Gain Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure
Why Your Open Educational Practice Matters for Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure
Including OER in reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT) can be uncharted territory, especially if it isn’t included in your institutional guidelines. Promotion and tenure systems often reward such activities as publishing in high-ranking journals and garnering high citation counts or impact factor [Website]. For several decades though, Ernest L. Boyer [Website], C.E. Glassick [Website], Kathleen Fitzpatrick [Website], Michael R. Dougherty [Website], and more have urged universities to realign their values and reward systems with teaching and scholarship benefiting the public good. Fortunately, many universities, academic associations, and the federal government responded with open access policies or mandates [Website] for wider disbursement of scholarship and strategic goals rooted in public service and teaching along. Pedagogically minded faculty have correspondingly cultivated the field of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) [Website], which, according to pioneer Peter Felten [Website], is characterized as systematically inquiring and appropriately sharing publicly how to improve student learning. Sound familiar? In this section of the toolkit, we will consider how Open Educational Practices (OEP), as an adaptation of SoTL to the field of open education, can bloom creating and teaching with OER into your agendas for research, service, professional development, and more.
Throughout Gain Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure, we will use the term “reappointment.” Your institution may use the term “retention.” In our research, these terms appear to refer to similar academic tenure processes.
Frameworks for Counting OEP in RPT
Let’s start with how your OEP can align with promotion and tenure criteria. Self-advocacy is essential to ensuring your work is recognized on campus and “counts” during your review process, as OER advocate Abbey K. Elder [Website] emphasizes. We suggest the following two frameworks, which are widely used for self-advocating OEP in promotion and tenure: the DOERS3 Tenure & Promotion Matrix [Website] and the SCOPE Framework [Website]. The DOERS3 Matrix translates OEP processes across research, teaching, and service. The SCOPE Framework [Website], developed by Virginia Clinton-Lisell, Jasmine Roberts-Crews, and Lindsey Gwozdz focuses specifically on scholarship. The trio outlines how to qualitatively and quantitatively assess your OER in relation to social justice, cost, outcomes, perceptions, and student engagement. Such tools can help you position your OEP within your guidelines.
Check out the frameworks in the table below to identify which can best help you represent your OEP in your dossier within your institutional context.
OEP Frameworks
Applying OEP Frameworks
The DOERS and SCOPE frameworks and our guidance is intended to be used in consultation with your institutional and disciplinary resources, including your mentors. Though we focus on promotion and tenure for teaching faculty, these strategies can be applied to promotion for non-teaching or non-tenure-track faculty as well as annual evaluations and applications for funding and awards. For example, consider how the category of teaching may translate to professional responsibilities for non-teaching faculty such as librarians.
Below, let’s take a closer look at the DOERS Tenure and Promotion Matrix [Website] using Abbey K. Elder‘s [Website] translation of the OEP matrix across primary areas for RPT: research, teaching, and service. We also offer awards and professional development as a category that may operate independently or may support your research, teaching, and service, depending on your institutional guidelines.
OEP and RPT Criteria
Assets You Can Use to Gain RPT
Now that you have a better understanding of how OEP could align with your RPT criteria, take a look at the self-advocacy guidance and templates listed below. Select the title for each asset’s guidance and templates.
Retention, Promotion, and Tenure (RPT) Dossier
Assembling your RPT dossier begins with the story you want to tell about your OEP work. Read guidelines for quantifying and qualifying the value of your OEP in alignment with the RPT criteria.
Guidance for categorizing and annotating your Curriculum Vitae to deepen the understanding of your OEP and self-advocate for your contribution.
Candidate statements contextualize your work within your philosophical goals and practices. Read successful examples and tips here.
Polish your dossier with supporting documentation. Cover sheets from successful RPT candidates detail OEP projects and exemplify how to self-advocate. Plus, our templates provide a way for you to document your research, teaching, and service.
Finding RPT Advocates for OEP: Building Your Hive
Before you venture to our guidance and templates, select the arrow to see tips and resources for building your OEP advocacy community, including finding external RPT reviewers and enacting institutional RTP changes inclusive of OEP.
Finding External Reviewers and Allies
RPT External Reviewers
In the RPT process, you will want external reviewers who will advocate for the importance of your OEP. Typically tenured and experienced in RPT, external reviewers are respectable and trustworthy experts who can speak to the relevancy and impact of your work in the greater discipline or field. Here are prospective types of external reviewers:
- Faculty who have adopted your OER.
- Faculty who have published OER within your field.
- OEP researchers whose work positively influenced your own OEP publications.
- Faculty recommended by your OER program lead.
Still can’t find someone? Post a call on an open education email listserv or newsletter. Simply state you are looking for external RPT reviewers with expertise in OER and your discipline as well as any other criteria required by your institution (specific ranks, for example). Below is a short list of state and national associations to begin your search.
OER Listservs
- Academic Senate for California Community Colleges OER Initiative [Website]
- Community College Consortium for OER [Website]
- Open Education Association (OEA) [Website]
- Check out OEA’s full listing of associations by state [Website] for more California associations.
- Open Education Network (Available to member institutions. Ask your librarian to post it for you.)
- Rebus [Website]
- SPARC [Website] (Available to member institutions. Ask your librarian to post it for you.)
- Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Program [Website] (Send request to sign up or post to ztc@cccco.edu [Email]
The open education community values caring and reciprocity, so be confident you will find a strong ally who will be happy to champion your RPT appeal.
RPT Institutional Policy Change
If you want to extend your OER advocacy beyond your own RPT process and dossier, we recommend building community through the above associations and exploring the following curated resources, which also serve as the works cited for this chapter. We have gathered these examples in a Zotero collection [Website], which highlights authors and initiatives that have successfully argued for the inclusion of OER and OEP in RPT standards and strategic efforts across their institutions, consortiums, and states.
