Open Educational Resources (OER)

The UK Centre for Bioscience took part in a pilot programme for the release of Open Educational Resources (OER) following a successful bid for £250,000 from HEFCE/JISC as part of the subject strand. This was part of a wider programme on £5.7m to encourage and enable the open sharing of educational resources.  Links to all resources produced as a result of this project may be found in the subject areas on the menu to the left.

What are we seeking to achieve?

By working in partnership with the Academy, professional bodies and insitutions we will identify the issues and problems for developing OER in the Biosciences. We have selected a broad sample of learning and teaching materials which we believe are representative of the types of resource available to support practical work in many Bioscience disciplines, which also illustrate a range of approaches. These will become 'An Interactive Laboratory and Fieldwork Manual for the Biosciences' and made available through links on our project site and numerous services including the forthcoming JorumOpen. Although these are targeted towards level 1 practical classes we expect components to be useful for various levels.

The Centre will use its networks and contacts to promote the use of OER and explore the issues of the potential adopters to inform the post-pilot programme.

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Educational Resources are resources for learning and teaching which are specifically designed with a different and distinct purpose; to encourage re-use, re-mixing and re-purposing.

It has long been recognised that it is good to share learning and teaching materials. Not only does this save time and effort but it enables these resources to be appreciated by a wider audience. This inevitably leads to suggestions for development and the quality of the resource can be improved. However, this does not occur in most cases; the popular practice of sharing existing institutional resources in HE is limited by a number of factors typified by the following questions.

• Has it been tailored for my course? Many modules will have content similar to others outside the institution but the context of the delivery is different so the resource does not appeared integrated to other learning materials.
• Can I trust the quality of the content? Many resources have not been properly documented - they can be provided for sharing with little history leading to less confidence in their use.
• Has it been kept up-to-date? Typically resources are passed around (once permission has been granted) but no mechanism for providing a reliable update is considered.
• Is it easy to find? The traditional email list or personal contact may find resources. Websites often give a limited description of the resource leading to a failure in the search engines to find them.
• Is there a benefit for providing the materials? Learning and teaching resources, especially computer based ones, are expensive to develop. Small (and more specialised) courses can find it hard to justify, especially in the current economic climate.
• Are the Intellectual Property Rights cleared for use or re-purposing? This is not often apparent and potential users have been concerned about the risk.

The OER approach is growing internationally as a means to share and re-use resources for learning and teaching efficiently. 'Resources' in this context are all types of course material; software, assessments, booklets, fulll course materials, videos, images - anything that can be used or re-purposed and re-used. As a subject centre we often hear about the difficulty in finding suitable resources even though so many materials are being produced. Discovery of suitable content (in whole or, more usually, in part) and licencing concerns are common, especially in Higher Education. It is hoped that by adopting an OER approach more learning and teaching resources will be liberated and re-used effectively.

• Resources can be tailored for local courses by being provided in a modifiable state, with instructions where possible.
• The content is designed from the outset with a wide audience in mind, verified before the initial release into the community. It can be often be provided with evidence of a critical review as an indicator of the quality of the material. It has been noted that when resources are developed for an audience also beyond the institutional boundary the quality often improves.
• Each resource is managed through a repository, with a record of updates.
• By use of a managed repository the content can be fully catalogued with meaningful academic descriptions making it easier to find as it is advertised to search engines and other repositories.
• The authors are properly and legally attributed with the use of appropriate Creative Commons licences. Additional work is also attributed as the resource is adopted and adapted elsewhere. The use of tags, metadata and download statistics enables the use of the resource to provide data as a measure of the benefit of recognition of the provider and their institution.
• The Intellectual Property Rights are cleared with specific licences. Users can adopt and adapt with confidence

If successful, the OER approach offers solutions to 'wheel-reinvention' problems, scaleability and improved longevity.

Activities and events

OER Dissemination Event - 31 March, University College London

This provides an opportunity to hear about the resources and how they have been developed for release as Open Educational Resources.

Project partners

Projects have been selected for the breadth of content they offer and various methods of delivery involved to enable us to maximise the issues involved in producing Open Educational Resources and sharing them with the bioscience community.

You can learn more about the partners and the resources they have provided by clicking on the subject links in the left-hand navigation above.

Where will these resources appear?

Resources created through the project are being hosted on the new JISC-funded JorumOpen repository. They can be viewed directly through our subject pages linked to above.

JorumOpen Cataloguing Guidelines

How can I stay informed about this project?

You can keep up-to-date with the project's progress through the Bioscience OER Blog

How do I discover more about Open Educational resources?

The concepts of OERs are described more extensively in the OER Commons, the Wikiversity and the JISC OER programme call. Further information is available from The Higher Education Academy Open Educational Resources

iIf you are considering adopting this approach you may also be interested in the OER handbook and OCW Toolkit

Funded projects under the Pilot Programme

Other information

A prezi presentation about the bioscience OER project

Open Education news

Project Manager: Terry McAndrew, C&IT Manager, Centre for Bioscience. t.j.mcandrew@leeds.ac.uk

Project Officer: Chris Taylor, Centre for Bioscience. c.d.taylor@leeds.ac.uk

Project Tag: bioukoer