Open educational resources: A new creative space

Abstract

Several agencies in the UK are funding a national programme to develop an infrastructure to support Open Educational Resources (OER). Policies and procedures are being defined and repositories and metadata are being established. Much of the graft involves Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) clearance. But the greatest challenges are with the educational value of the material that is deposited and how they can facilitate and enhance learning. The ambition is for OER to contribute to the teaching-research nexus, where staff and students can meet in a creative space, co-creating resources within an active, co-dependent and interactive curriculum. This paper describes how one University in the UK is currently developing an OER at the institutional level and the challenges that are being encountered.