Open educational resources (OER) increase equitable access to education and empower students in the learning process. Open pedagogy – an approach to teaching and learning that draws on OER – places students at the center of their academic experience through an experiential learning environment. Conceived in Summer 2018 at Montgomery College in Montgomery County, Maryland by Dr. Shinta Hernandez and Dr. Michael Mills, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG) Open Pedagogy Fellowship was designed to offer faculty an intense opportunity to increase their understanding and application of the UN SDGs, open pedagogy, interdisciplinary connections, Creative Commons licensing, and renewable assignments. Montgomery College is fully committed to social justice and innovation through its focus on open pedagogy, as evidenced in its MC 2025 institutional strategic plan, Academic Master Plan, and the Middle States Re-accreditation Self Study. To date, there are nine institutional partners across North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, with many more institutions around the world exploring partnership interests. In 2020, Montgomery College received the Open Pedagogy Award for Excellence from Open Education Global on behalf of the fellowship.

The conceptual framework on which this fellowship is based are the UN SDGs, which is a set of 17 goals that address an array of issues designed to achieve and maintain social justice around the world, with a target year of 2030. During global Open Education Week, the application process opens at all of the institutional partners. Through a competitive process, selected faculty are teamed up with faculty from other institutions and in other disciplines. Throughout the summer, faculty fellows engage in synchronous summer programming that focuses heavily on the various components of the fellowship with embedded team time and interactive exercises. Ultimately, faculty teams create several interdisciplinary renewable assignments centered around a UN SDG, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and peace and justice. These renewable assignments receive a Creative Commons license and will be deployed in the upcoming fall semester. During Open Education Week in the following year, there is a faculty-student showcase in which faculty and selected students co-present on their work together. To date, nearly 4,000 students and nearly 140 faculty have participated in the fellowship.

There are multiple outcomes of this unique work. At its core, this fellowship brings awareness to students of the service learning opportunities available at the institution and within the community, which may open a door of opportunity for future networking in the labor market. In addition, the interdisciplinary and cross-institutional requirement of faculty teams is intended to increase equitable opportunities for students and to maximize student impact across the institutional partners. This work also increases the networking of faculty who may not otherwise know colleagues in other disciplines or at other institutions. The interdisciplinary component of the fellowship encourages faculty and students to embark outside of their comfort zone and create opportunities for increased student engagement, improved understanding of the world, and advanced critical thinking and other related competencies. Another outcome is that the Creative Commons licensing allows for the renewable assignments and student products to be freely shared around the world to increase equity in education and maximize global change. Lastly, the assignments can help students become agents of change in their own community through their coursework, as well as increase ownership and leadership of their active learning experience. The student learning process becomes more engaging and more collaborative, and ultimately, this open educational practice may increase overall student and faculty success.
The fellowship has been recognized in a number of sources worldwide. In addition to being a global award-winning fellowship, this work was highlighted at OpenCon2018 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City in October 2018 and was noted as an international model. This fellowship also received national recognition with Achieving the Dream when it was highlighted in the press in April 2022. In addition, this work was the foundation of a May 2022 article written by its co-founders and published in Education Technology Insights entitled “Principles of Good Teaching and Learning and the Role Open Pedagogy Can Play.” Because of the accomplishments and global impact of the fellowship, Montgomery College has become a member of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which was established in 2012 under the auspices of the UN Secretary General. This fellowship continues to be the topic of keynotes, presentations, and workshops at the state, regional, national, and international levels.

For more information about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellowship, please visit the website: https://unsdgopff.opened.ca/.

To hear from the fellowship co-founders, please view the video: