Group Admins
Description
To facilitate best practice OEPS is building a peer support network as it collaborates with more than 50 organisations (both inside and outside the academy, including universities, colleges, trade unions, some employers, regional and national third sector and non-departmental public organisations) and has created an online hub which has sections on practice, using and creating OER. The OEPS collaborative partnership projects focus builds on experience from earlier Scottish projects (Macintyre, 2013, Cannell & Macintyre, 2013). OEPS enables organisations not normally engaged in creating educational materials to gain experience building pedagogically robust OER for a wider public audience, including individuals and communities not accessing higher education. This extends how to create OER to a wider group in HE, FE and beyond from the small number who currently reuse, revise and remix content openly (Dhanarajan & Abeywardena, 2013).
The experience of the OEPS project is being captured on the OEP hub site in a series of articles and case studies which investigate open practices, design of open learning journeys (Macintyre, 2015), strategies and practical solutions to the barriers encountered in particular situations.
This presentation will focus on the first few months use of the online Open Educational Practices hub which went live in October 2015 and the emerging advantages of community collaboration in the creation of open educational resources. It explores the extent to which organisations and individuals both within and outside the academy are prepared to share their experiences of OER creation and open practices on the hub to help the wider community and the reputational and strategic benefits this brings.
Cannell, Pete and Macintyre, Ronald (2013). Reflections on work and learning and flexible curriculum. In: International Enhancement Themes Conference: Enhancement and Innovation in Higher Education, 11-13 June 2013, Glasgow, UK, pp. 4–12. http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/38321
D’Antoni, S. (2013) ‘Open Educational Resources: Access to Knowledge – A Personal Reflection’ in McGreal, R., Kinuthia, W. and Marshall, S. (eds) (2013) Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice. Vancouver: The Commonwealth of Learning and Athabasca University https://oerknowledgecloud.org/sites/oerknowledgecloud.org/files/pub_PS_OER-IRP_web.pdf#page=153
Dhanarajan, G. & Abeywardena, I. (2013). Higher education and Open Educational Resources in Asia: An Overview. In G. Dhanarajan & D. Porter (Eds.). Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective. Commonwealth of Learning. http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=446
Macintyre, Ronald (2013). Openness and practice: innovations through openness in partnership. In: International Enhancement Themes Conference: Enhancement and Innovation in Education, 11-13 June 2013, Glasgow, UK, pp. 90–96. http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/38320
Macintyre, R (2015) Create your own / Designing Open Learning Journeys http://www.oeps.ac.uk/create-your-own/designing-open-learning-journeys
Welsh Government (2014) “Open & online: Wales higher education and emerging modes of learning”, Report of the Online Digital Learning Working Group http://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/140402-online-digital-learning-working-group-en.pdf
