317 words In March 2022, RMIT University, led by the Library, embarked on a two-year project to develop an Open Scholarship Policy. A significant aspect of the project was to establish principles that drew together both open research and open education (OE), reflecting the reality of our academics and higher degree by research candidates who engage in both teaching and research. Significantly, the Policy project team were determined to articulate RMIT’s ambitions about engaging with open educational practices, including open pedagogy and the use and creation of open educational resources such as open textbooks. The outcome of this project is a Policy that provides a framework for the entire RMIT community – students, academics and everyone who supports teaching, learning and research – to create and disseminate knowledge openly and collegially.
This lightning talk will focus on the key processes involved in successfully developing an institutional policy that promotes OE endeavors. A supplementary openly-licensed OE policy project management toolkit will be provided.
The structure of the talk will include a snapshot of the key stages of the project, accompanies by three slides:
Beginning: alignment with RMIT’s new Education Plan; defining open scholarship to include OE and open research; an environmental scan of open scholarship policies in Australia, New Zealand and internationally; and relationship building with OE allies and stakeholders. (4 minutes)
Middle: three core consultative initiatives to invite perspectives, expertise, and feedback from senior staff from university strategic areas including Indigenous Education, Commercialisation and IP, Legal and Strategic Operations, ITS and Procurement, Research and Innovation, Student Equity and Inclusion, and College and School leaders; and the co-design of Policy principles with members of this community. (4 minutes)
Implementation: socialisation of OE with RMIT’s academic, research, teaching and professional communities using University communication channels, outreach programs and targeted initiatives including open textbook publishing. (2 minutes)
Questions: This will include an invitation by the presenter to take questions to follow up at a later time. (5 minutes)
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[Session 2D]: Practice and Policy in OEAuthor Keywordsopen education policies and strategies, open educational practices, open textbooks
