OER infoKit wiki Open Educational Resources infoKit / Some examples
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Some examples

Page history last edited by Doug Belshaw 12 years, 6 months ago

Examples to give you inspiration

 

Follow the links to see them in action.

 

Virtual Analytical Laboratory (School of Allied Health Services, De Montfort University)

Laboratory skills required for a range of science courses are taught through simple explanatory videos. Future, new and returning students can brush up on old skills and learn new ones – as and when they need to.

>> Visit the Virtual Analytical Laboratory

The Periodic Table of Videos (The University of Nottingham)

Staff at the University of Nottingham have brought the periodic table to life with a series of light-hearted yet informative videos exploring each of the 118 elements. This is just one of a number of open educational resources available at Nottingham University, thanks to its open courseware initiative: U-Now.

>> Try out the Periodic Table of Videos>> Watch a video about U-Now

Chemistry.FM (The University of Lincoln)

All the teaching and learning materials for a course unit ­– Introductory Chemistry for Forensic Science – have been shared publicly using Creative Commons licences. Along with the unit handbook and lecture slides there are videos, made for and by the students, and radio programmes to support the curriculum. The radio programmes were initially broadcast on Lincoln's community radio station, and then made available via podcasts on course web pages and iTunes U.

>> Listen to Chemistry.FM

Using iTunes U (Oxford University)

More than 10,000,000 downloads have been made of podcasts of public lectures, teaching materials, interviews with leading academics and information about enrolling in the university. These are made freely available using the iTunes U service and a dedicated website.

>> Explore Oxford University on iTunes U

 

 

Success stories

 

A sustainable approach (Leeds Metropolitan University)

One of the key aims for Leeds Metropolitan University was to engage senior management teams and academics in open educational resources.

Sustainability was paramount. The university established a long-term model for open educational resources implementation so that funding beyond the initial set up stage would not be required. It embedded the creation of open educational resources into established processes, and adapted its existing repository to provide access to material openly.

A centralised approach can be costly. So Leeds Metropolitan devolved ownership and responsibility for open educational resources to its faculties, while at the same time providing learning technology support.

Development sessions have helped staff appreciate how open educational resources can enhance their learning and teaching practice. Open educational resources are now recognised within personal development reviews; thus staff can gain recognition for their work in this area.

Through open educational resources, academic staff can work as "learning designers", selecting quality materials to enhance and complement their own work and save them time. In turn, students have access to a broader range of educational resources.

>> Unicycle: Leeds Met's open educational resources project
>> Open educational resources strategy document

Using social media tools (Politics in Spires, University of Cambridge & University of Oxford)

Politics in Spires is a blog-style website created through a collaboration between the politics and international studies departments at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. Blogs, audio, video and other learning materials which are licensed for reuse and redistribution are sourced from the web to form collections of relevant open educational resources. The materials are openly available to anyone. Comment and debate is actively encouraged.

Triton, the system behind Politics In Spires, allows collections of open educational resources to be curated quickly and easily. Keyword searches, RSS feeds and Creative Commons information are used to automate the collection of resources relevant to a particular topic. Then, through human intervention, the quality of each resource can be evaluated: students and staff use a 'like' button to show appreciation for the materials they find useful.

Collections can also be created by teachers and learners themselves. Registered users bookmark relevant resources to deposit them into the blog framework. This forms a "learning pathway" which can be shared with others.

Using Politics in Spires, students within and beyond the universities can find relevant, good quality resources much more easily. There is also evidence that schools are using Politics in Spires to stretch their students and give them a taste of university education at Oxford or Cambridge.

>> Politics in Spires
>> Triton

Profile raising (OpenSpace, University College Falmouth)

University College Falmouth developed OpenSpace to share teaching materials from its professional writing courses with learners all over the world. The University established a framework for dealing with intellectual property rights, which included a basic agreement.

University College Falmouth developed OpenSpace to share teaching materials from its professional writing courses with learners all over the world. The University established a framework for dealing with intellectual property rights, which included a basic agreement.

OpenSpace was piloted through the college's MA Professional Writing course. This course was well suited to open educational resources, with a programme centred around self-reliant students undertaking independent study. As the course was delivered online, the supporting materials were already in digital format.

By openly releasing these resources and using Twitter to publicise them, Falmouth gained considerable public interest in its courses and witnessed an increase in enrolments.

The course has been able to demonstrate that with small amounts of investment open educational resources can be used successfully for marketing purposes. This has driven an interest in open educational resources across the institution.

The team driving open educational resources at Falmouth believe that work in this area increases academic rigour. Sharing course materials openly invites feedback from others. In turn, feedback helps tutors to reflect, and approach a subject from a fresh perspective.

Releasing open educational resources has also created opportunities to develop mutually advantageous international partnerships.

>> OpenSpace, University College Falmouth
>> University College Falmouth presentation at JISC Conference 2011

Effective collaboration (Humbox, humanities departments and subject centres)

Humbox is a repository of humanities resources free to download and share. It is the result of a collaboration between four Higher Education Academy subject centres and a consortium of humanities departments in universities throughout the UK. As well as building a bank of resources, the aim is to create a community of humanities specialists willing to share teaching materials, collaborate with each other and peer-review resources.

The main driver behind Humbox is to encourage networking and collaboration between academic staff with a view to enhancing teaching practice. As such, staff have been encouraged to release materials that are not necessarily perfectly polished, with a view to receiving feedback and making improvements. Without huge investment in staff development, tutors are able to improve their skills and discover the approaches used in other similar disciplines. Humbox also provides teachers (particularly those who are not research active) with an opportunity to showcase and raise the profile of their work and the work of their institution.

More than 1,300 resources have been published, a number which is growing daily. Items include slide presentations, individual images, lecture podcasts, video materials and interactive online materials. Users can not only download the materials but also comment on them.

>> Humbox
>> About Humbox

OpenLearn (The Open University)

As its name suggests, The Open University has always taken an open approach, so adopting open educational resources was a natural next step. The Open Learn initiative brought together pockets of open educational resources work already happening around the university.

As part of its social justice mission, the university has made a policy to openly release a percentage of each of its full courses (5% as a guideline).

Initially, the university identified elements of existing courses that lent themselves to being released openly. Since then, open educational resources have become mainstream across the university, created as byproducts of the course production process.

Making material fit for open release is embedded into the creation process. Authoring teams are supported through technical tools; for example, add-in software has been made available to automatically transform core material into various formats.

Through OpenLearn, the Open University has made over 600 online courses available for anyone to sign up to for free. Hundreds of people accessing these free resources go on to enrol on paid-for courses, thus generating a return on investment for The Open University.

>> About OpenLearn
>> Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor, The Open University, at JISC Conference 2010

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