부산대학교 도서관

In this article, the author shares her view of "open faculty." To truly understand "open faculty," one needs to step back to a time before the Internet, before it was so easy and inexpensive to share anything and everything. In the pre-Internet era, faculty fell on the same continuum between those who freely share ideas and resources and those who do not. Faculty who shared in those days did so in department meetings, at conferences and workshops, in journal articles, in letters to colleagues, or in the day-to-day water-cooler conversations. Even if a faculty member had wanted to give away his or her intellectual property (e.g., textbooks, lecture videos, research) for free, the cost and the distribution difficulties were a huge barrier. There simply was no such thing as free; someone had to foot the bill. In the digital age, technology acts as both a barrier and a catalyst between "analog openness" and "digital openness." If faculty do not know about or cannot use technology tools that can enhance their ability to share, then technology is a barrier between analog and digital openness. On the other hand, as faculty learn to use new tools, technology can act as a catalyst, rapidly increasing a person's ability to share with larger audiences. Open faculty are learning some of these technology skills from formal workshops and professional training, but many spoke of learning technology skills from other open faculty (or even students) during on-the-fly informal learning sessions. Open digital faculty do more than just share and participate in open resources; they transfer their approaches to the teaching space. Learning becomes a shared activity in which the students also collaborate and participate in shaping the course activities.