Dear Muhlenberg Faculty,
You are invited to join a yearlong Faculty Learning Community on Open Scholarship, facilitated by Ben Carter, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, and in collaboration with the Digital Learning Team. This FLC is supported by the office of the Associate Dean for Digital Learning. Open scholarship can be broadly defined as scholarly activities that aim to increase accessibility to the data, processes and/or results of scholarly research through engagement with communities beyond our disciplines. However, because it is open, is practiced in many different ways and is actively in flux, open scholarship is difficult to define. It includes:
- Open access publishing- i.e., publishing in journals or books that provide access to all- usually via the internet.
- Open publishing- i.e., forms of publishing outside of the “normal” book and/or journal formats, e.g. multimedia, data, community presentations, or software code.
- Open pedagogy- i.e., engaging students with “publics” as a form of teaching and research.
- The use of open source tools- i.e., community-built tools freely available to anyone (usually, but not exclusively, software) and/or contributions to the development of open source scholarly tools.
- Open educational resources (openly available textbooks- frequently written by faculty and peer-reviewed).
- And more, including the dynamic interrelationship of the above.
The purpose of the FLC is to provide faculty with a community in which to read, digest, and discuss current scholarship on “openness” and combine that knowledge with disciplinary, institutional, and individual factors to construct an open scholarship plan.
Goals
Note that, in the spirit of openness, the final learning goals of the FLC will be derived from input from the participants. However, these goals may include:
- Providing a scholarly community in which to discuss and critically assess scholarship on “openness.”
- Increasing awareness of the ethical dimensions of open scholarship, including those associated with diversity, access and inclusion.
- Fostering awareness of issues surrounding the ways that non-traditional deployments of scholarship are evaluated and considered for tenure and promotion.
- Discussing and weighing the benefits and drawbacks of the wide variety of possible ways to interact with “publics.”
- Analytically evaluate different means and modes of publication.
Expectations
The FLC will entail two components. First, there will be four (1.5 hour) in-person meetings during the Fall Semester of 2017 largely focused upon the ethics and practice of open scholarship. Potential topics for those sessions include those above and will be determined based upon the collective input of the participants. Open scholarship is an extremely broad concept; we hope to engage with those most appropriate for the participants. Second, there will be a final project. This project may take many forms. One possibility is a personal open scholarship plan.
Schedule
4 meetings in the fall.
2 meetings in the spring.
Benefits
Faculty will receive a $500 stipend to support their participation in this FLC and their work on a related project. This compensation is in recognition of the time and energy that participation in the community entails. Of course, the primary benefit is the face-to-face engagement with your colleagues.
Application
To apply, please use the following form to submit a brief statement on your interest in and experience with open scholarship, and what you hope to learn through this experience.
https://goo.gl/forms/WEJKAPIN3uFd2nEh2
Application deadline is June 9, 2017.
At the end of the FLC, participants will be asked to complete a short survey reflecting on their experience and how it will likely impact their teaching practice and scholarship.