On 14th november 2012 I travelled to Birmingham (UK) to join in the UKOER3 startup event. The event marked the start of phase 3 of a major programme funded by the JISC and the Higher Education Academy. The UK Open Educational Resources Programme.
The UKOER is one of the largest programmes of its kind in the world, aiming to encourage academics and institutions to create and release educational resources under a creative commons licence. So far the programme has involved hundreds of academics from over 60 UK universities and colleges across the UK. It is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) who have invested tens of millions (£).
We, at Glasgow Caledonian University’s Caledonian Academy, are leading the evaluation and synthesis of the programme. The project team includes another three, internationally-renowned experts with whom I really enjoy working: Helen Beetham, Lou McGill and Isobel Falconer. Our research is now in the third year, building on two previous phases (UKOER 1 and 2).
During UKOER2 (20010/11) we identified key benefits and motivations for academics and institutions to create and release Open Educational Resources. The use of OERs triggers changes in knowledge sharing p students, helping the sector a step closer to participation in an open knowledge economy.
Our role in UKOER3 is to lead the evaluation of the programme from October 2011-October 2012. We are working with 18 institutions, universities and colleges, across England as well as a variety of national support initiatives, to identify key messages for the JISC, the HEA and the sector as a whole.
We will evaluate the programme using the synthesis and evaluation framework we developed through phases 1 and 2. The framework has a number of key themes, each with a range of evaluation questions that are asked by project teams as they carry out their individual project evaluations. The data they collect was mapped to the questions in the programme evaluation framework, providing an overview of key issues and trends across the programme. Thus we identified key lessons learnt and outcomes and highlighted significant outputs that demonstrate evidence of this.
If you’re interested in OERs, here are some useful resources from the UKOER programme:
- The final report from Phase 2 http://tinyurl.com/bu5lvge
- UKOER Synthesis and Evaluation Wiki: https://oersynth.pbworks.com/
- UKOER Synthesis and Evaluation Blog: http://oersynthesis.jiscinvolve.org/wp/
- UKOER InfoKit: https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/