Open practices in the absence of institutional policies

Wherever you turn nowadays, there’s a push for openness: Institutional policies, state policies, provincial policies, and VC funds are encouraging and supporting open practices. Little has been written however about the use and adoption of open practices at any particular institution, and even less has been written about the adoption of open practices by academics at institutions that have no stated open policies.

In my latest research study, I am examining whether faculty members perform open practices at an institution that lacks open policies. This case study describes describes the range of open practices identified as being employed by faculty at this university, and shows that even though no institutional mandate exists to support openness, educators and researchers have employed a wide variety of open practices to support their work. The study suggests that institutions should do more to support innovative faculty as changemakers in the higher education landscape.

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2 Comments

  1. I am not sure if these fit your scope; I interviewed 6 faculty members from the organization I started at (Maricopa Community Colleges, well I never finished publishing the other 3)– all of their efforts were from individual interest/motivation, not institutional policy

    http://cogdogblog.com/maricopa-oers/

    • Hi Alan,
      Thanks for sharing these!
      This is one of the arguments in the paper as well, and we see it in other settings. For example, institutions encourage faculty to go online for various reasons, but it seems that the ones that *are* online, in an online resident (not visitor) way, are there for different reasons.
      Thanks for your comment!

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