Phase Three of the JISC/Academy Open Educational Resources Programme is now well underway and I’m pleased to report plenty of news since my last update.
We had our start up meeting on 14th November, where new projects met in Birmingham to learn about each other. We explored the existing resources in the OER infokit (which was recently enhanced with a new section for senior managers). It was good to see that at least two of the delegates are also involved in the digitisation for OER strand of the JISC eContent team too. I suspect plenty of links with the JISC digital literacies programme too.
We got a sneak preview of the OER Phase Two Evaluation and Synthesis report. Phil Barker shared technical trends that OER projects should be aware of, including aggregation, developments in machine- readable metadata, and the concepts around the Learning Registry. Jason Miles-Campbell shared his IPR and Licensing top tips.
Current Highlights
- The Academy have issued Funding Calls for OER
- We’re working with the OU SCORE project to ensure a good range of training opportunities are available. There is already a good flow of ideas between the SCORE Fellowship Scheme and projects in the OER Programme.
- I have been contacting a selection of OER projects to submit information about their collections to a prototype UKOER showcase, based on the JISC content portal. The prototype will be ready in the spring 2012. If you are a UKOER-funded project and want to be part of it, please contact me!
- We are also hoping to fund some work to visualise the activities and outputs of the UKOER programme so far, to help the synthesis of understanding practices. This will complement the global mapping work being done by OLnet.
- The OER Programme is also funding an experimental involvement with the Learning Registry. We are scoping out how this R&D project will run, but it will definitely involve a Task Group. Thanks to everyone who has contacted me about that so far. You should hear more by the end of the month.
- We (myself, JISC CETIS and others) are also scoping out a developer challenge. So many ideas on what to focus on, we’re in brainstorm mode. Ideas include building content related services/interfaces around a course data aggregation, looking at widgets for open content / open practice, bringing together ideas for distributed VLE and curriculum design and development with open content.
On a broader note I have also been commissioning JISC-funded case studies on open institutional approaches. Part of a larger JISC focus on “open” (-access, -science, -source, -innovation) so far we have published University of Southampton and University of Salford, but there are more to follow soon and they will include OER approaches.
OER Funding Opportunities
- OER and student as producer
- OER and student satisfaction
- OER and staff development
- OER and teaching quality
- OER and distance learning
- OER and public engagement
- Changing the OER culture of your institution
- Barriers to OER
The deadline is 9th December 2011.
We have chosen these as topics that have emerged from the evaluation and synthesis of project experiences, and from global work. We hope that this Call will result in a bank of evidence of how people are using open educational resources approaches to support those key objectives.
In parallel I am preparing a new funding opportunity: a Call for Rapid Innovation projects.
Amber Thomas
Programme Manager JISC
@ambrouk
Quotation of the day from JISC Cetis: “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
Classic. 🙂
The OER InfoKit is a valuable resource, as was the accessibility passport. John Casey’s video on a repository as a fruit/veg stand was a useful analogy too! A very good day all the way around.
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