Affordances, challenges, and impact of open pedagogy: examining students’ voices

Open pedagogy has emerged as an important teaching and learning practice while the current global open education resources movement has developed. The present research addresses the need to develop and conceptualize open pedagogy models in higher education contexts. This case study examined student perspectives on the affordances, challenges, and impact of an open pedagogy approach implemented within the context of three higher education courses. Various renewable assignments were integrated into face-to-face, blended, and online courses. Data sources consisted of reflection reports and semi-structured interviews conducted with 13 student participants. The qualitative analysis revealed six themes that conceptualized student engagement with open pedagogy: content curation, peer feedback, community engagement, development, reflection, and scaffolding. We discuss the impact of these practices on the participating students’ knowledge and awareness of open access and student agency. The results present an open pedagogy in action model with recommendations for future research and practice.