Introduction

In this chapter, I will share the story of my doctoral dissertation study, including the context that led me to my research question, a brief summary of the findings, and how those findings may inform your own teaching and researching practices. The dissertation is available on Athabasca University’s DTheses website, a digital repository for theses and dissertations produced by AU graduate students.

My First Steps into Truth and Reconciliation Education

I’m a person of mixed Euro-Canadian and Algonquin Anishinaabe ancestry. I’ve been teaching at the postsecondary level for 15 years, and I also have a background in instructional design. My focus areas are reconciliation education, decolonization in the academy, technology-enabled pedagogies, and open education.

Ten years ago, I was invited to lead the design of an Indigenous Studies course titled Truth and Reconciliation. The course was intended to be delivered asynchronously online and would be available to all of the students studying at the College of Applied Arts and Technology where I teach, as it would be an elective option in all programs. As I sat with my Dean as they made this request, I remember feeling incredibly humbled by the opportunity, and also incredibly daunted by the immense responsibility.

My Dean helped me see that my passion for decolonization education and my advanced knowledge of online teaching and learning made me a strong fit for the project, suggesting that my reservations underscored that I’d be a good fit for the task. They encouraged me to give it a shot, so I did, and I threw my whole self into the work: mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally.

I’d supported several Indigenous colleagues with their course designs in the past, and so I reached out to these same Anishinaabe-kwe (Indigenous women) to help me develop this new course. We’d eat, visit, and eventually turn our attention toward the development and design of the Truth and Reconciliation course. I’m grateful to these women as they helped me to see my own gifts and shared theirs with me so generously. The kweok helped me to reframe the course in my own mind, anchoring to the fact that this course was one about settler colonial harm, not cultural instruction, and helped me see I could teach from a place of truth and integrity. Encouraged by their guidance and affirmed by a beloved Elder, I continued to pour myself into the project, committed to creating a learning experience that honours truth and empowers students to find their voices and take meaningful action in allyship and advocacy.

Ten Years Later

Jump ahead a decade, and I’ve now taught the course many, many times. Hundreds of students have passed through. I’ve also shared the course with other faculty colleagues, who take my online course as a starting point and add their own personal touches to it. We also have a degree-level equivalent of the course that I teach in-person to students in various degree programs. It’s been a wonderful experience, but it’s also challenging to witness students’ grief as they learn about Canada’s true history, the promises that have been made, and, tragically, the promises that have been under-delivered on and/or completely broken.

However challenging, this is sacred work. I continue to endeavour to teach these courses in a way that acknowledges my settler positionality and the unearned privileges this affords me, while also honouring my Algonquin Anishinaabe ancestry and knowledge traditions by centering relationality, embracing complexity and plurality, acknowledging that learning is experienced holistically, incorporating Anishinaabemowin language into the course experience, and by storying our learning. As we come to know each other and share our perspectives and experiences, many students describe profound shock and sadness at Canada’s historical and contemporary treatment of Indigenous persons. Many students ask why they are first encountering this important learning in their postsecondary curricula as an optional General Education course.

Incorporating OER-Enabled Pedagogy

Right from the first iteration of the course, I knew I wanted to include some form of open pedagogy. I’d been engaged in open education practices for a few years and immediately saw the value of applying open pedagogy principles to the Truth and Reconciliation course. I wanted students to take this learning and actually do something with it, something that could have a positive impact in the real world and allow students to find their own voices in this important and ongoing conversation about colonial harm, effective allyship, and the complexities and contradictions inherent within the term reconciliation. Students in the course learn difficult yet important truths about Canada’s colonial past and present. They learn about the residential school experiences and the policies that supported this system of cultural genocide. They learn about key concepts such as terra nullius, the Doctrine of Discovery, and intergenerational trauma. By the end of the course, they are more knowledgeable than most persons living in Canada on these important subjects. I want to help empower students to share their knowledge in ways that fit for them.

So, toward the end of the semester, I invite students to select one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 Calls to Action, provide historical context to help an imagined audience of secondary and postsecondary students understand the need for the call to action, research progress on the Call to Action from a variety of Indigenous and non-Indigenous sources, provide comparative and critical commentary, then ultimately celebrate grassroots efforts in support of their chosen Call to Action. Their projects end with students’ own unique calls to action which invite their imagined audience to learn more and get involved.

Depending on students’ preferences for sharing, their final projects have the potential to meet the criteria for renewable assignments, also referred to as Open Educational Resource-Enabled Pedagogy (OER-EP). Renewable assignments are typically described in opposition to their counterpart, the disposable assignment. Where disposable assignments are created for an audience of one, usually the course professor, to be read through quickly, awarded some degree of commentary and a grade, and then essentially “disposed of,” renewable assignments are designed in such a way that the labour involved in their making has the potential to benefit a broader audience, usually through open, public sharing.

In the Truth and Reconciliation course, students are invited (but not required) to publish their final projects on a public-facing website we co-created called Nàbowàdjige: Our Calls to Action. If they decide to share their work on the website, they make specific choices related to authorship and licensing. Students can opt to share their work anonymously, pseudonymously, or eponymously. They’re invited to select from a range of licenses, ranging from All Rights Reserved to CC-BY. They also have a wide degree of choice in the format of their final projects, ranging from more traditional academic papers, to visual presentations, audio clips, videos, or a mix of media.

Studying Learners’ Experiences with OER-EP

I’d been teaching the Truth and Reconciliation course for a few years when it came time to select a research project for my doctoral dissertation study. At the time, many semantic debates were circling around the terms renewable assignment, OER-EP, and open pedagogy broadly. Wiley and Hilton (2018) conclude their article titled Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy with this specific call: “We need to spend time in these early years of researching OER-enabled pedagogy specifically investigating the value students and faculty find in doing this work, how motivating or engaging they find it, and how it can be improved” (p. 144). Hilton et al. (2019) expanded on this call, requesting that researchers focus “on a limited set of pedagogies (preferably one instantiation of open pedagogy) to help grow the corpus of knowledge related to open pedagogical practices” (p. 283). Others, including DeRosa and Jhangiani (2017), Paskevicius and Irvine (2019), and Bali, Cronin, and Jhangiani (2020) expressed similar calls to action.

Given this context, researching students’ experiences of OER-EP within the Truth and Reconciliation course felt like a natural fit, and, bonus, I really cared to learn about their experiences. Ultimately, my dissertation leveraged an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach, supported by an Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing) epistemology, to analyze one central and guiding research question:

How do students enrolled in a college Truth and Reconciliation course experience the creation of a renewable assignment?

As learners decided how to respond to this invitation toward openness, they engaged in complex decision making related to their potential audience, ownership, vulnerability, and voice. Seven former Truth and Reconciliation offered me their perspectives on the experience of participating in the renewable assignment through semi-structured interviews. These conversations, supported by the IPA analytic process, and the helper Maang (loon), brought forward many truths that helped me to better appreciate the invitation to openness from learners’ perspectives. For educators and helpers working with OER-EP and open pedagogies broadly, these findings raise important questions, including:

• How can we align open pedagogiees with broader social justice aims?
• How can we avoid openness essentialism and support students in nuanced decision making related to openness?
• How can we support learners in creating high quality, media-rich OER that met the accessibility needs of a broad audience?

In the following sections, I’ll recount how I leveraged IPA to analyze the study data, and how an Etuaptmumk approach led me down a path of authentic meaning-making that honours Western and Anishinaabe ways of knowing, holding space for the multiple worldviews that form who I am as a person, as an educator, a researcher, and a student of life.

Methodology and Methods: Etuaptmumk and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis in Practice

In my Canadian academic context, doctoral dissertation studies typically involve two major milestones: the first milestone happens when a student successfully defends their research proposal, which generally includes an introduction to the study, a review of literature, and a detailed methods section that describes exactly what the student researcher intends to study and how. The research proposal basically includes everything up to the point of data collection. If the student is successful in their proposal defence, they become a doctoral candidate and can proceed with research ethics applications, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and a final defence.

As I drafted my proposal, I knew I needed to root the study in a methodology that not only supported rigorous qualitative inquiry but also aligned with my personal and cultural ways of knowing. I didn’t want to erase my Algonquin ancestors or my true motivations related to the Truth and Reconciliation course and the subsequent study, but I also didn’t want to pretend to be some kind of expert in Indigenous research methods. As the first author in this study, as the sole person who decided on the research question, it just didn’t seem appropriate to try to fit an Indigenous methodological approach into this very colonial research model. It all felt so colonial, frankly.

And yet… just as my Algonquin heritage called me to the design and delivery of the Truth and Reconciliation course, so did it call me to try to engage in this work in an authentic way that didn’t silence or hide my cultural connections. I needed to bring the mix forward in an authentic way, without overstating my cultural connections or engaging in pretendianism. I wanted to bring Anishinaabe and Western knowledge systems into conversation on the pages of my dissertation in the same ways that they were in conversation in my mind and heart as I engaged in this work. Etuaptmumk offered me a path forward, though perhaps not a perfect one.

Etuaptmumk

Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing) is a Míkmawísimk term brought forward by Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall. It is a concept that involves “learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing” (Bartlett et al., 2012, p. 335). While Etuatmumk studies are increasing in popularity, some are critical of the approach, cautioning against extractive, superficial, and tokenistic applications of deep Indigenous knowledges, the reinforcement of existing power hierarchies, and a potential loss of cultural specificity when applying a Mi’kmaw concept in a pan-Indigenous way. Dr. Amy Shawanda, keynoting Laurentian University’s (2024) Maamwizing Indigenous Research Conference, cautioned that the widespread adoption of the approach has, at times, robbed Etuaptmumk of its deeper significance, diminishing its transformative potential and leading to misapplications that offer little more than a methodological buzzword. She advised the researchers in the room to articulate their own understandings of dual perspectives rather than extracting from Mi’kmaw cultural understandings and offered the Anishinaabemowin term nishwaabing as a potential starting place (Shawanda, 2024). I’m grateful for Dr. Shawanda’s critical feedback and I’ll carry her advice forward in my future research activities. However, since I referred to Etuaptmumk throughout my dissertation, I’ll continue to do so here.

From the very beginning of my study, Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing) was present as both an epistemological commitment and an ethical guide. It offered me a framework through which to braid Anishinaabe teachings with the academic traditions of qualitative research. This did not mean simply placing one beside the other, but engaging deeply with the tensions, contradictions, and insights that came forward. Dual perspectives shaped my review of literature, helped to form the guiding research question, helped me to consider ethical relationality with those who shared their perspectives and experiences with me, and of course, guided the analysis.

Etuaptmumk reminded me that multiple truths coexist, and articulating the contradictions, complexities, and colonial silences is fertile ground for critical analysis, but one must proceed with caution. For me, Etuaptmumk was not an act of celebrating both Western and Anishinaabe worldviews in a neutral manner. Rather, Etuaptmumk provided a critical space whereby Anishinaabe cultural perspectives could empower the critique of dominant Western narratives.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Now, back to my research question and the crossroads I found myself at. I knew I wanted to learn more about students’ experiences with OER-EP in the Truth and Reconciliation course, and I knew that the Etuaptmumk epistemology would decolonize the work by making space for Anishinaabe voices, perspectives, ways of knowing, and cultural values related to open knowledge sharing, but what next? I had to find a methodology that fit my purpose. Since my focus was on participant experience and sense-making, and I didn’t have any hypothesis or theory that I was trying to test, I concluded that a qualitative, inductive approach would be the most appropriate paradigm for my study.

Holding space for learners’ shared experiences is rooted in the same spirit of respect and agency that undergirds open pedagogical practices generally, as well as the Anishinaabe concept of minwaadendamowin (respect), which calls us to get to know someone or something on a deeper level than surface impressions. The coinciding and complementary epistemologies of interpretivist inquiry, open educational practices including OER-EP, and Anishinaabe gikendaasowin (knowledge) cradled the inquiry, and an Etuaptmumk approach enabled an exploration of the epistemic divergences and tensions that exist within these core concepts.

I selected Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) because it is deeply attuned to individual experience and is particularly well-suited to research questions focused on how people make sense of significant life events. IPA emphasizes lived experience, acknowledges complexity, and embraces researcher interpretation. I wanted to include myself in the study. I wanted to write in the first person and be explicit about the role I would play in the meaning-making process. IPA’s idiographic commitment, which begins with detailed analysis of individual cases before moving to more abstract group-level themes, felt appropriate given the personal, often emotional nature of the learner experiences I was engaging with. It seemed to me that the IPA approach was a well-established qualitative research methodology with a clearly defined analytic process, while also allowing researchers some latitude in how they would personally apply the method. However, an IPA question should also inquire about an experience that held meaning for participants. Before I started my data collection, I worried that participants wouldn’t care about or remember their final capstone projects enough to meet this requirement. I was so wonderfully wrong about this!

IPA data collection is typically conducted through semi-structured interviews, and my study held to this norm. The semi-structured nature of the discussion allows for flexibility. The tone can be conversational, responsive, but also purposeful. It made space for participants to share as much or as little as they chose about their motivations, intentions, and reflections related to their renewable assignments. Many described powerful learning moments. Others discussed the careful thinking that went into decisions about licensing, audience, and anonymity. These reflections helped to illuminate the nuanced considerations that accompany the invitation to share one’s work openly and publicly, especially when the content intersects with personal or cultural identity and social justice broadly.

As a novice researcher, I was very concerned with getting the interviews wrong somehow. I was concerned with sticking too closely to my Interview Guide (the interview questions approved by the Research Ethics Boards that reviewed my study prior to data collection). I was also concerned that I might miss opportunities to probe for additional information, but I also didn’t want to ask leading follow up questions. It was a lot to hold in my mind at once, and I was a nervous wreck when the first interview started. But then, there was one of my wonderful former students who I’d worked so closely with. Even though the course was taught asynchronously, she was deeply invested in her work, and we’d met over Zoom several times over the course of the semester. I felt myself relax. The interview went well, not perfectly, but well, as did the remaining six interviews. My anxiety was replaced with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude toward the learners and all that they offered to the study.

The remainder of the IPA process was time-consuming but fairly straightforward. I leaned heavily on my supervisor, Dr. Dianne Conrad, for guidance and support, participated in a few virtual IPA workshops, and referred often to two comprehensive IPA guides as I worked through the process. These guides were Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (2009) by Smith, Flowers, and Larkin, and Essentials of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (2022). I recently described the entire analytic process in detail at the Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN)’s Tenth Member Research Special. The session would be helpful to open researchers interested in adopting an IPA approach to their studies.

The Maang Oshkaabewis

The Etuaptmumk approach helped to guide the review of literature by offering critical perspectives on whose voices are centered, what forms of knowledge are valued, and how open education has historically been framed without due attention to cultural context, colonial histories, or relational responsibilities. However, I feel the true gift of dual perspectives occurred when I embarked on the cross-case analysis and met the Maang Oshkaabewis, the Loon helper who guided me from that point forward.

After many months of idiographic analysis, that is, analyzing each interview transcript in a stand-alone manner, I began the cross-case analysis phase of the IPA process on a warm summer evening. I had created seven mind maps based on the seven conversations I had experienced with the former Truth and Reconciliation students. I printed out those mind maps, then cut out each and every data point on them, eventually arriving at seven little stacks of paper. I placed the seven clusters beside a wooden turtle, a symbol of debwewin (truth), and offered semaa (tobacco), asking for help accessing the truths shared by my participants.

I then placed all seven stacks of paper together into one container. I shook the container seven times and poured everything out onto my kitchen counter. Seven individual accounts had now become one collective whole.

I started grouping and regrouping the mess of papers into related clusters. I kept telling myself, “Just do it! Don’t overthink it.” As the word clusters grew and changed, I heard the call of a loon, clear and close. This helped me to recall a dream I had the night prior. In the dream, I was swimming in the middle of a lake and a loon surfaced right next to me, looking at me with beautiful red eyes.

As I continued to group and regroup participants’ data, I started thinking about some of the loon teachings that have been shared with me, and the connections between those stories and the stories study participants had offered. I continued to group and regroup my data as the hours passed. The loon continued to call out intermittently.

Finally, I took a step back and reviewed the resulting word clusters. I listened for the loon’s messages, but they had fallen silent. I took a deep breath and knew that I was looking at the four group experiential themes and nine subordinate themes. I also knew that the loon and related Anishinaabe teachings must inform my subsequent sensemaking. When helpers visit, it is essential to take notice. For the Anishinaabe, these are not coincidences. I had been visited by a helper spirit, Maang, and the path ahead of me felt clear.

Maang and Meaning

One of the predominant themes that came forward was the deep meaning and significance that learners placed in participating in the OER-EP project. Study participants framed the significance of their participation in the OER-EP project based on their lived experiences, intrinsic motivations, and emotional reactions to their learning. Their personal connections functioned as a metaphorical North Star, a beacon that guided and motivated them as they navigated various technological challenges and overcame personal insecurities to eventually arrive at their ultimate goals for their projects.

As I sat with these stories, and remembered the emotion in the students’ voices as they told me how much they cared about the course, their projects, and speaking up to share truths related to Canada’s colonial past and present, I was reminded of an Ojibwe star teaching that a dear colleague, James Tregonning (Woonowin We’iingaans), Montagnais, generously shared with me based on stories that were gifted to him by a friend from the Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation (James Tregonning, personal communication, November 10, 2022). Some of the stories that James shared with me included the Maang constellation and the stars that comprise it.

James explained that where the Western world sees the Little Dipper, the Anishinaabe see the Maang constellation. The North Star, known to the Western world as Polaris, holds many Anishinaabe names depending on region, including Ojiig’anung, Giiwiidin Anang, and Wiċaḣhpi Owaŋjila (Vukelich, 2018). James’s teachings place Ojiig’anung on the tail feathers of the Maang constellation. Therefore, the Maang constellation is often drawn in the middle of the Ojibwe Star Maps, with Ojiig’anung placed at the very center.

I asked myself, what was the Ojiig’anung for students engaging in these OER-EP projects? What was that metaphorical North Star that motivated them to create their best work and share their projects with others? I encourage researchers and practitioners to continue to question what is the Ojiig’anung, the guiding goal and purpose, of OER-EP? Of OEP broadly? What can it be? What should it be? Without an Ojiig’anung, OER-EP may simply be a vessel without a destination, a canoe without a paddle or paddler. This is not unique to OER-EP; indeed, without a clear guiding purpose, the same might be said, at least in part, of all educational assessment strategies. For this group of students, supporting the truth part of truth and reconciliation motivated learners. Openness was the vessel, but social justice was their Ojiig’anung.

Honouring Self, Honouring Others

Some question whether postsecondary students are capable of producing high-quality OER. Not me! I’ve witnessed learners create media-rich, accurate, and impactful resources that honour their own voices and stories while amplifying the contributions of equity-seeking individuals, groups, and communities.

The learners shared many strategies they enacted to make their projects as impactful as possible for their imagined audience, trusting in the inherent value of peer-to-peer learning, but also remaining committed to respecting their own values and comfort levels when it came to open sharing. These dual functions of honouring oneself and honouring others parallel the leadership strategies of the Loon and Crane Clans of the Anishinaabe Dodemag, the Anishinaabe Clan system. While this practical and highly sophisticated framework has traditionally supported the social and spiritual order within Anishinaabe societies, in the context of this study, it helped to remind me that true, effective leadership must be balanced. Just as the two clans provide checks and balances for each other, we are reminded that effective social justice advocacy requires reciprocity, care, and community connections.

The Maang Dodem also reminds me that structures and processes must be enacted to disrupt normative Western assessment practices that position learners at the bottom of knowledge hierarchies, rather than as leaders of their own learning journeys. The conditioning of the Western education system can create confusion and resistance within learners who have been trained to sit passively and listen to so-called experts, rather than taking up space and sharing their own truths as the experts of their own experiences. Just as the Maang Dodem benefits from equal partners who hold them to account and call them to more, students can benefit from collaborators and co-leaders who can help them consider and navigate the complexities within open pedagogies in ways that align with their personal values and their hopes for an imagined audience.

The Legend of the Shut-Eye Dance

The third major theme in the study focused on the unique ways that participants enacted licensing choices and authorship decisions, guided by their individual understandings, goals, and boundaries. These stories evoked for me the Algonquin Legend of the Shut Eye Dance, an ancient teaching featuring a Maang character who speaks out against injustice with near-fatal consequences.

We need to avoid the Shut-Eye Dance when we invite students to engage in open pedagogies and when we research open educational practices. We must recognize our responsibilities, ensuring that students are empowered with the requisite knowledge to proceed in a good way. In the context of open licensing, this requires direct educational interventions that inform learners about Creative Commons licenses and their limitations, guiding learners through the complexities of openly licensing works that include traditional knowledge and copyrighted materials, and addressing the possibility that learners may feel guilt, shame, or regret for selecting more restrictive licenses due to an openness essentialism that pervades open education discourses (though, I will acknowledge, the field on the whole is moving away from this essentialism toward more nuanced, culturally appropriate understandings of how knowledge may be shared).

Educators and researchers wishing to avoid enacting the Shut-Eye Dance in their open pedagogy projects must be aware of the myriad complexities for all involved. We must educate ourselves if we aim to effectively assist students as they navigate OER-EP assignments and other forms of open pedagogy, understanding the collective responsibility of balancing individual rights, agency, and choice with the broader needs of the community. Traditional teachings such as the Legend of the Shut-Eye Dance can offer powerful entry points and metaphorical anchors for these discussions, highlighting the symbolic relationships between the actions of engaging in OER-EP and other forms of openness, the tensions that exist within these practices, and the ethics required for all of us to dance with both eyes open.

The Maang Community Hand Drum

The final overarching study theme included participants’ suggestions for educators considering OER-EP assignments in their classes, and suggestions for learners who have been invited to participate in OER-EP, which included encouragement to keep an open mind, find their true voice, and to take advantage of the opportunity to share bravely.

When viewed holistically, the rich data generated in this study evoke for me the teachings of the drum. For Anishinaabe people, and in many Indigenous cultures, the drum is far more than a percussive instrument. The drum is understood to hold spirit, and the teachings reflect the immense responsibility that comes with caring for a drum. It took many years before I felt prepared to pick up an Anishinaabe hand drum. I attended ceremonies, I listened, I opened my heart to the songs gifted to me.

One day, a student offered me semaa and asked me to speak and share a song at a Truth and Reconciliation event on campus. She is a residential school Survivor, and it was a great honour, and great responsibility, for her to request this of me. I agreed. On the day of the event, I walked to the Indigenous Student Services Centre to smudge and heard one of the community hand drums make a “ping” sound. I opened the cabinet containing the community hand drums, paused, then picked up the first Nokomis who called out to me. I uncovered the drum and found Maang, and her babies painted on the face of the drum. This full-circle moment brought tears to my eyes. I smudged her, warmed her, and sounded four honour beats. This was the first day I picked up the community hand drum. I sang my song and shared my truths surrounded by my colleague-friends and student helpers.

Our commitments to ourselves, to each other, and to our communities are sacred duties reflected in the circle teachings of the drum. Open pedagogical practices like OER-EP align with these teachings, emphasizing relational accountability and interconnection. Whether in open education or a traditional drum circle, the journey from silent novice to active member involves deep, relational work. The Maang teachings, alongside participant insights and my lived experiences, have shaped how I understand learner engagement with OER-EP and how I can continue to serve as a helper in this work.

Final Remarks

Summarizing a 236-page dissertation study into five thousand words or less is no easy task! I heard Dr. Shawanda’s cautions against applying Etuaptmumk in a superficial, tokenistic manner as I touched on some of the Maang teachings that came forward in this study. This knowledge is so rich, so storied, it is truly impossible to do it justice in an abridged manner. I hope that I didn’t do an injustice, and I hope that I have achieved my goal of sharing not just the outcomes but the process of my dissertation study. I hope that I’ve left you with some ideas to carry forward in your own work.
Some of the key takeaways, as I see them, are as follows:

• Etuaptmumk supported my study by allowing all parts of me into the research process. It made space for Elder stories, dreams, spirit helpers, traditional teachings, and critical perspectives from Indigenous researchers to sit alongside the extant open education literature, and to empower me to critically question concepts such as openness, essentialism, and Indigenization.
• Sharing Indigenous knowledge in a culturally appropriate manner is incredibly nuanced, requiring connection, collaboration, lots of conversation, and a great deal of critical self-reflection.
• Open pedagogies are great, but they alone don’t provide the why. Social justice aims and high levels of learner agency led to great outcomes in my context. Could this apply to your context as well?
• Students can’t be expected to go this alone. True leadership is shared, and the same applies to open practices. Provide support options so that students can enact their true visions of their OER while meeting technology challenges, accessibility requirements, and navigating the complexities of open sharing.
• Listen for your helpers. When they call to you, hear them!

References

Bali, M., Cronin, C., Jhangiani, R. S. (2020). Framing open educational practices from a social justice perspective. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.565

Bartlett, C., Marshall, M., & Marshall, A. (2012). Two-eyed seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together Indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(4), 331-340. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13412-012-0086-8

De Rosa, R., & Jhangiani, R. (2017). Open pedagogy. In E. Mays (Ed.), A guide to making open textbooks with students. Rebus. https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/

Hilton, J., Wiley, D., Chaffee, R., Darrow, J., Harper, S., & Hilton, B. (2019). Student perceptions of open pedagogy: An exploratory study. Open Praxis, 11(3), 275 – 288. https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.11.3.973

Paskevicius, M., & Irvine, V. (2019). Open education and learning design: Open pedagogy in praxis. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1(10), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.512

Shawanda, A. (2024, November 16). Paddling upstream, an Anishinaabekwe’s journey toward ethical frameworks in Indigenous research. [Keynote address]. Maamwizing Conference 2024, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. L. (2018). Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i4.3601

About the author

name: Jessica O'Reilly, EdD

institution: Cambrian College of Applied Arts and Technology

Hi, I’m Jess, a person of mixed European-Canadian and Algonquin Anishinaabe ancestry. I serve as a Professor and Program Coordinator at Cambrian College in Sudbury, Ontario, where my work focuses on open education, Indigenous perspectives, and decolonizing post-secondary learning. I recently completed the Doctor of Education in Distance Education at Athabasca University. My doctoral dissertation explored how students in a Truth and Reconciliation course engaged with Open Educational Resource-Enabled Pedagogy (OER-EP) through renewable assignments. My work contributes to conversations on open education, reconciliation, and student agency in learning.