Open Learning Network

The JISC Open Educational Resources Programme OER impact study is now available from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer2/oerimpact.aspx.  The report investigates the impact of Open Educational Resources (OER) use on teaching and learning and draws on literature surveys, interviews, focus groups and workshop data to identify the pedagogic, attitudinal, logistical and strategic factors conducive to uptake and sustained use of OER.

OU staff Patrick McAndrew (IET, Director of OLnet), Simon Buckingham Shum (Senior lecturer KMI working on SocialLearn and OLnet), Karen Cropper (IET, Project and Liaison Manager OLnet) and Freda Wolfenden (FELS and TESSA) all attended The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation 2010 Grantees Meeting at Yale University on 8-10 April 2010.  At this meeting the Hewlett Foundation presented for the first time to a public audience their new funding strategy for the next 7 years.

I spent most of last week attending, for the first time, the annual OpenEd 2009 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Though this was not the first event combining academic grounding and practitioner insight, that I have attended, the openness of concepts and multiplicity of spaces – virtual and physical –  for expression pushed me to think of education in many new ways.  To put it briefly this event did not only provide an opportunity for reflection on the blurring of boundaries between scholarship and pedagogy, teaching/learning practices; it also provided a community space for activists and those interested in broadening the definitions of, and participation in, education and learning.