Following on from the meeting about MOOCs, the Open Scholarship group has got another Opening to exploit! Matt McGregor from Creative Commons (NZ) will be at the University on August 12 and we’ve invited him along to join in a discussion about… Open Access, Academic Publishing and Creative Commons. Our invitation to Matt signalled that […]

The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (an open access journal) has published an issue that focuses on OERs (see below). Also, recently published online on the Learning, Media and Technology journal site is an article entitled “Self-directed learning and guidance in non-formal open courses”. It’s an interesting look at how OERs […]

Following on from the successful Open Minds Seminar series in 2012, a Community of Practice has been established for Otago staff to share experiences and ask questions about what it means to be an ‘open scholar’. Over the course of our two-monthly meetings we might debate questions like: Are MOOCs the greatest opening up of […]

From the Commonwealth of Learning … a new publication about OERs …  Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning: Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice Rory McGreal, Wanjira Kinuthia and Stewart Marshall, Eds. May 2013 Published jointly by the Commonwealth of Learning and Athabasca University, Canada (UNESCO/COL Chair in OER) as CC-BY-SA and freely available […]

The current issue of the journal Open Praxis is devoted to the topic “Openness in higher education”. Have a read… http://www.openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/issue/view/2/showToc Several articles discuss the challenges of assessment – especially when learners want to credit their open learning to traditional/formal courses … What would you do if a student asked for credit from a Udacity/Courseara/OpenLearn/OERu […]

Published today, an interesting article in IRRODL looking at the impact of OpenCourseWare (or more broadly Open Educational Resources) involvement on some of the OCW institutions and on learners. Broadly speaking, OCW publication has helped learners decide on and prepare for courses prior to enrolment, and has had some positive impacts on recruitment and outcomes […]

The blurb on the Commonwealth of learning site (http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412) says that 28 contributors to a new book on “OERs and change in higher education” answer such questions as: How do institutions, in both developed and developing countries, reposition themselves meaningfully within the new information-rich world in which information is accessible as never before? …. and […]

There’s a useful article about the move toward Open Educational Practices (OEPs) in a recent issue of the Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society. The authors discuss the ways in which there is a shift in focus from OERs, which have mainly engaged educators, to a wider focus on OEPs which also require the engagement […]

Bill A (sunrise over peninsula) Richard W (generic Otago books – OPEN!) Sarah G (original photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/korosirego/ has been remixed).