Moreover, the ambiguity of some anti-critical race theory laws leaves room for students to express their opinions about content related to course topics that do not include state government approved primary sources (Russel-Brown, 2022, p. 24). Pressbooks provides opportunities to accommodate students’ comfort levels in sharing content and opinions. Students have the option of completing an assignment but excluding it from the public facing view of the book. In this way, students can participate without fear of retribution. In addition to this option, students can use pseudonyms in place of their legal name, if the student desires. Prior arrangements with the instructor will facilitate grading. In this way, a student can share and publish their ideas through an open pedagogy assignment with anonymity to the public. “Anti-woke” laws discourage the literacy and educational autonomy that the options available in Pressbooks may help preserve.
Pressbooks is a free, open-source authoring platform that can be downloaded from GitHub and installed on an institution’s server. It creates multiple sites on the server that are individual books. See the Pressbooks User Guide. It is used by many institutions for publishing open educational resources and specifically open textbooks. It allows for different user roles with varying privileges within a Pressbook. In our open pedagogy assignments, students are given the author role. This allows them to create a chapter (page) within the Pressbook for their assignment submission. A Pressbooks author can access and edit chapter pages of their own creation, but they cannot do so with other people’s chapter pages. With group projects, one member can be designated to enter the combined assignment work into the Pressbook. The author role also allows them to create H5P content and upload images to the media library of the book. The H5P interactive learning objects and media can then be inserted into the chapter pages they create within the book. An editor role would allow editing of any chapter of the Pressbook. It was not assigned to students because of the risk of accidental deletion of other students’ assignment content.
Within each Pressbook is the option to activate and use the H5P plugin. Once activated, an H5P content area is created on the main menu for interfacing with the book. H5P technology allows students to produce knowledge checks and interactive learning content for publication. In 2017, when we started using H5P, there were 43 content types. The developers have since added more and there are now 53. Examples include creation of quizzes and questions over course topics, interactive video with links to more information and questions interspersed on the timeline, course presentations that incorporate many of the other content types, branching scenarios, virtual tours with 360-degree photos, timelines, images with hotspots, juxtaposition of before and after imagery, and Agamotto sequences of images that change over time. For more information visit H5P Content Types.
Though instructors often turn to Pressbooks as a technology for student creation and publication, Google Sites is also a favorite tool for authoring. Google Sites can create a more aesthetically pleasing venue for the student content, given its ability to easily use images for backgrounds within a web page. There can be more than one editor of a Google Site for group work. Separate sites for separate student projects eliminates the risk of accidental deletion with the editor role. On one occasion, a history student admitted that he found it easier to work with Google Sites than to interact with the H5P forms that create content, though H5P.org provides plenty of documentation, examples, and tutorials. For the Introduction to Theatre open pedagogy assignment, an instructional designer visited with the Theatre classes and demonstrated how to access the Pressbook and create H5P content within it. She demonstrated how to search for images in the Public Domain or with a Creative Commons license. For the history classes, she produced video tutorials demonstrating how to create various H5P content of interest. The instructional designer also made herself available to support students with questions by sharing her contact information and by being part of class Teams sites. She also provided administrative support in setting up the Pressbooks and user accounts. Students were also required to generate an embeddable Google Map with their location biographies.
The library at the institution has a multimedia computer lab which students use to borrow digital cameras and utilize Adobe Creative Cloud applications. History students in geography utilized the multimedia lab to photograph their artifacts for their “Concentrates of Place” assignment. Some student film and media majors also have access to digital video cameras through their department. Students with cell phones were encouraged to use them for image and video creation for the assignments. Students could also use screen capture applications to produce location biographies as video presentations. The institution has Panopto Video integrated with Blackboard Learn for this purpose. Panopto allows a student to control the sharing permissions on a video. In this way, the student could make the video available for public viewing, if he or she wished. Some students used Screencastify to create video presentations. Students could also upload videos to YouTube for use in H5P or embedding in Pressbooks.
Note: For assignment instructions, please see Appendix B.
Students were given a class Pressbook and asked to produce H5P knowledge checks and/or interactive learning objects over topics and content in the course. They could utilize their open-source textbook, Theatrical Worlds, information about Playhouse Square, presentations, articles, and plays assigned within the course. They were given a link to Playhouse Square’s Digital Press Kit as a source for shared images and media. Students could also pull in YouTube videos covering course related topics, such as costume design. They were shown how to locate and use images with Creative Commons and Public Domain licensing.
The instructor facilitated engagement with the open resources. Students were encouraged to collaborate on larger endeavors, such as the creation of interactive video. If students chose simpler forms of H5P, such as multiple-choice questions, they were asked to do three. Students who struggled with Pressbooks were also given the opportunity to submit their assignment to Blackboard Learn. Students were told their assignments would live publicly in a Pressbook and were given the option to opt out of this.
The following learning objectives were supported by the assignment:
Students were graded on both their engagement with the assignment and the appropriateness of the work to the course.
Both Introduction to Geography and Introduction to Historical Studies were designed with Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani’s frames of Open Pedagogy in mind. Conceptualizing these courses and the student-created OER models Open Pedagogy as a “site of praxis.” Most importantly for students in these two courses, the instructor draws on their framework of Open Pedagogy as “an access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education AND as a process of designing architectures and using tools for learning that enable students to shape the public knowledge commons of which they are a part” (DeRosa & Jhangiani, 2023). As noted above, this combination is critical to teaching historical thinking in the 21st century United States.
The “Concentrates of Place” assignment was given as a precursor to a “Location Biography” project. The concept of “place” is one of the most challenging for students to work with in the “Location Biography” project as reflected in their work and student evaluations from previous semesters. The “Concentrates of Place” project enables students to start thinking critically about the geographical concepts of location, space, and place at the start of the semester. In this assignment, the students
Students were asked to choose a location with meaning for them to illustrate place, lending to their ownership of the final product. The students also had a Microsoft Teams site to receive instructions and guidance and post their questions and creations to share with other students. Both the instructor and instructional designer created example assignments within the class Pressbook to show students what was expected. These and student submissions can be seen in “Concentrates of Place—2022” in the Pressbook titled Geography for Social Studies Educators: Learning Resources and Reflections—Fall 2022.
For this assignment, students created websites that are biographies about an absolute location. Google Sites was recommended because most of the education majors in the class will encounter Google Classroom in their teaching careers, but other website content management systems were accepted. This project is given in place of a traditional midterm and final exams in the course, and components are due at various points throughout the semester. Each student must demonstrate mastery of the geographic concepts of place, space, and environment. This assignment has been part of the Introduction to Geography course in some form for 10 years. With the addition of the H5P component and the “Concentrates of Place” assignment, student success in this course increased to 94%. See Appendix A for links to examples of student submissions.
For this assignment, students were introduced to the special collections area at the institution’s library. In this class meeting, students were given a box from special collections. They were asked to select one item from the box and, working as a group, answered historical thinking questions about sourcing, contextualization, corroboration, and close reading about the primary source (Stanford History Education Group). Some of the images in the special collections area are digitized and students were welcome to choose one for their “H5P in the Archive” assignment. They were asked to find an image as a primary source and provide an analysis of it. This took the form of writing within a chapter page of their class Pressbook, and inserting an H5P content type of their creation that narrated the image. Student assignment submissions can be seen in “H5P in the Archive” in the Pressbook titled Intro to Historical Studies: Student Research and Resources—Fall 2022.
In the “Press Release” assignment, students created press releases for important contributions to the historical discipline within a class Pressbook. They utilized the Stanford History Education Group’s “Historical Thinking Chart” as a guide to completing their assignment. Students selected a book/author to review from a spreadsheet of recommended books determined to be pioneering works of historical research by instructors in the CSU history department. As part of her open pedagogy method, the instructor completed the assignment herself as an example to demonstrate expectations and each step to the students. They also had a class Teams site for communicating questions about the assignment, receiving instruction, and sharing resources. Student assignment submissions can be seen in “Historiography Timeline” in the Pressbook titled Intro to Historical Studies: Student Research and Resources—Fall 2022. A strength of these Pressbooks publications is that students and instructor alike now have shareable resources that demonstrate their historical thinking skills beyond the classroom. Students can also add links to these products in their resumes and teaching portfolios, increasing their engagement with the assignment, and helping them build a professional identity right from the start of their major.
Before the open textbook and Pressbooks assignments, success rates (grade of C or above) in Introduction to Theatre topped out at 72% with 10% failures and 17% withdrawals. After the adoption of an open textbook and the Pressbooks assignments, success rates reached a high of 88% before the COVID-19 pandemic caused an institutional shutdown. As is evident from the results, students were interested in and enjoyed the Pressbooks assignments. Many students took the opportunity to work in teams to pursue projects that were more than the minimum assignment. Videos of department productions and enhanced videos with learning checks were popular choices by teams. Individual students pursued their interests by creating documents and learning checks in a variety of formats—crossword puzzles, fill-in checks, graphic identifications. Students were also appreciative that the previously created assignments offered them a way to check their own knowledge as well as provide insight into what other students found interesting.
The Introduction to Theatre “Interactive Learning Content Creation with H5P” assignment was first assigned in Fall 2017. With encouragement to record video with a cell phone for H5P content types, such as interactive videos, one student partnered with a master electrician to record and create a behind the scenes look at the student production of Steven Sondheim’s Company. The video was posted to YouTube and used for the creation of an interactive video. Within the video, the student interviewed people in many distinct roles of the theatre production. He linked to the American Association of Community Theatre’s website for further exploration of the roles he mentions along his timeline. He also shows the catwalks where the theatre lights are maintained. Other students utilized existing YouTube videos on costume design to create interactive videos on costume design for various productions. Because of the flexibility of the assignment, students with varying skill levels could complete a content type that worked for them. Some unique uses of content types were implemented, such as the use of H5P’s Timeline to illustrate the steps involved in the costume design process. Occasionally, there would be a problem with implementation. The setup of the Flash Cards content type is one. One student presented the acting term on the front of the card and required a short sentence answer, which was difficult for another to complete. This problem was noted and mentioned to subsequent classes of students when they were introduced to the assignment.
Another example from a pair of students who went above and beyond, was an H5P Course Presentation which incorporated their video of the student production of Into the Woods. The viewer is asked to watch the video and then answer questions about it. This presentation interviews students in different acting roles, explains acting terminology, and shows a behind-the-scenes look at rehearsals and preparation for the musical portion of the play. The Course Presentation content type was used for other topics, including “The History of Ancient Greek Theater” and “Tools of Lighting Design.” As the development of H5P content types evolved, students in subsequent sections became more creative with the tools, including simple multiple choice question sets. Students started to embed YouTube videos on various theatre topics, such as costume design interspersed with their knowledge check questions. Find the Words content type was used for finding terms related to theatre production.
The Introduction to Historical Studies “H5P in the Archive” and “Press Release” assignments were added in Fall 2022. In the Fall 2022 course, student success peaked at an 88% pass rate out of 25 students, increasing from 69% pass rate in Fall 2020, 78% in Spring 2021, and 72% pass rate in Fall 2021. The H5P assignment introduced students to the H5P plugin, and the Image Hotspots content type allowed for an historical analysis of the chosen image and its content. Hotspots allowed for more context to be given, along with other writing within a Pressbook page. The ability to add embeds of YouTube videos with the hotspots, created the opportunity for further exploration of a subject, such as the links to a biography about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X seen in the historical analysis of Martin Luther King, Jr’s and Malcolm X’s Press Conference. The history student authors explained the historical context of the image, demonstrating how this analysis fits the steps of historical thinking. This introduction to using Pressbooks served as a foundation for the “Press Release” assignment where students turned their attention to secondary source analysis. They were able to write press releases for pioneering works of historical research such as Kathy Peiss’ Hope in a Jar, further reinforcing the digital publishing lessons learned in the H5P assignment. Students in this course noted the value of learning transferable skills through these assignments and that they could be applied to their own historical work as well as other disciplines.
The “Concentrates of Place” and “Location Biography” assignments gave students the opportunity to explore, research, and demonstrate their proficiency in geographic concepts using a specific geographic location. Students used the Image Hotspots H5P content type to explain objects they selected for their tin. Students explained the concepts of location, space, and place within a Pressbook page for assessment. Students learned how to create embeddable Google maps to illustrate their locations. The websites created for the “Location Biography” allowed students to research change over time in a specific location and explore place meaning. The impact of using open pedagogy and Pressbooks in Introduction to Geography is clear. Fall 2020 and Fall 2021 both had a pass rate of 78.8%. With the addition of the “Concentrates of Place” assignment and semester-long focus on open pedagogy student success in Fall 2022 increased to 94.3%. This result is promising for future cohorts in this required course for early education majors and social studies majors and reveals that the addition of the H5P assignment did the work of scaffolding the “Location Biography” project and providing all students with the skills and confidence to complete these digital projects.
The assignment designs facilitated active engagement with course content and collaboration with each other, especially with the creation of the videos on student productions. Completion and success with the assignments was high when they were engaged with projects that had personal meaning to them, demonstrating that voice and choice are critical components of open pedagogy design. Introduction to new technologies and media resources are built on digital skills, which are valued in many careers and by future employers.
Bridges, C.A. (2023, January 27). What is ‘The 1619 Project’ and why has Gov. DeSantis banned it from Florida schools? The Daytona Beach News-Journal. https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/education/2023/01/27/1619-project-hulu-why-are-republican-states-banning-it-in-schools/69847374007/
DeRosa, R., & Jhangiani, R. (2017). Open pedagogy. In E. Mays (Ed.), A guide to making open textbooks with students. The Rebus Community for Open Textbook Creation. https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/chapter/open-pedagogy/
Harel, I., & Papert, S. (1991). Constructionism: research reports and essays, 1985-1990. Ablex Pub. Corp.
Mitchell, C. (2014). Theatrical worlds. University Press of Florida. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/242
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Russell-Brown, K. (2022). ‘The Stop WOKE Act': HB 7, race, and Florida's 21st century anti-literacy campaign. UF Law Faculty Publications, 1203. 26. https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub/1203
Stanford History Education Group. (2023, July 31). Reading like a historian. Stanford History Education Group. https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-lessons?f%5B0%5D=topic%3A7#main-content#main-content
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U.S. Census Bureau. (2021). Poverty in the United States: 2021 (Report Number P60-277). https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.html
Dr. Bernd received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Theater History and is an Associate College Lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Cleveland State University. She teaches Introduction to Theatre, Theatre History, Script Analysis and Dramaturgy. A staunch advocate of open and hybrid pedagogy, she has worked with co-author Heather Caprette to create resources that eliminate textbooks in THE111, saving students over $25,000 annually.
Dr. Rose received her Ph.D. from Binghamton University and is Associate Professor and Director of Social Studies in the Department of History at Cleveland State University. Her research interests include digital humanities, pedagogy, protest movements, and gender history. She is a cofounder of the Cleveland Teaching Collaborative.
Heather Caprette, M.F.A. works as a Sr. Media Developer/Instructional Designer in CSU Online at Cleveland State University. She works with faculty on the design and development of open educational resources, and open pedagogy assignments. She also helps faculty design online courses that meet Quality Matters standards.
Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.