Practicing What We Preach: Doing Open Pedagogy in a Book About Open Pedagogy

Tiffani Tijerina, Texas Tech University and Kennesaw State University

In a meeting with the advisory board for this first volume of Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice, members of the board suggested working with students to design our cover page. I loved the idea—we all did! So, we turned it into our own open pedagogy project. I knew that my department at Kennesaw State University had an undergraduate major in interactive design, so I reached out to find out who was teaching our visual design course. I was excited to learn that my friend, colleague, and fellow Texas Tech University alumna Dr. Leslie Hankey was teaching the course in the following semester. I reached out to her, she agreed that it was a good opportunity for her students, and we hammered out some details. In this section I want to share how this project worked, followed by a display of all submitted designs for the cover of Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice.

Matching Our Needs to the Course Requirements

One of the important things to keep in mind when designing an open pedagogy assignment is that it has to fit the course needs and the course design. So, the first thing Leslie and I did was identify where the project could fit in the course and whether it was a good fit. She sent me her second course project, which would normally ask students to design a poster influenced by the Bauhaus school of art and design, which aligned with the content they studied in class during that time. We both agreed that our cover design project was a good fit for this, so she re-designed the assignment so that students were designing our front and back covers instead of a poster. To provide a bit of context on the design style, “[t]he Bauhaus movement championed a geometric, abstract style featuring little sentiment or emotion and no historical nods, and its aesthetic continues to influence architects, designers, and artists” (History, 2018).

Once we identified a good spot for the project in her course, Leslie set me up to present on the project to her classes, where I gave them all of the information they needed on the book and our requirements, which I’ll summarize in the following section. A key piece to making these kinds of project work, though, is to separate the assignment and grading aspect from the publication aspect. Leslie gave her students their assignment requirements, and I gave them our project requirements. The two pieces worked together, but I never saw students grades on the assignment, and students were not required to submit their work to us for publication—it was entirely their decision to make, and we did our best to make sure they were able to make a fully informed decision.

Project Requirements, as Given to Students

In this section, I’ll provide an outline of the information given to the students about the publication side of this project. All of the following information was provided in a live presentation and in a slideshow given to students for review—they were also offered the opportunity to ask questions and to email me if they needed anything.

About the Book/the Team

Edited collection: seven author teams/seven papers related to open pedagogy

Types of papers:

Team: editor (me), University of North Georgia Press, five advisory board members, seven author teams, and student designers (you!)

Format: free e-book and at-cost print

Definitions

Open Pedagogy – teaching and learning practices and environments that promote equity, collaboration, and innovation and invite students to create and share knowledge with future publics, often in association with the use of open educational resources (OER).

Open Educational Resources – educational materials that are freely available under an open license that allows the user to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the work and any derivative works, typically through the use of Creative Commons licensing or the public domain.

Sample Titles from the Work

About the Project

You will design a front and back cover for the book, following design standards from Dr. Hankey and your course content.

Design submission: if you want to be considered for publication, you will email your design to me (more on that later).

Design selection: the editor (me) and the UNG Press will select one cover for the book. All others submitted for consideration will have front covers published within the book on a dedicated series of pages with the designer’s name below each cover. So, it’s a guaranteed publishing opportunity!

Project Requirements

Front and back covers, no spine.

Dimensions: 6" by 9" plus a 0.25" bleed on all sides (each)

Outsourced images must carry a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY) or exist in the public domain (no copyright). Suggested repository for openly licensed images: unsplash.com

Front covers need title and editor lines:

Back covers should complement front cover and include the book description:

Open pedagogy is teaching and learning practices and environments that promote equity, collaboration, and innovation and invite students to create and share knowledge with future publics, often in association with the use of open educational resources (OER).

Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice seeks to advance the study of open and innovative pedagogy through the belief that their impact and reach are increased by research on and analysis of the theory and practice of open pedagogy across the disciplines and via multiple modalities.

In this first volume of Pedagogy Opened, seven author teams explore and share their work with open pedagogy in a variety of ways, including through research, practice, and autoethnographic reflection.

Copyright for the Project

You are not required to submit your design for consideration, and your instructor will grade your work separately.

If you do choose to submit your design to Pedagogy Opened, by doing so you are also agreeing to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which is explained below.

Submission Guidelines

You are not required to submit your design for consideration/publication. Assignment grading will be done independent of publication submission, by your professor.

To submit for consideration/publication, send your design to pedagogyopened@gmail.com and copy Dr. Hankey. Include the following in your email:

  1. Your design exported to .jpg
  2. Any fonts used in the design
  3. Sources for any images used, including links (even if they are public domain)
  4. Your preferred publishing name

Open Licensing

Because we are publishing content about open pedagogy and open educational resources, Pedagogy Opened will carry an open license itself.

“Open” licensing means that you keep your copyright ownership, but you are giving up-front permissions for users to use your work openly with attribution to you.

Typically, this means that users can retain (keep copies of the work), reuse (use the work), revise (change the work), remix (combine the work with other open works), and redistribute (publish any derivative works based on your work) as long as the user attributes back to you and your original work.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Creative Commons makes open licensing easy.

Pedagogy Opened will carry a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license has no additional restrictions of use beyond basic attribution.

Your designs, if you submit them to us for consideration and publication, will carry the same license, with you retaining your copyright. So if someone comes in and uses your design, they will have to attribute back to you (the designer), your design (the original work), and Pedagogy Opened (original publication).

References

History. (2018, August 21). Bauhaus. The History Channel. Retrieved December 16, 2023 from https://www.history.com/topics/art-history/bauhaus

Cover Design Submissions

Without further ado, the following are all cover designs submitted to Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice for consideration. All students consented to publication of their work and name, and all designs are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

The present book cover designed by Sidney Alexander
Sidney Alexander

A book cover designed by Abby Almond
Abby Allmond

A book cover designed by Jack Burns
Jack Burns

A book cover designed by Caitlynn Campbell
Caitlynn Campbell

A book cover designed by Kaitlyn Carlsen
Kaitlyn Carlsen

A book cover designed by Angela Chude
Angela Chude

A book cover designed by Logan B. Cooper
Logan B. Cooper

A book cover designed by Eileen Dong
Eileen Dong

A book cover designed by Riya George
Riya George

A book cover designed by Madelyn Grimes
Madelyn Grimes

A book cover designed by Aysha Hardizi
Aysha Hardizi

A book cover designed by Sha'mari Hightower
Sha'mari Hightower

A book cover designed by Isatou Kijera
Isatou Kijera

A book cover designed by Hazel Kim
Hazel Kim

A book cover designed by Savannah Kramer
Savannah Kramer

A book cover designed by Katherine Lanham
Katherine Lanham

A book cover designed by Hayoung Lee
Hayoung Lee

A book cover designed by Mekhyle Lee
Mekhyle Lee

A book cover designed by Elle Nuckolls
Elle Nuckolls

A book cover designed by Max Ray
Max Ray

A book cover designed by Scott Rzasa
Scott Rzasa

A book cover designed by Joy Weatherly
Joy Weatherly

A book cover designed by Matthew Williams
Matthew Williams

A book cover designed by Reagan Yost
Reagan Yost

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Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.