Opening Educational Practices in Scotland

Opening Educational Practices in Scotland (OEPS)

14th April 2015

Project aims and themes

In the context of support for widening participation and transitions.

To facilitate best practice in open education in Scotland through the development of a peer support network, an online hub and awareness raising activities.

To enhance the Scottish tertiary sector’s capacity and reputation in developing publicly available online materials supported by high quality pedagogy and learning technology.

Origins

An extensive range of partnerships between the OU in Scotland and other organisations: third sector, unions, employers, colleges and schools. An increase in interest in OER and the development of some partnerships to co-produce new material and practices.

The Promise and the challenge of OER

PROMISE AND CHALLENGE

• Free access to high quality education on a mass scale

• Widening participation

MEET THE CHALLENGE

• Redraw the boundaries between informal and formal learning and between community/workplace learning and college/university learning

• Combine best practice in adult and community education pedagogy with the affordances of open education to widen participation

Developing Practice

OEPS is currently working with over 40 different organisations, universities, colleges, unions, regional and national bodies and employers

Practice is about design, structure and supportBut also about partnership, networks and social models of learning

Emerging Themes• Partnership

• Working with partners who are embedded in their own well established networks

• Working with partners where individuals play intermediary or facilitating roles with fellow workers, clients …

• Embedding practice in learning networks

• Extending learning design and practice to include the use of materials in social settings

• The online hub is being designed to support learning communities – not another repository

Development of new content and new practices Examples• Parkinsons UK – enabling Parkinsons education to be delivered at

much greater scale

• Glasgow University Wellcome funded programme on ‘end of life care’ – developing a global community of practice

• Women into Science and Technology – working with EQUATE and the OU Science Faculty

Learning from the practices and approaches associated with already existing OERExample: ULRs into Open Learning Champions

Example: Rural Entrepreneurship – working with SMEs

Open Badges • Currently 2 and shortly 5 open

badges created under the umbrella of OEPS and being used at scale

• More in the design process

• Badged Online Access Courses

Developing a network and sharing practice

• Informal meetings and dialogue

• Open education workshops

• Learning design workshops

• Advisory forum every 6 months

• Blog/website www.oepscotland.org • Conferences and seminars

Contact Us: Email:OEPScotland@open.ac.uk

Social media:@OEPScotland

www.oepscotland.org