The Tenure Review Process Must Evolve
when the Digital Humanities emerged as a field, most tenure and promotion systems didn’t address digital scholarship, leaving this new form of academic work unrecognized and uncitable in tenure and promotion portfolio.
Many postsecondary institutions in North America evaluate tenure candidates along three dimensions: research, teaching and service.
OER-related activities are forms of research, teaching and service.
unfortunately, OER work isn’t a standard criterion for tenure and promotion evaluation. Moreover, the tenure review committee may not be familiar with OER and thus may not appropriately take this work into account while evaluating the faculty member’s portfolio.
the Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success (DOERS3) collaborative, a group of 25 public higher education systems and statewide/provincewide organizations that are committed to supporting student success by promoting OER, has developed a tool to help tenure-track faculty include OER work in their tenure and promotion portfolios.
The matrix could also be used to incentivize OER adaptation and creation: For example, a department chair who has spearheaded an OER initiative in their department could adapt the matrix to show faculty how they can fit their OER work into their tenure and promotion portfolio, thus piquing faculty’s interest in OER. This department chair could also share the matrix with other chairs on their campus who are interested in OER so they could adapt it for their own departments.