GETTING SWITCHED ON! OPEN NOTTINGHAM, REMOVING THE BARRIERS FOR RE-USE AND SHARING

Through the BERLiN (Building Exchanges for Research and Learning in Nottingham) project, a 12-month JISC funded project to expand Nottingham’s existing Open Educational Repository, u-Now , Nottingham released 360 credits of existing learning resources freely online in April 2010. In addition, The University of Nottingham, working with colleagues from OER Africa, sought end-user feedback on our open learning materials, exploring issues such as usability, mechanisms for deployment and the limitations faced within the region. The main drivers were to enhance our open learning materials and encourage both the routine use and publication of learning resources at Nottingham, facilitating cultural change through cost effective content creation. The development of an Open Educational Repository (OER) and the wide distribution of OER is a strategic driver for University, in particular supporting the University’s international strategy (‘knowledge without borders’) and fostering interaction with prospective and existing students in order to complement their studies, as well as building connections with other HEIs nationally and internationally.

The BERLiN project team began by exploring the barriers preventing adoption at Nottingham, identifying the issues involved and developing strategies for overcoming them. Consequently, a series of academic focus groups (summer 2009) explored institutional perceptions towards open learning and potential reuse at Nottingham. The detailed results were illuminating though they did confirm our suspicions that anxieties lay in areas such as the fear of loss of control, legal or moral restrictions, time and effort required, quality controls and the extent to which the numerous forms of teaching can be represented in OER.

This presentation will discuss the successful and unsuccessful strategies employed to support the growth in use and repurpose of OER at Nottingham, including:

• Content development, including processes to find and attribute open materials
• End user feedback
• 21st century information skills training
• Promotion and awareness raising activities
• Approaches for encouraging reuse
• Strategies for addressing academic concerns

The presentation will also include a demonstration of the U-Now OER, project blog and academic focus group feedback, facilitating continued participation with audience members.