Responsible RDI and education

Responsibility and openness are strategic principles that are implemented in practice at Laurea and in cooperation with partners, guided by values, policies, and guidelines. 

The Laurea Roadmap for Openness defines Laurea's principles and objectives for openness. The Roadmap applies the national guidelines to Laurea's operating environment and practices. The roadmap is accompanied by a measures document (page on Laurea's intranet), which describes the measures, timing, responsibilities, and monitoring of the development areas. Laurea's Openness Roadmap has been produced by the Openness Roadmap Working Group 2022–2023.

A key actor in the promotion, development and strengthening of responsible open practices is Laurea’s Open Corner service and network. Open Corner handles questions and challenges related to openness, cooperates with national network and promotes open practices, instructions and training in Laurea. Contact: avoinkulma@laurea.fi

The Laurea Roadmap for Open RDI and Education

Universities in Finland are committed to the Declaration on Open Science and Research 2020–2025, which has four areas of focus, on which guidelines and recommendations are published. The areas are: 

• Open operating culture
• Open education and open educational resources (oer)
• Open data and methods
• Open publications

The guidelines and recommendations set out principles, objectives, measures, and timetables for higher education institutions to promote open culture. The national action on openness is coordinated by The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) under the authority of the Ministry of Education and Culture (Avointiede.fi).  

Laurea's profile in open RDI activities strengthens RDI integrated learning (RDIL), the quality of teaching materials and learning, RDI projects, Laurea's competitiveness, and social impact.   

Laurea strengthens the quality and societal impact of its activities through open practicies. This will be achieved by integrating education, RDI and business. Education and training will provide a solid foundation of competences in the substantive areas. RDI enables new knowledge and discoveries, fresh teaching and new services. In business, knowledge and discoveries are pieced together so that they can be effectively exploited and targeted to different customer groups.  

The Laurea Policy for open RDI and education aims to bring together the principles and objectives established in national policies and recommendations and apply them to the operating environment and practices of universities of applied sciences and Laurea. This ensures that national objectives are taken into account in the development of Laurea's openness and provides a basis for evaluating the development of Laurea's open practicies and identifying areas for improvement. An excel document describing the measures, timelines, responsibilities and monitoring of the development areas is attached to the guideline.  

The guideline and the measures form a roadmap for Laurea's policy for open RDI and education, identifying challenges, opportunities and natural links to Laurea's activities, and using these as a basis for proposing solutions to the challenges. It also identifies situations where Laurea should seek to influence national policies and recommendations, and makes suggestions for Laurea statements and proposals. The roadmap will also create a pathway for the smooth use of open data in Laurea's business. 

The Laurea Policy for open RDI and education was produced by the Open Policy Roadmap Working Group in 2022. The members of the working group are listed at the end of the policy. The policy was updated in January 2024. 

Contents:

1. Introduction
2 Open operating culture 
3.1 Open education: Open educational resources (oer)
3.2 Open education: Open education and open educational practices (oep)
3.3 Open education: Theses 
4.1 Open data and infrastructures: Open and FAIR research data   
4.2 Open data and infrastructures: Longitudinal data 
4.3 Open data and infrastructures: Open methods and infrastructures 
5 Open publications  
6 Sources and background documents   
7 Producing and updating the policy 

More information: