All About oer and Renewable assignments
.png){kind=logo}
Examples, Advantages & Challenges
Examples of Renewable Assignments & Discussion about the Advantages and Challenges for Faculty and Students
Table of Contents
Click on a button to go to that section.
Introduction
The purpose of this module is for learners to:
-
Consider how they can incorporate renewable assignments into their curriculum
-
Be aware of the advantages and challenges associated with renewable assignments
Objectives
The objectives for this module are:
-
Review examples of renewable assignments
-
Discuss advantages & challenges of adopting renewable assignments
Knowledge Quiz
3 multiple-choice questions to see what you know so far.
Submit it to see how you did and get feedback.
Examples
This section introduces three renewable assignments.
Let's Consider the Following Scenario:
Karman Schad is a professor in the department of Health and Applied Physiology at Concordia University. She has taught at Concordia for many years. Although she would like to improve her pedagogy and design a better course assignment, she never finds the time to start. She also does not know quite where to start. In her time as a student, Karman only experienced traditional assignments like an essay or a presentation. She does not know what else she could get her students to do for an assignment.
​
She is also concerned about the amount of time a more engaging new assignment might take to grade. Karman struggles to do the bare minimum each semester as she must juggle too many competing priorities in her schedule. Karman finds it frustrating that her students are not more engaged with the course material. She is concerned that her students do not find the course material interesting or useful, but she is not sure how she can connect the course theories to more real-world examples.
How Could Karman Incorporate a Renewable Assignment?
-
Click on each of the three examples of renewable assignments
-
While reading, consider:
-
If the assignment meets the criteria of a renewable assignment​
-
How the assignment benefitted the students
-
Summary of the Three Renewable Assignment Examples
This table explains for each assignment:
-
The task
-
The goal
-
The benefits to students
Wrap-Up: How Could Karman Incorporate Renewable Assignments?
After reviewing the examples of renewable assignments, karman feels more confident that she can include one in her course. She realizes that it doesn’t have to be very complicated.
She could start by having them create an annotated bibliography for a particular topic. She feels this could help her students be more engaged creating work that matters to them and the world around them. She also feels that rather than throwing away a student's work, like an essay, after the course is finished, an annotated bibliography will benefit future students in the course.
She decides to modify a current renewable assignment, such as the annotated bibliography, as her first assignment. This way she can slowly start to introduce renewable assignments without feeling overwhelmed.
Advantages
This section introduces the benefits of renewable assignments for students and faculty
To read more, click on the title.
To read more, click on the title.
To read more, click on the title.
To read more, click on the title.
To read more, click on the title.
To read more, click on the title.
Renewable Assignments (RA) provide students with opportunities to:
-
Engage in meaningful work that adds value to the world
-
Create new knowledge and fill a gap in understanding
-
Address a pressing issue
-
Serve a community in need
-
Establish a foundation for future students to learn from and build upon
-
Transcend the traditional student-teacher relationship
-
Connect with their peers, university community, and global learning community
Supports Faculty Research & Career Development
The process of designing a renewable assignment can help you, as a faculty member:
-
Deepen your own understanding of the course material
-
Reassess the goals for your course and realign the course material according to those goals
-
Develop greater awareness of your pedagogical practices
-
Align your research activities with your teaching activities
-
Save time, effort, and money in creating instructional material for your courses
Empowers Students with Opportunity to View Themselves as Experts
Disposable Assignments
Tends to follow ‘banking approach’ in which knowledge is deposited into passive recipients without critical questioning
Renewable Assignments
Breaks the traditional student-teacher relationship to allow for active learning where students are active contributors and co-investigators
Imparts Important Knowledge and Skills
​Renewable Assignments have the potential to:
-
Maximize learning outcomes by addressing course content while also developing students’ broader disciplinary literacy skills
-
Fulfill the aims of critical pedagogical approaches that identify the relationships between people and the systems they exist in
-
Facilitate experiential learning as students engage in an iterative process of tinkering and experimentation
-
Provide an opportunity for students to observe the nuances and details involved in solving real-world problems
-
Help students develop media literacy skills that are increasingly becoming critical to their academic and professional achievement
Renewable Assignments Prepare Students in Ways That Disposable Assignments Cannot
Challenges
This section introduces the challenges for students and faculty.
To read more, click on the title.
To read more, click on the title.
To read more, click on the title.
Time Constraints
Finding an existing renewable assignment (RA) that could be used for your course or designing an entirely new RA is a very time-consuming process.
Publishing student work publicly and openly is not a straightforward process. Extra time may be needed to deal with:
-
Sensitive data that needs to be anonymised before publishing
-
Data that will not be easily understood by somebody who was not involved in the data collection process
-
Lack of standards for sharing research materials publicly and openly, competing standards can impede interoperability
-
Lack of clarity as to what complies with the laws, rules, and regulations when sharing data publicly in different jurisdictions
Resource constraints to consider when implementing renewable assignments (RA)
-
Costs associated with publishing and maintaining content in an open format
-
Technical expertise needed to publicly publish course content
-
Lack of availability and accessibility of existing RAs to revise/remix
Some additional constraints include
-
Difficulty introducing RA into rigid fields or departmental cultures
-
Lack of connections to communities or knowledge of real-world issues that students could feasibly address for RA
-
Poor quality student work that cannot be published publicly due to plagiarism, privacy breaches, or copyright issues
Public Sharing Constraints
Will I share openly?
Students need to decide whether to share openly
Who will I share with?
Friends, classmates, the instructor, colleagues, the public
Who will I share as?
Digital identity: as myself or as a pseudonym
Will I share this?
Students need to decide if this particular work will be shared openly
"This work "Discussion Flow" is a derivative of a figure taken from Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education by Catherine Cronin, used under the CC BY 4.0 International License. "Discussion Flow" is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 International License by Gabrielle Adam.
Students may not want to publish their work publicly due to privacy concerns, among other reasons.
Alternatives for students who are reluctant to publish their work publicly:
-
Publishing with a pseudonym
-
Publishing in a way that only other people in their class can see their work
-
Submitting the assignment only to the instructor or T.A.
-
DA alternative
Summary
Examples:
​
This lesson explained how three renewable assignments took three different approaches: creating an annotated bibliography, writing chapters for an information guide and creating multiple-choice questions for an open textbook. Students were positive about the projects and felt motivated creating questions that could possibly be included in their exams. All three assignments met the criteria of the four-part test for a renewable assignment. They were authentic material, provided value beyond the classroom, were shared publicly and were openly licensed.
​
Advantages and Challenges:
​
Renewable assignments foster greater student participation, engagement, intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation. Compared to disposable assignments, renewable assignments have the potential to add long-lasting value to the world outside of the classroom. By implementing renewable assignments, faculty members can improve their collaboration with students, pedagogical practices, understanding of course material, course design, and alignment with research activities. Faculty members might face time, resource, and public sharing constraints when attempting to implement a renewable assignment.
Assessment
10 Multiple-choice questions to test your knowledge.
You can scroll through the form and submit it to see how you did and get feedback.
Resources
.jpg)
References
Ashworth, J. (2016). A call to end single use, throw-away assignments. University Affairs. Retrieved from: https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/throw-away-assignments/
Axe, J., Childs, E., DeVries, I., & Webster, K. (2020). Student experiences of open educational practices: A systematic literature review. Journal of E-Learning and Knowledge Society, 16(4), 67-75. https://doi.org/10.20368/1971-8829/1135340
Bleichmar, F. (2018). Opening the door to OER. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2018/02/07/open-educational-resources-offer-exciting-possibilities-though
​
Elder, A. (2019). Introduction to Open Educational Resources. University of Regina. Retrieved from: https://opentextbooks.uregina.ca/oerstarterkit/chapter/introduction/
Gaines, A. (2018). Capitalism and the cost of textbooks: The possibilities of open source materials. In Teaching Economic Inequality and Capitalism in Contemporary America (pp. 257–266). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71141-6_22
Jhangiani, R. (2018, March 16). Why have students answer questions when they can write them? Open Pedagogy Notebook. Retrieved from: https://openpedagogy.org/assignment/why-have-students-answer-questions-when-they-can-write-them-by-rajiv-jhangiani/
Katz, S. & Van Allen, J. (n.d.). Evolving into the open: A framework for collaborative design of renewable assignments. Milne Library. Retrieved from: https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/openpedagogyapproaches/chapter/evolving-into-the-open-a-framework-for-collaborative-design-of-renewable-assignments/
Macdonald, M. (2021). Embracing development, sustainably. University Affairs. Retrieved from: https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/embracing-development-sustainably/
Magee, A. & Pherali, T. (2019). Freirean Critical Consciousness in a Refugee Context: a Case Study of Syrian Refugees in Jordan. Compare, 49(2), 266-82.
Northeastern University. (n.d.). Students as makers: Renewable assignments. Northeastern University. Retrieved from: https://learning.northeastern.edu/students-as-makers-renewable-assignments/
Scheliga, K., & Friesike, S. (2014). Putting open science into practice: A social dilemma? First Monday, 19(9).
Seraphin, S. B., Grizzell, J. A., Kerr-German, A., Perkins, M. A., Grzanka, P. R., & Hardin, E. E. (2019). A conceptual framework for non-disposable assignments: Inspiring implementation, innovation, and research. Psychology Learning & Teaching, 18(1), 84-97. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1475725718811711
Tugman, B. (2020, August 20). An Ecological Approach to Obesity and Eating Disorders. Open Pedagogy Notebook. Retrieved from: https://openpedagogy.org/course-level/an-ecological-approach-to-obesity-and-eating-disorders/
​
Van Leusen, P., Cunningham, J., & Johnson, D. P. (2020). Designing and teaching adaptive + active learning effectively. Current Issues in Emerging eLearning, 7(2), 1-18.
​
Veletsianos, G. (2017). How do faculty benefit from renewable assignments? BCcampus. Retrieved from: https://bccampus.ca/2017/12/12/how-do-faculty-benefit-from-renewable-assignments/
​
White, D. (2019, December 12). Students Creating a Shared Annotated Bibliography. Open Pedagogy Notebook. Retrieved from: https://openpedagogy.org/category/assignment/students-creating-a-shared-annotated-bibliography/
​
Wiley, D. (2016). Toward Renewable Assessments. Improving Learning. Retrieved from: https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/4691