Responsible RDI and education

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

Laurea’s Open Corner service and network are key factors in promoting, developing, and strengthening responsible open practices in Laurea. Open Corner handles questions and challenges related to openness, cooperates with the national open RDI network, and promotes open practices, instructions, and training in Laurea. Contact: avoinkulma@laurea.fi

The Laurea Roadmap for Open RDI and Education

The Laurea Roadmap for Openness applies national guidelines on openness to Laurea's operating environment and practices.  Universities in Finland are committed to the Declaration on Open Science and Research 2020–2025.

The declaration has four focus areas on which guidelines and recommendations are published. The areas are:

• Open RDI & Education
• Open education: Openness in learning and teaching
• Open data and methods
• Open access publications (Avointiede.fi).  

  The guidelines and recommendations set out principles, objectives, measures, and timetables for higher education institutions to promote open RDI & Education. 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 practices. This is achieved by integrating education, RDI and business. Education and training provide a solid foundation of competencies in the substantive areas. RDI produces new knowledge and discoveries and enables the developing of teaching methods and services. Knowledge and discoveries are divided so that they can be effectively exploited and targeted in business activities to meet the needs of different customer groups. 

The Laurea Policy for Openness brings together the principles and objectives established in national policies and recommendations and applies them to the operating environment and the practices of universities of applied sciences in general and Laurea in particular. This ensures that national objectives are considered when developing Laurea's openness. It also provides a basis for evaluating the development of Laurea's open practices and identifying areas for improvement. An Excel sheet describing the measures, timelines, responsibilities, and monitoring of the development areas complements the guideline. 

The guidelines and the measures form the roadmap for Laurea's policy for openness. They identify challenges, opportunities, and connections to Laurea's activities, and use these as a basis for proposing solutions to challenges. They also identify situations where Laurea should seek to influence national policies and recommendations, as well as make suggestions for Laurea statements and proposals. The roadmap also creates a pathway for the smooth use of open data in Laurea's business.

The Laurea Policy for Openness was produced by the Open Policy Roadmap working group in 2022. The policy was updated in January 2024. Policy is published in Finnish language Vastuullinen ja avoin TKIO Laureassa: Avoimuuden tiekartta - Laurea-ammattikorkeakoulu

Contents of the Policy:

1 Introduction

2 Open RDI & Education

3.1 Open education: Open educational resources

3.2 Open education: Learning and teaching practices

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: Openness of methods and infrastructures

5 Open access publishing

6 Sources and background documents  

7 Producing and updating the polic

More information: