In May 2021, a group of interdisciplinary open education faculty fellows, librarians, and students collaborated to run the first annual open assignment sprint. The sprint was held over the course of two days with 21 students finding, adapting, and creating open assignments they would be interested in completing in their courses. By the end of the sprint, faculty had outlines and learning outcomes for open assignments that could be included in future Psychology, Communications, Kinesiology, and STEM courses, and students felt they had participated in the design and development of tangible course materials for their peers. The open assignments that were found and adapted during the sprint will form the foundation of an institutional ‘Open Assignment Bank’, where faculty can browse a repository of open assignment examples to adapt into their own courses.
A primary goal of the sprint was to empower students and include them in conversations about their own learning by asking them what assignments they would be interested in working on in future courses. Therefore, the various sprint activities were overseen by faculty from individual departments, but the work and direction was led by the student participants.
Due to the pandemic, the sprint was held virtually over Microsoft Teams. The planning team attempted to recreate the collaborative nature of in-person sprints by inserting opportunities for dialogue and feedback, and designing an online space to facilitate sharing.
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Develop a culture of student empowerment by fostering faculty-student collaboration
- Identify strategies to build consensus among key stakeholders
- Design achievable goals for an online sprint event
