Open Science Online Course

How to gain merit from OE and OER/OEP?

Promoting open education requires time and competence for all the parties involved. Teachers are the most important promoters of open education, but many other parties also work for open education, like researchers and research projects that produce open educational resources, students who have participated in promoting open educational resources, and open education professionals supporting open education in their own work, such as library experts, researchers, education planners and other support staff. 

It is recommended that organizations have clear criteria and guidelines on how the promotion of open education should be taken into account as a part of the work evaluation as a whole, for example, in recruitment, advancement on the career path, determination of pay, funding applications and awarding of prizes. In addition, it is recommended that higher education institutions in particular ensure that teachers and other staff have the opportunity to use their working time for promoting open education and take it into account in their work schedule planning. 

Organizations should make it possible for teachers and other personnel to make use of their development in promoting open education, say, as part of advancement on their career. When assessing the openness of education, different emphasis can be given to ways of promoting open education, suited for various levels of competence and the relevant merits.

Organizations should provide clear instructions on how to record the merits in open education and educational resources in evaluation situations. Merits related to open education and educational resources can be recorded in the CV, the teaching portfolio or the organization's research information system. The aim is that, in the future, the data related to merits earned in promoting open education and educational resources could be harvested directly from different information systems.

The merits in open education and educational resources can be divided into:

• open educational resources
  • LUT recommends using the Library of Open Educational Resources (aoe.fi) for publishing open educational resources or their metadata
• research outputs concerning open education
  • research publications on open education and educational resources and open research data generated from teaching
• online courses and lectures open to anyone
  • provide additional information, such as the topic and implementation method of the course or lecture, the scope of the course or lecture and/or the workload required for planning it, potential permanent identifier (online courses) and the impact the courses and lectures have had (number of participants or courses completed and feedback received)
• activities related to open education
  • open education related activities like courses on open education and competence, use of open educational resources and open educational practices, peer review of open education and educational resources produced by others, and national and international cooperation related to open education

Source and additional information:

Open Science (2021) How to gain merit from OE and OER? Available at https://avointiede.fi/en/open-science-expert-panels/open-education/how-gain-merit-oe-and-oer (Accessed: 16 Aug 2024)