JISC

Overview
The OERCaFE project builds on the learning and experiences of the Coventry University OCEP (Open Content Employability Project; a first phase institutional strand OER project) to engage two prominent FE providers of HE (Lewisham College and Warwickshire College) in an exploration of the issues, possibilities and relevance of OER involvement by HE in FE providers in general.

Aims & Objectives
The project will explore issues particular to FE around the release of open educational resources to the HE sector.  The project will capitalize on the experience of the team in its successful delivery of previous HEFCE and JISC funded repository enhancement and OER projects.

The project will promote the sharing of learning resources to increase student satisfaction and quality of learning enhancing the likelihood of student retention and success in HE in FE. Given that the OER initiative is, in part, based on adopting lean principles to developing teaching materials, the project will lead to economies of effort across the FE sector.

Project Methodology
The project will have four phases.

1. The first phase will bring Warwickshire and Lewisham staff
   up to speed with OER issues.
2. The second phase will comprise an audit of the colleges’
   existing resources to identify specific resources for re-
   purposing as OERs. The audit will be conducted against the
   criteria developed during phase 1.
3. Phase 3 will re-purpose the resources identified under phase
   2. Coventry staff will lead a number of workshops for
   college staff on re-purposing.
4. Phase 4 will comprise project reporting, dissemination and
   impact assessment.

Anticipated Outputs & Outcomes
Project outputs and outcomes will include:

a. report on strategies for embedding the open content deposit
b. guidance to colleges on OER use, release, benefits etc
c. briefing and training materials contextualised for college use
d. fully documented exemplars of college-generated OERs
e. two case studies of OER development and use; one from each partner college
f. a set open resources for use in college staff development
g. a college knowledge base on open resource issues
h. a demonstration of the value of participation in the OER community by colleges