Open Educational Practices: Opening the Learning
Open Educational Practices (OEP) are the teaching and learning approaches that emerge when openness moves beyond materials and into relationships, pedagogy, and power. OEP invite students and educators to co-create knowledge, make learning processes visible, and share work beyond the boundaries of a single course or term. This resources itself is a co-creation of knowledge with student employees of The Trent Teaching Commons: Najah Wardat, Darcy Culp, Prima Morakhia, and Johan Kevin Agatare.
At Trent, OEP align strongly with experiential learning, community-engaged learning, and relational approaches to teaching. They emphasize learning with students rather than for them. They recognize students as contributors, not just consumers.
If OER are about what we use, OEP are about how we learn together.
The Call: An Invitation to Act
Use Open Educational Practices to:
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Invite students into the work of knowledge creation
Shift from students demonstrating learning only for the instructor to creating work that has value beyond the course. -
Make learning processes visible
Emphasize drafts, reflection, feedback, and iteration not just final products. -
Share power, voice, and agency
Offer meaningful choices in topics, formats, audiences, or assessment pathways.
OEP is not about radical redesign. It can begin with one intentional moment of shared authorship.
Examples from Practice
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Students create openly licensed study guides, glossaries, or explainers for themselves and future classes.
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An assignment allows students to choose whether their work is shared publicly, shared privately, or kept personal.
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A class collaborates on a resource that connects course concepts to local, community, or Indigenous contexts.
In each case, openness is paired with care, consent, and choice.
Your Response: A Short Action Plan
Pause and reflect.
Where could students have more agency in one of your courses?
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Could an assignment invite more open creation?
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Could students choose their audience, medium, or level of openness?
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How might consent and flexibility be built in?
Below is just an empty space to envision your response. Feel free to keep track of your responses in your own way. You will be asked to make a short response in each chapter, so collecting them all in one space would be a very learner-centred thing for you to do for yourself!
My first OEP action will be:
(One moment of shared ownership is enough to begin.)
Looking Ahead: Connecting to the Next Chapter
This chapter focused on practice. What happens when openness shapes how learning unfolds? The next chapter will explore Open Assessment: how openness can support meaningful feedback, reflection, and evaluation without increasing risk or workload for students or instructors. It will be less about being open to the world, and more about open with each other in our own course environments.
If OER open materials and OEP open learning, assessment is where openness must be handled with the most care.
Deep Dive: Learn More About OEP
Introduction to Open Educational Practices (University of Saskatchewan Pressbooks) is a freely accessible, comprehensive guide to Open Educational Practices that breaks down what OEP are, why they matter, and how to engage in them.
Why this resource?
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Offers a clear, structured overview of Open Educational Practices (OEP) from fundamentals to examples and planning activities.
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Connects OEP to equity, access, Indigenization, and decolonization in learning and teaching.
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Includes practical sections on copyright and open licensing, finding and creating OER, and planning open pedagogy activities.
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Provides a multi-author perspective grounded in real teaching contexts and community engagement.
This resource is an excellent foundation for educators new to open practice as well as those wanting to deepen their implementation of OEP.
