It feels a bit strange to be writing about Open Pedagogy now, a week into CUNY’s (and most other colleges’ and universities’) pivot to emergency distance learning amid the global pandemic that is COVID-19.  I admit that thinking about pedagogy, especially changing the way I teach, is not high on the list right now, when my mind is full of getting through the classes I have this semester, making sure I don’t lose any students, worrying about my health and my family, wondering about what is all going to happen, when diagnoses and fatalities mount daily and policies change by the hour.   (I’m sure these concerns are shared by many, in this fellowship and beyond it). But the show must go on, if it can go on in a socially-distanced, work from home kind of way, which this fellowship can, so we will all do our best.  

As I’ve been exploring Open Pedagogy for the past few semesters, I’m a bit ahead of the curve of the rest of the fellows in this cohort.  I can say, that so far, having more student choice and agency in my classes has been an extraordinary improvement. Yes, there are some bumps- it so happens that my biggest experiment to date with incorporating student agency and choice just happens to be this semester, where everything has gone, at best, sideways because of the pandemic.  I can say that because student choice, agency, and flexibility were already baked into my course design and syllabus, the adjustment to turning my courses into emergency-distance-learning was fairly easy- made blogging a mandatory adventure (so the requirement of weekly student work was met, and we could develop a bit of community by reading each others’ work), revised or removed all assignments that had required leaving the house, and I was done.  I also reiterated that all assignments (except their exams) would be self-graded, and that all due dates are flexible given everything that was going on. In only a week so far, I’m happy to say the flexibility has worked well. I have to keep repeating it, and replying to emails with it, but it feels good to be able to tell students, especially now, don’t stay up late to finish my work- get a good night’s sleep for your health, and do a good job on the work when you have time.  It’s so much better than previous semesters, which is really remarkable- given everything going on, for anything to be going as well as previously, let alone better, is magical. I’m going to savor that, while I read and comment on students blogs, and enjoy reading their memes (which I’ve always enjoyed in previous semesters, but now get to really enjoy, as I am mostly simply transfering their self-grade to the gradebook in Blackboard).  

In all of this, I am definitely conflating, and possibly even conflagrating, OER, Open Pedagogy, the Pedagogy of Care, and Ungrading into one jumbled mess.  I’ll use Catherine Cronin’s broader term to name my jumble “Open Educational Practices.”  In extraordinary times, which these certainly are, all we can do is try to do the best we can, so that’s what I’ll keep trying to do.