The aim of the Open School project is to strengthen the openness of universities to its students. In an Open School, students do not take a passive role as service consumers; they are active, and empowered members of their university. Hence, the open school reflects a new mindset in higher education enabled by the usage of latest crowdsourcing technologies. The web-based IDEANET platform is an adequate system to support universities in launching an Open School project. Three case studies conducted at German higher education institutions demonstrate the feasibility of the concept in practice. The case studies show that students are willing to contribute with their ideas to different issues, ranging from new entrepreneurial business models, improvements of study conditions or creation of new teaching, and research methods. Including grading systems and possibilities for students to realize their ideas in practice are promising, and effective reward mechanisms to steer student participation. In some circumstances, however, the use of grades as a reward can give rise to conflicts among students, and hence needs to be carefully designed.

1. The Open School
Nizar Abdelkafi, Michael Bartl, Johann Füller, Christoph Ihl

2. Agenda
• The Current Situation and the Vision
• The Open School Objectives
• What is the Open School good for?
• Case Studies
• Scientific Results and Future Research
• Open School Project: “Small” Funding  BIG Impact
• Publications and Presentations
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3. The Current Situation and the Vision
The university’s system
• University: • Students:
Administration Undergraduates
Teaching and Graduates
research staff Offline relationships and PhDs
Library
basic online interactions Study programs
… …
The university’s system
• University • University
Subsystem 1 (Staff): Subsystem (Students):
Administration Undergraduates
Offline relationships and
Teaching and sophisticated online interactions Graduates
research staff based on the technologies PhDs
supporting open source
Library Study programs
development, open content
… generation, and innovation contests
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4. The Open School Objectives
To develop a Student community platform, operated by
universities
• The students can actively contribute to research and
practical activities in order to develop innovative
solutions to diverse problems.
• The activities published on the platform may be posted
by the university’s administration, teaching and research
departments, industrial companies, general public, or
students themselves.
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5. Selected Benefits
Initiator of
Examples of Problems/Activities Students’ Contribution over the Platform
the Task
Students complain about the lecturer’s Students improve the learning resources by creating new
Teaching
slides to be abstract or difficult to material or enhancing existing ones; the teaching staff decides
staff
understand. on the modifications to be adopted.
Students contribute to writing case studies. During trainees,
Case studies are required for the Research or project studies, bachelor or master theses, students gather
purpose of teaching and research. teaching staff practical experiences and gain new insights that can serve for
the development of case studies.
Software is required to support the
Research Students develop a new software or improve an existing one
automation of a new methodology
staff according to the open source principles.
developed within a research project.
Students contribute with ideas to reduce the length of queues or
Students are unsatisfied with the long Canteen’s
simulate the canteen’s food counters and checkouts in order to
waiting times in the canteen. staff
propose effective strategies.
Students complain about long waiting
Students work out ideas in order to reduce the time until getting
times between ordering and getting Library staff
the book titles.
library books.
A commercial company looks for new Students develop new ideas how the product may be used in a
Industry
applications for its product. different way than so far.
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6. But…
• …does the idea work in practice?
• Is there any evidence that students will participate in
such an initiative?
• What are the kind of activities students are most
interested in?
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7. Case Studies
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• Development of business concepts for service innovations based on smart phones,
• In winter semester 2009/2010, 241 submissions from students in the fields of
education, entertainment, and healthcare
RWTH Aachen
• Submission of ideas that aim to improve the university’s life conditions and
processes
• Participation of almost 60 students (RWTH 2.0, the digital university!!!)
HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of Management
• Co-creation of management knowledge in close collaboration between academia
and practice,
• Students actively contributed to case writing seminars
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8. Results
• Students are willing to use the platform; they are able to
generate original ideas.
• Open school projects, using voluntary participation and
competition among students can work in the practice.
• The use of grades, as a means to push motivation
among students, can sometimes lead to conflicts.
• Students can contribute to the creation of high quality
research and teaching materials
• The IDEANET platform generates big volumes of data
that can be analyzed to answer diverse research
questions related to online communities
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9. Future Research
• The identification of new problems is, at least, as important
as finding innovative solutions. Thus, why not a contest, in
which students participate to ask questions and find
problems.
• Implementation of the open school platform in a small
class (30 Students); this is an ideal setting to compare
students’ profiles in real life with their online behavior 
The experimental setting at the university of Leipzig in
winter semester 2010/2011 within the context of an
innovation management lecture.
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10. Open School Project:
“Small” Funding  BIG Impact
• Looking for the Big Impact: The open school project gave the idea to submit a
proposal to apply for an European project
• Project: PARENIS – Development and Implementation of a Program Advancing
Research Education and Exploitation for the Support of National Innovation
Systems
• EU-Program: TEMPUS
• Consortium: 12 Partners from 7 countries (Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, France,
Tunisia and Morocco)
• Project Contents: Introduction of lectures on research methods in Tunisia and
Morocco, research stays for PhD students, Initiation of innovation labs with
industry, and Implementation of the Open School Platform, as a method to
facilitate innovation and technology transfer.
• Project duration: 3 years
• Submission: March 2010; Acceptance for funding: July 2010
• Project volume: € 972.052,73
• Tempus Grant: € 869.111,73
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11. Publications, Presentations and Reports:
• Presentation slides and video record of the Presentation “Open Source
Innovation and Open School” during the Meeting of the Peter-Pribilla-
foundation on 13. April 2010 in Tunis
• Presentation in the workshop “Service Innovation & Open Collective
Work” INFORMATIK 2010 | Service Science – Neue Perspektiven für die
Informatik 40. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik „The Open
School Vision – For More Openess at Universities“
• Protocol of the project meeting on 28.05.2010 at HYVE AG in Munich
• Abdelkafi, Nizar / Bartl, Michael / Füller, Johann / Ihl, Christoph / Rieger,
Markus (2010): The Open School Vision – For More Openess at
Universities, in Klaus-Peter Fähnrich and Bogdan Franczyk (Ed.):
Proceedings of Informatik 2010 : Service Science – Neue Perspektiven
für die Informatik, Band 1, pp. 949-955.
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