Using Open Educational Practices to Support Institutional Strategic Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Scholarship

Abstract

This paper explores the integration of Open Educational Practices (OEP)into an institutional strategy to develop distinctive excellence inteaching, learning and scholarship. The institution in the case study isa public polytechnic university serving a metropolitan area in Canada.If emerging Open Educational Practices are to flourish at ouruniversity, support for OEP must integrate with and contribute to ourbroader efforts to clarify and enhance our strategic position.We have identified three focal points where our institution can focusattention in order to ensure that our use of emerging Open EducationalPractices will best align with, contribute to, and benefit from ourinstitutional strategy for distinctive excellence in teaching andlearning:Opening up the pedagogy underlying exemplary OER, to enable a deeperfaculty engagement in integrating and mobilizing diverse sources ofknowledge in teaching;Opening up that process by which individual faculty improve teaching andlearning, as a model for our students' own engagements with knowledge;Opening up our collective faculty work in innovation networks, as amodel for students and as a signature institutional strength andoutcome.We summarize the rationale and planned next steps for each of thesefocal points, which are intended to cumulatively build on each other asa value chain to support the development of distinctive graduatecapabilities as signature outcomes of our teaching and learning.