Foreword

My hope is that A Graduate Student’s Guide to Open Education and Scholarship will provide a useful, quick introduction to various aspects of the open education movement to graduate students in a wide variety of disciplines. I created this guide as my capstone project for the 2022–23 SPARC Open Education Leadership Program. It is intended for graduate students in any discipline who are interested in careers in higher education, particularly future faculty members. If others also find it helpful, all the better.

Observers have long noted that U.S. doctoral programs have a mixed record of preparing graduate students for teaching careers in higher education. Some disciplines place more emphasis on pedagogical training than others, but overall it often seems like an afterthought. As Rifkin et al. (2023) point out, “few faculty members have sufficient preparation to teach because the emphasis of doctoral education is on research.” And of course not all graduate students become faculty. The number who do choose that path and follow it successfully varies widely by discipline—I have seen estimates that range from 3% to 40%.

Meanwhile, the open education movement has grown significantly over the past couple of decades, but progress is often hindered by the ongoing struggle to fully engage college and university faculty who are often set in their ways. These professors may have adopted commercial textbooks without considering or even being aware of alternatives. They might deploy the traditional “sage on the stage” pedagogy they learned by watching their professors while still students. They usually are faced with a strictly defined tenure and promotion process that they do not have the agency to challenge while still untenured. “If only we could reach those faculty before they’re fully invested in practices we then have to ask them to change,” I thought. Hence this attempt to reach future educators while they are still students and show them the benefits of open licenses, open education, open pedagogy, open educational resources, open access, open science, and open data, hopefully at an early enough point in their career trajectory that they can go into academia with an understanding of the benefits and joys of being an open educator.

References

Rifkin, B., Natow, R. S., Salter, N. P., & Shorter, S. (2023, March 16). Why doctoral programs should require courses on pedagogy. The Chronicle of Higher Education, https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-doctoral-programs-should-require-courses-on-pedagogy