What Is Open Pedagogy?
Most assignments follow the same pattern: write it, submit it, never see it again. Open pedagogy challenges that. Instead of creating work that disappears into a dropbox, learners produce things that live in the real world and actually mean something to someone outside the classroom.
David Wiley describes this through the idea of renewable assignments, work that has value beyond the course. The opposite is a “disposable assignment,” something only your professor ever reads. Open pedagogy shifts learning from private consumption to public contribution. Content is freely shared under Creative Commons licensing, learners have real agency over what they create, and work is published for a real audience rather than just graded.
In technology-mediated environments, specifically, this matters a lot. The tools and platforms we choose are not neutral; hosting something on a public WordPress site versus submitting a PDF to Brightspace sends a completely different message about who the work is for.
How It Aligns With Our Topic
Our group is teaching how passwords are stored, hashing, salting, and digital security. Open pedagogy fits naturally here because digital security literacy benefits everyone, not just students enrolled in a course.
We plan to host resources publicly on WordPress so that anyone can find and learn from them. That is open pedagogy in practice. The way we designed, like the Crack the Hash Challenge using CrackStation.net, also reflects these value, learners experiment with real tools and draw their own conclusions rather than passively absorbing definitions. Choosing free public tools like HaveIBeenPwned instead of paywalled software reinforces openness at every level of the design.
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Reference
Wiley, D. (2013). What is open pedagogy? Iterating toward openness.