What is Open Pedagogy Pit Stop?

The Open Pedagogy Pit Stop program was designed to support faculty with integrating both interactive technologies and the principles of open pedagogy into their teaching. Participants were invited to engage with AI, educational games, Virtual Reality (VR), Extended Reality (XR), and more over the course of twelve weeks while incorporating open pedagogy values such as collaborative learning, student agency, accessibility, and sharing educational resources. Each week, participants were also building an interdisciplinary community with one another, sharing ideas and strengthening their professional connections.

The goals of the Pit Stop program are best summarized by the learning outcomes set by the facilitators, which are as follows:

• Learners will analyze and evaluate the applications of AI, educational games, and extended reality technologies in their teaching and learning.
• Learners will apply open pedagogy principles to design and share transparent, collaborative, and accessible learning environments.
• Learners will apply interactive technologies towards innovative open pedagogy.

Building Blocks: What it took to pilot Pit Stop:

The idea for Pit Stop came out of previous editions of the Open Pedagogy Incubator, where feedback pointed to a need for a learning space that could align open pedagogy with interactive technologies.

Funding

A grant from the NC State Foundation supplied funds intended to cover at least two cohorts of the Pit Stop program. The grant covers the costs of facilitating the program itself, including guest instructors and refreshments during in-person sessions. It also supports post-program scholarly activities such as conference registration and article processing charges. While the grant offered the program much greater flexibility and support, Pit Stop likely would have moved forward regardless—drawing on the deep well of expertise already available at NC State.

Facilitators

The facilitators for the program were intentionally selected for their deep knowledge of open pedagogy and the use of emerging technologies in teaching. The team included librarians with specialties ranging from experiential learning to copyright and licensing, alongside a colleague from the Office for Faculty Excellence—an established OER advocate with a strong track record of supporting faculty. Together, they co-designed and delivered the first iteration of Pit Stop. Assembling a relatively large team of seven facilitators not only brought a wide range of perspectives to the program but also made it possible to share responsibilities in ways that accommodated their already demanding workloads. Later, a colleague from DELTA, NC State’s learning technology service, joined the team to support the program’s Labs and offer expert guidance as participants developed their cohort projects.

Guest Instructors

While the team of facilitators was already well-versed in the subject matter, they also had a network beyond NC State that could help further enhance the program. Ultimately six sessions were facilitated or co-facilitated by a total of eight guest instructors. This kept the sessions feeling fresh by varying instruction styles week to week, and it gave participants access to new resources, ideas, and contacts that could support their work.

Curriculum

Working backwards from the big idea for Pit Stop, the facilitators identified smaller themes that eventually broke down across twelve weeks, nine of which introduced new content. Because the main points were centered around open pedagogy and interactive technology, introductions to both were worked into the first three sessions. From there, the ideas could be integrated by bringing in a range of technologies and applying an open pedagogy lens to their use in the classroom. Each facilitator took on a topic suited to their area of expertise and prepared the content for at least one of the sessions.

Technology

A core priority of the program was the integration of timely and relevant technologies. At the time, generative artificial intelligence (AI) and extended reality (XR) were rapidly gaining traction among faculty in higher education. The program intentionally focused on these technologies—alongside broader gamification strategies that support metacognitive learning—to ensure participants could explore practical and pedagogically sound applications. This approach was designed to meet faculty where they were, offering value regardless of their existing comfort level with emerging tools. AI, in particular, was a major area of interest among participants, and the program created space to move beyond casual experimentation and begin thoughtfully incorporating AI into teaching practice.

Recruiting Participants

With the specifics of the program defined, the last step was to market it to prospective participants. Previous experience pointed toward a few successful strategies including posting in the Office of Faculty Development digital newsletter, the libraries’ social media, and another university-wide newsletter. Facilitators also directly notified a handful of faculty who they thought might be interested.

The application was open for three weeks in the fall, and accepted applicants were notified a week after the application closed. Recruitment occurred well in advance of finals and winter break–a strategy that has led to the most completed applications in past programs hosted by the Open Knowledge Center.

The Pilot Cohort

The first cohort of PIT STOP took a hybrid approach. A total of three meetings and one Lab was held in person. The other eight meetings were held over Zoom, which allowed guest facilitators from all over the country to contribute their expertise to the group. Over the twelve weeks of the program, we explored a range of technologies, how they could be applied in an Open Pedagogy framework, and the challenges they pose to both teachers and students.

Weekly Reflections

Each week, participants were invited to reflect on the session—sharing their ideas, takeaways, and lingering questions. As with any learning environment, the depth of responses varied, but the facilitators used this feedback to adapt the program in real time. Early on, it became clear that the cohort was eager for more hands-on opportunities to engage with the technologies during the sessions, rather than focusing heavily on theory and experimenting independently afterward. Gathering feedback throughout the program allowed us to adjust the format to better meet participants’ needs. While we also collected final reflections in the last meeting, the ongoing, session-specific input proved especially valuable in shaping a more responsive and engaging experience.

Program Feedback

During the final session of the program, we shared a survey for participants to share their thoughts. Because this was the pilot cohort, the survey was designed to help us improve future iterations of the program by identifying what went well and what could be improved next time. In general, our pilot cohort agreed that hands-on activities were the most impactful parts of the program, and they appreciated the community of creative professionals committed to innovating their pedagogy. They also highly valued the inclusion of guest speakers and the clear communication from facilitators. While their weekly reflections were incredibly useful to us on the facilitators’ team, participants found them to be only moderately useful. Other points of critique included a desire for more practical applications and examples from guest speakers, fewer lectures and more activities, and less homework.

We asked participants to rate each session on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being the least effective and 5 being the most effective according to their pre-program goals. Interestingly, eight out of the nine sessions that presented new content received at least one score of 4 or higher. The only session that received only scores of 4 or higher was week 10: Integrating Interactive Technologies Into Your Course: Insights from Guest Instructors. While it would have been ideal to see every session rated so highly, these results demonstrate that each participant arrived at Pit Stop with unique goals and at different comfort levels with emerging technologies, and the vast majority of sessions were useful to at least one participant.

What We Learned & What We Will Change for Next Time

As is true of any program, the first iteration of Pit Stop was bound to be improved upon in the future. We, as facilitators, made adjustments along the way as we found our footing and made our best effort to give participants a valuable experience. Overall, our first cohort created impactful projects that blend interactive technology with open pedagogy, but we also learned more about what our faculty need and what they already know. As our faculty facilitator put it, the point of an incubator is to hatch a chicken, and our job is to help move ideas from eggs to hatchlings to fully grown chickens. By that definition, the pilot cohort was successful–everyone did something–but we can make a few adjustments to become a more fruitful incubator in the future.

Since completing the pilot cohort of the PIT STOP program, our team of facilitators has begun planning for its next iteration. While much of the core content will remain the same, several key changes are being introduced based on feedback and lessons learned.

The most notable change is to the timeline. Instead of weekly meetings over twelve weeks, the next cohort will meet approximately every other week, for a total of ten sessions spanning the fall and spring semesters, with a two-month break in between. This adjusted schedule is designed to better support a problem-based approach, in which participants enter the program with a specific teaching challenge they aim to address using open pedagogy and interactive technologies.

We’re also expanding the facilitation team to include an instructional technologist, who will offer specialized support as participants develop their projects. Additionally, participants will be expected to present their final projects at a university-wide conference on faculty excellence in the spring—providing a meaningful opportunity for recognition and broader impact.

To support this deeper project work, we are increasing dedicated lab time for in-session problem-solving and collaboration. The added time between meetings, along with the mid-year break, will give participants space to reflect and make substantial progress on their goals.

We also plan to retain several elements that worked well during the pilot. The hybrid meeting model—split evenly between in-person and virtual—will continue, as will the session-by-session reflection activities. These reflections were essential in helping facilitators understand participant needs in real time and adapt the program accordingly.

Advice for Creating Similar Programs

Any opportunity to collaborate with faculty over an extended period of time has to be balanced in a number of ways. Having a clearly defined goal for a program such as Pit Stop is essential for defining the scope and determining what content to include. It is also important to identify a reasonable workload for both facilitators and participants and to communicate expected deliverables early on. Another challenging balance to strike is within the content itself. Having a team of facilitators and guest instructors sometimes leads to repetition of certain content. To avoid being redundant, it is important to plan in advance and vet the content that guest speakers will bring to the group. Most importantly, facilitators have to bring flexibility and open-mindedness to a program like this. Participants will fall anywhere on a vast spectrum from complete beginners to near-experts, meaning that they will all come to the program with unique needs and perspectives. Our greatest strength was listening to those needs as they arose and then tailoring on the go.

Our hope is that Pit Stop will be one of many programs that promote open pedagogy through interactive and emerging technologies. We plan on continuing to improve our program and leading by example in this space. For more information and the latest on Pit Stop, please visit our website here.