JISC

Overview

This project seeks to cascade support for embedding Open Educational Resources within the social sciences curriculum, focusing on the relationship between the use of OERs and student engagement. We will work with three key academic partners in cascading a guided discovery approach to finding and using OER to meet curriculum needs, followed by a guided process of OER release. Student engagement and response will feature in this cascade framework.

Aims & Objectives

Our project aims to develop a better informing of the process of using OER to support curriculum development (particularly in social science domain); an exploration of pedagogical issues in relation to using OER; work with students to evaluate and reflect on use of OER in curriculum development, particularly in increasing engagement for particular curriculum issues (such as key concepts or methodology).

Project Methodology

Our project will work with a small cluster of academic staff (3 institutional partners including one HE in FE institution). As the project team is adopting a Communities of Practice methodology, we will work closely with the project partners, supported by our project consultant and project critical friend. We will combine face to face meetings with other means of support and communication including online support.

Anticipated Outputs & Outcomes

• A framework to support cascade of OER use and release (based on project methodology);
• Creation and deposit of new OERs into JORUMOpen and international repositories such as MERLOT;
• Engagement with students in the cascade process;
• Review of cascade release in HE/FE;
• Enhanced literature review and other resources;
• Dissemination activities including project events, workshops, project website, blog, and feeds into tools such as twitter and netvibes;
• Increased awareness of the benefits of incorporating Open Educational Resources into undergraduate curriculum design and teaching.

Technology/Standards

The project will adopt the mandated OER programme keywords and tags for OER release. The project blog and web resource will use standard RSS/ATOM for feed dissemination. All released OER will use appropriate creative commons licenses (anticipated v 3.0).