OER

  • 10 New Textbooks Added to the BC Open Textbook Collection

    When the BC Open Textbook Project began in 2012, the dream was to create 50 open textbooks in the top 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the province.

    The project has now grown to over 150 open textbooks, with another 10 titles recently being added to the collection.

  • Awareness of OER and OEP in Scottish HE institutions – Survey Results

    The Open Educational Practices in Scotland (OEPS) project conducted a survey to find out about the level of awareness of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) among Higher Education (HE) institutions in Scotland.

    Key findings

    •     Awareness of OER among Scottish HE educators is generally low
    •     Awareness of Creative Commons (CC) licenses is lower than public domain or copyright (but awareness of all license types is higher than awareness of OER in general)
    •     Most educators share teaching materials via their institution’s virtual learning environment (VLE) but few share them openly online
    •     Lack of awareness is perceived as the highest barrier to adoption of OER
    •     Scottish HE educators use OER to broaden the range of materials available to their students
    •     Staff who attend continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities are more likely to engage with OER and OEP

    Recommendations

    •     Efforts to raise awareness of OER and OEP among HE teaching staff in Scotland need to be scaled up
    •     Opportunities for development around the use of OER in the curriculum, and especially the affordances and limitations of open licenses, should be provided
    •     Institutions should consider the possibility of ‘opening up’ their VLEs, and establish how to best support and encourage their teaching staff to share resources openly

    The full interim report is available for download here.

  • Call for proposals for OER17

    ALT have announced that the #OER17: The Politics of Opencall for proposals has now been published.

    The 8th Open Educational Resources Conference, OER17: The Politics of Open, will be held from 5 to 6 April 2017 at Resource for London, UK.

    The deadline for proposals is on midday GMT Wednesday, 16 November 2016.  

    The conference themes for submission this year are:

    Local, national, and international policy and practice

    • Cape Town Declaration 10th anniversary & 5th anniversary of the UNESCO Paris declaration
    • Privacy, surveillance, and open politics
    • Governance and power
    • School-level policies

    Institutional/organisational politics

    • Changing cultures
    • Open in the classroom
    • Open organisations and organising
    • From OER to OEP

    Participation & social equality

    • Open as inclusive
    • Human rights and OER
    • Digital literacy & open
    • Children, young people and open education

    Open Party

    • Celebrating heroes, wins and progress
    • Hacking, making, gaming, sharing
    • Open innovation
    • Wildcard contributions

    There are four submission formats: lightning talks, presentations, workshops and panels, and posters.

    Keep an eye on https://oer17.oerconf.org/call-for-proposals/for more details.