The aim of this case study was to establish a process and gain an insight as to how cultural change within an institution leading to an open culture can be developed and adopted.
At De Montfort cultural change with respect to OER and open education has developed from the ground upwards with many academic staff using and releasing OER and students becoming familiar and involved in activities as users producers and evaluators. There is now however the need to garner the support of senior management and to formulate how open education fits with the institutional vision and strategies. There needs to be institutional ownership and support for this work so as to establish processes to scale and sustain the existing activity and facilitate future developments in a sustainable fashion.
Ten interviews were conducted with senior executive and management staff so as to ascertain the level of OER awareness within the institution what the benefits and obstacles were to our engaging with open practices and to formulate a process for shifting culture though policy strategy and/or other means. The discussions were guided to see how OER could be applied within the institution to deliver existing research and teaching strategies e.g. internationalisation or supporting student transitions. The senior staff included faculty Deans pro-vice-chancellors and Directors of Library Services eLearning Staff Development Academic Quality and other faculty leads for Internationalisation and Commercialisation.
This case study was part of the HEA/JISC Open Educational Resources case study: pedagogical development from OER practice project.
