Breaking Open: Defining a Student-Centered Pedagogy

Abstract

Librarians at the Graduate Center at CUNY (City University of New York) used state OER funding to create an Open Pedagogy Fellowship for graduate students who were teaching as adjuncts in undergraduate classes. Following a competitive application process, the fellows accepted into the program were introduced to open resources and strategies for innovative pedagogy at an intensive four-day OER boot camp and an end-of-year symposium. The fellows were challenged to implement “open” in their field of study, supported by librarians and educational technologists on the creation of course sites, and charged to migrate their syllabi to OER. Toronto-based scholar Clelia Rodríguez served as inspiration and symposium keynote speaker for the program, which was a response to decolonial and critical pedagogies, race/diversity in the New York City educational system, and inclusivity as it pertains to scholarship.