Open Educational Resources – what’s going on?

The revolution continues apace – following the launch of the circular and related guidance in December, alongside the ongoing commentary in twitter and on blogs and the programme briefing day in January there is now a great deal of resources and guidance available for those currently writing to the 4th March deadline.

This is a joint JISC/Academy delivery of a HEFCE programme, to encourage the HE sector to release and share learning materials openly, for the benefit both of themselves (in terms of reputation, exposure and encouraging prospective student interest) and the world (regarding opportunities for the reuse of high quality learning materials).

We’re looking to help institutions and consortia put processes and policies in place to support the large scale and sustainable release of resources. So, it’s not about buying and relicensing stuff – more about helping people get over the “hump” of interia and changing the culture of the sector. Releasing valuable resources in their own way, suiting their own needs and benefiting the wider community.

And this first year is only the pilot – we are looking for evidence of what works, what are the approaches that are most effective in particular settings. Not in terms of institutional versus individual versus subject – in terms of common successful practices, key compontents of projects that have worked well. And an even bigger programme is intended to follow – learning from the trailblazing dynamism of the pilots and bringing OER into the mainstream.

Interest has been widespread – worldwide, even. A lot of eyes are focused on our HE sector regarding OER – in terms of pumping public resource into this agenda, and testing multiple models of release, we are leading the western world. And our (your) content is going to be out there. Via Jorum Open, via web pages and web 2.0 services. Making a case for the quality and innovation that the UK HE sector is respected for, and dragging this message into the 21st century worldwide learning economy.

Is this a programme or a revolution? From some angles it is hard to tell. Certainly we are taking a big risk, putting a marker down regarding our intentions and aspirations. And we are looking for a level of cultural change that we know is difficult to achieve and difficult to measure. Certainly some pilot projects will “fail”, but in terms of learning these are still successes as they help us on the road to understanding how to achieve our aims.