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A number of high-level studies have been commissioned which focus on, or consider issues around, Open Educational Resources (OER). There are also some useful practical guidance documents available as a result of project work in this and related areas. This section highlights many of the resources available to institutions, consortia and individuals with an interest in Open Educational Resources.

HE Academy/JISC UKOER Programme

The joint JISC/Higher Education Academy Open Educational Resources programme (April 2009 - October 2012) was a large scale programme across three yearly phases of activity. Known as the UKOER programme - projects, support teams and programme officers produced a wide range of reports, guidance, toolkits and other practical resources to inform the wider community around lessons learned around a wide range of issues:

• strategic and policy issues
• legal aspects
• technical issues
• pedagogic aspects
• cultural and practice change
• benefits, barriers and enablers
• stakeholder engagement and capacity building
• business models and sustainability
• quality, ownership and trust

For further information see the following pages:

• UKOER subject disciplines

• UKOER key reports  

• UKOER guides and toolkits

• and OER Evaluation

Historical perspectives

• Kernohan, D. and Thomas, A. (2012) OER - a historical perspective. http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/4915/
• JISC CETIS commissioned an article and timeline of OER developments which also covered the period before the UKOER Programme and provided a broader view of the landscape.
• Good Intentions Report. The JISC information environment and e-learning teams jointly commissioned a report entitled 'Good Intentions: improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials', examining various business cases and models for sharing learning materials. This report offers a useful history of sharing learning materials in the UK.

Overviews and General Guidance

• The Open practices: briefing paper was produced by the UKOER Evaluation and Synthesis team in 2012 to highlight key issues around OER and open educational practice Beetham, H., Falconer, I., McGill, L. and Littlejohn, A.  JISC, 2012  https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/51668352/OpenPracticesBriefing
• The Open practice across sectors: briefing paper was produced by the UKOER Evaluation and Synthesis team to highlight aspects of open educational practice across sectors during the second phase of the programme McGill, L., Falconer, I, Beetham, H. and Littlejohn, A.  JISC, 2012 https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/49655750/OpenPracticeAcrossSectors
• Good Intentions Report. The JISC information environment and e-learning teams jointly commissioned a report entitled 'Good Intentions: improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials', examining various business cases for sharing learning materials. We would strongly recommend reading this as a precursor to identifying and describing your own business case.
• The JISC Sharing eLearning report is a synthesis of, and commentary on, findings across 30-40 JISC projects in a number of different programmes over the past 3-4 years. The conclusions it draws are aimed at JISC rather than individual institutions, but the report is a useful overview of existing work in this area.
• OpenLearn is part of the wider Open Learning network (OLnet) supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation which features resources, research and tools. In addition, Support Centre for Open Resources in Education (SCORE) is a HEFCE-funded project (2009-2012) based at the Open University which aims to "support individuals, projects, institutions and programmes across the higher education sector in England as they engage with creating, sharing and using open educational resources."
• The Pocket Project investigated the potential of migrating open content approaches in a range of disciplines across a number of different higher education institutions. The project ran from November 2007 until February 2009 and was led by the University of Derby. The partner institutions were: University of Bolton, Open University and the University of Exeter.
• The RepRODUCE programme addressed the repurposing of existing content for use within institutions and for subsequent open release. Helen Beetham  worked with the programme management team to provide resources concerning the evaluation of activity in this area. You may wish to view the slides as well as the evaluation and quality assurance plans.
• Jorum is a national repository for learning and teaching resources, and the Jorum Community Bay aims to support knowledge exchange and discussion on all aspects of sharing, re-use and repurposing of learning and teaching resources. The Jorum Community Bay provides links to a range of useful information, such as authoring and repurposing tools, case studies and discussion forums. 
• The Learning Resources and Activities (LRA) infoKit contains further links to previous and current JISC funded resources in this area.
  
• Open Database of Educational Projects and Organizations (ODEPO) is a wiki-database of organizations involved in providing educational content online. ODEPO includes over a thousand sites affiliated with various organizations, the majority of which involve the creation and expansion of Open Educational Resources.
• Steven Downes has released an ebook (August 2011) entitled Free Learning which collates many of his essays, posts and conversations around OER and Copyright - and address much broader issues of open practice. Provides some of the history and discourse in this fast moving field.

Research Reports

• Learner Use of Online Educational Resources for Learning (LUOER) Paul Bacsich, Barry Phillips and Sara Frank Bristow Sept 2011

• OER Impact Study: research report. Liz Masterman and Joanna Wild University of Oxford, July 2011

Practical resources

• The Open CourseWare Consortium (OCW) is an international organisation offering guidance to institutions and organisations across the world investigating the open release of learning content. They have provided an online toolkit to support potential projects in exploring the issues related to this form of release.
• The Open University’s OpenLearn project has opened access to a wide range of distance learning material via its website. In addition to these learning resources, OpenLearn has also provided advice for educators, which describes the nature of open content and the ways in which it can be used. 
• Get Started: Educators
• 'Creating Open Educational Resources' module
• OpenLearn is part of the wider Open Learning network (OLnet) supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation which features resources, research and tools. In addition, Support Centre for Open Resources in Education (SCORE)was a HEFCE-funded project (2009-2012) based at the Open University which aimed to "support individuals, projects, institutions and programmes across the higher education sector in England as they engage with creating, sharing and using open educational resources."
• OER for beginners: an introduction is an excellent page produced by the MEDEV Subject Centre which provides links to resources for healthcare education
• The STEM OER Guidance wiki contains guidance documents prepared by the STEM project teams from a number of Higher Education Academy/JISC-funded projects, which ran May 2009 to April 2010. The guidance is based on the experience of the teams' work with practising academics around issues to do with OER production and release.
• The UKOER Evaluation Toolkit  was produced by the UKOER Evaluation and Synthesis Team during phase 3 of the programme to help projects with evaluation of OER initiatives.

Case studies

• HE Academy: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/oer/oer-phase-3-case-studies

• Score: http://www8.open.ac.uk/score/case-studies

• JISC (Users): http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer2/casestudies.aspx

• JISC (in impact report): http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer2/oerimpact.aspx

• Jorum: http://www.jorum.ac.uk/community/jorum-stories

• OER Infokit Senior Managment Guide: https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/45742659/Some%20examples

• OER-CSAP six partner case studies (CSAP Project, UKOER)

• OER MEDEV: 14 scenarios/use cases (MEDEV Project, UKOER)
  

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