Opening Up: A Fellowship for Open Pedagogy
JMU faculty who are interested in “opening up” their teaching are invited to engage in a learning community with JMU colleagues in Fall 2025. Each participant will receive a $1500 stipend for their work and participation in the fellowship.
Apply by April 18, 2025 to join this fellowship that will run from Fall 2025 to Summer 2026.
Based on a fellowship model that centers community building, this program will include a mix of asynchronous and synchronous work. It is intentionally designed to be a slow-paced and supportive environment that fosters curiosity, exploration, and growth.
During the fellowship, you will be supported as you progress toward the learning outcomes (below) and engage with the “Open” community locally and globally. You will also have the opportunity to participate in collaborative scholarly activities related to this work, such as submitting a proposal for a future OpenEd Conference or another appropriate conference.
The three phases of this fellowship will occur from Fall 2025 to Summer 2026. Three virtual synchronous sessions are scheduled in the afternoons of October 22, February 4, and May 6. After implementation during Fall 2026, faculty will come back together to share their work and progress as a way of evolving their open educational practices.
This fellowship is available for part-time or full-time JMU faculty members.
Objectives
Participants will make progress toward these learning outcomes:
- Deepen your experience with Open Pedagogy and Open Educational Resources to identify your own path.
- Critically analyze your pedagogical, curricular, and assessment choices through a social justice lens.
- Improve equity in the classroom through your pedagogical, curricular, and assessment choices.
- Create pedagogical, curricular, and/or assessment materials to share with your community.
What Faculty Are Saying
“This has been one of the most transformative learning experiences that I have had.”
– Dr. Pamela Sullivan, Professor of Early, Elementary, and Reading Education
“The reading assignments paired with exemplars really helped me to understand and appreciate open pedagogy’s potential for social justice practice.”
– Dr. Christine Robinson, Professor of Justice Studies
“For my students, learning about open pedagogy (e.g., history, context, ties to equity and inclusion) was as crucial as the doing of open pedagogy. Though time intensive, I’ve reworked my canon of readings, searching for as many open resources as possible and then modeling and naming my rationale to students. Not surprisingly, students appreciated the bevy of free resources, but it’s likewise important for them to think about what’s underneath the open movement, such as diversity of authors and author perspectives, access of knowledge beyond discriminate boundaries.”
– Dr. Cara Meixner, Professor of Graduate Psychology
Fellowship Facilitators
“Our intention was to create a fellowship model that centered community building and was intentionally and flexibly designed to be a slow-paced and supportive environment that fosters curiosity, exploration, and growth.”
– Elaine Kaye, Fellowship Facilitator