United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellowship | Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. The creation, adaptation, and adoption of OER supports equitable access to education.

Open pedagogy may be understood as an access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education. An increasingly popular form of open pedagogy involves the design and use of renewable assignments. Renewable assignments (also known as non-disposable assignments) are those that add value to a student's world, live outside of the boundaries and beyond the duration of the course, and are likely to have a lasting impact.  Disposable assignments, on the other hand, are those that only the instructor and students will see and which students are likely to throw away once they have been graded (Seraphin et al., 2019; Wiley, 2013).

Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) and Montgomery College (MC) in Montgomery County, Maryland (U.S.A.) are committed to supporting social justice through this international partnership in which faculty and students can work across institutions to maximize global impact. The conceptual framework on which this fellowship is based is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), which is a set of 17 goals that address a wide range of social issues, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and peace and justice.  The SDGs are designed to achieve and maintain social justice and a sustainable future, with a target of the year 2030 set for the attainment of each goal.

UN SDG Open Pedagogy Fellowship

This fellowship is designed to assist faculty with creating renewable assignments (all of which will carry a Creative Commons license) to help students become agents of change in their own communities.  Each fellowship team (which will include at least one faculty member from KPU and one faculty member from MC) will design three renewable assignments during the Summer semester.  A minimum of two renewable assignments will be deployed in the classes of each fellowship team during the subsequent academic year.  Faculty are expected to present to the KPU community at appropriate venues (e.g., Teaching, Learning, Scholarship, & Research Symposium) on their renewable assignments. A student showcase will take place during the Spring semester in which a select number of students present on how they improved their communities and achieved global justice through the UN SDG framework.

It is anticipated that 2 applications will be selected per year for the UN SDG Open Pedagogy Fellowship, which includes training and support from the Office of Open Education along with a grant of CDN$1000 that may be used to hire one or more student assistants. Open Pedagogy Fellows will be required to attend a kick-off meeting and three additional meetings throughout the summer.