New to the SCN: Open Pedagogy in Practice: A Primer for Librarians

This is the latest post in a series announcing resources created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, or SCN. The SCN is a hub of open teaching and learning content on scholcomm topics that is both a complement to an open book-level introduction to scholarly communication librarianship and a disciplinary and course community for inclusively sharing models and practices. IMLS funded the SCN in 2019, permitting us to pay creators for their labor while building a solid initial collection. These works are the result of one of three calls for proposals (our first CFP was issued in fall 2020; the second in late spring ‘21, and the third in late fall 2021).

Today we’re excited to share “Open Pedagogy in Practice: A Primer for Librarians” (available via Pressbooks and in the SCN OER Commons Hub). This work was created by Lindsey Gumb and Mandi Goodsett to help librarians and LIS students understand perspectives from teaching faculty (via podcast interviews with them) and proposing an adaptable lesson plan for implementing open pedagogy in library instruction. Here they are to introduce Open Pedagogy in Practice:

As faculty interest and knowledge of open educational resources have increased over the last several years, so has their interest in involving students in the creation and revision processes of these free resources. As librarians and faculty navigate this new and exciting path together, all parties should be mindful of examining the needs of our students as they begin their own exciting journeys as open scholars.

In this support primer, you’ll find a collection of podcast interviews, as well as one-shot lesson plans for librarians or faculty who are exploring open pedagogy in the classroom. Mandi’s podcast series of faculty interviews will be helpful for other faculty seeking to learn more about their peers’ experiences with open pedagogy, but librarians will also benefit from hearing first hand perspectives so they can better understand the necessary support librarians might provide. The one-shot lesson plans are intended to assist academic librarians tasked with supporting faculty embarking on open pedagogy projects; however, we recognize that it often takes a village, and individuals in other roles will also benefit from these (adaptable) lesson plans.

We hope that the community will not only learn from this support primer but that it will expand upon it and transform it into something even better than we could have ever imagined! We’d love to hear from you if you have feedback or suggestions for us; contact us at a.goodsett[at]csuohio.edu or lgumb[at]rwu.edu.

About the Authors

Mandi Goodsett (she/her) is the Performing Arts & Humanities Librarian, as well as the Open Educational Resource & Copyright Advisor, at Cleveland State University. She serves as an OhioLINK Affordable Learning Ambassador and an instructor for the Open Education Network OER Librarianship Certification. Her research interests include open education, critical thinking in library instruction, mentoring new professionals, and sustainability in libraries. In her free time Mandi loves cooking, playing board games with friends, and enjoying the outdoors of Northeast Ohio.

Lindsey Gumb is an Associate Professor and Scholarly Communications Librarian at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, and she also serves as the Open Education Fellow at the New England Board of Higher Education in Boston, Massachusetts. With an active interest in the intersections of information literacy, open education, and critical librarianship, Lindsey works with faculty on her campus and region-wide to push the awareness of open education from a cost-savings tool to be more inclusive of pedagogies that allow for opportunities to create systemic changes in more representative and equitable information creation, evaluation, and access. She resides in Rhode Island with her family and together they enjoy the beach, hiking, gardening, and their animals.