Open practice can provide a competitive advantage for students, both early career researchers and those not planning to work in academics. Early engagement with open tools and practices can also seed a familiarity with openness that students will carry into all facets of their lives. This course introduces strategies for developing a reciprocal practice that makes open culture a tool for student success and makes authentic, interest-driven student engagement the cornerstone of a broad and diverse open culture driving research, creativity, and entrepreneurship.
The course will guide participants through hands-on work with open tools to develop a portfolio of their own as a model for practice. The session will begin with an overview of communities of practice on campus and discussion of strategies for connecting openness with these communities so that open practice is built into student life. The course will also offer case studies for connecting with students from diverse backgrounds and fields and demonstrating the value of openness in their lives and careers.
At the end of this session, participants will be able to:
Demonstrate the value of open practice for undergraduate and graduate students to build familiarity with tools and provide value that lasts a lifetime.
Describe the competitive advantage of openness for students as creators, collaborators, and job-seekers.
Offer a hands-on introduction to tools that build and promote early career researchers’ brand and identify new partners and collaborators.
Develop a portfolio of their own work that is shared openly, using a variety of tools from student journals and preprint services to GitHub repositories of code or multimedia works.
Proposed level: This course is appropriate for participants who are broadly familiar to the scholarly communications landscape.
Intended audience: Although geared toward undergraduate and graduate students and those who support them, the course will be of interest to anyone early in their career who wants to understand how open practice can create, build, and promote their brand.
