UKOER institutional strand guidance and support

What guidance and support needs to be offered nationally and at institutional or even departmental level?

Which support mechanisms are appropriate for different stakeholders?

author: Lou McGill

Projects developed a wide range of guidance materials which ranged from awareness raising materials focussing on benefits of OER release to specific information to support staff with institutional guidelines on Copyright and metadata. All of the guidance materials develped are of value to the wider community who could adapt them for their own institutional context. These are inlcuded in the new OER Infokit and Institutional strand projects are very positive about the value of this resource to the wider community.

Many projects took advice and guidance on legal and technical issues from project support teams (JISC Legal, JISC cetis, Jorum team and Techdis). These teams have also made a range of useful materials available on their own support sites.As expected, projects felt there was a strong need for guidance on Copyright issues, particularly around provenance, third party clearance, licencing and takedown policies. Projects utilised JISC Legal, institutional Copyright Officers and Lawyers and other projects to clarify issues and produce their own institutionally focused guidance materials.

As well as producing guidance and support materials for their staff in relation to benefits of openly releasing their own materials, all projects identified a need amongst their staff for guidance on using others OERs in their teaching. There was a low level of awareness of OERs around the potential they could offer teachers, and specifically how to find and utilise them. Several projects developed substantial workshop materials, which were also incorporated into accredited staff development mechanisms.

BERLIN (University of Nottingham) Open Learning Workshop

  • The aim of the workshop is to provide guidance on how to harness the power of the web, to find, use, attribute, create and publish open educational resources. In essence it is designed to cascade the knowledge gained by the BERLiN team across the University in order to maximise the effectiveness of OER, support cultural change locally through the routine re-purposing of open content and to open up a rich and varied source of content for use across the institution. It is also designed to help academics understand how to find and re-purpose resources located on the web appropriately and in line with relevant copyright and creative commons licensing.
  • The workshop will be made available as a qualifying workshop towards the Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE), enabling new lecturers to understand the importance of finding and attributing web-based materials correctly and providing a wealth of content to avoid duplication when designing a module. This is one of several examples of a cultural shift in the institution brought about by the project.
  • BERLiN Project Final report

OCEP University of Coventry)

  • Copyright questionnaire for academic staff (producing snapshot of current understanding to identify where guidance is needed)
  • Guides for contributors on ELGG
  • OCEP Project Final Report

OpenExeter (University of Exeter)

Openspires (University of Oxford)

OpenStaffs (Staffordshire University)

OTTER (University of Leicester)

Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University)