Higher Education Academy/JISC Open Educational Resources Programme

The Higher Education Academy and JISC are working in partnership to support the HEFCE funded Open Educational Resources (OER) programme which began with a pilot initiative in April 2009.

Building on the work of the pilot phase (April 2009 - April 2010) a second phase of funded projects and activities will run between August 2010 and August 2011, more information can be found below:

The aim of the programme is to make a wide range of high quality higher education resources freely available, easily discovered online and routinely re-used and repurposed by both educators and learners worldwide. The potential benefits of the open release of educational resources by UK higher education institutions include:

  1. An increase in student satisfaction concerning the quality of learning materials;
  2. An enhancement of the global academic reputation of the UK HE system;
  3. An increase in applications to UK HEI courses from international, and non-traditional, learners;
  4. Improved value for money in resource creation for the UK HE sector;
  5. UK higher education's contribution to the public good and the developing world;
  6. A significant increase in the open availability and use of free high quality online resources;
  7. Advertising and marketing benefits to individual lecturers, HEIs and UK education, opening up universities to potential students (e.g. widen access; promote the uptake of science subjects);
  8. Making use of the significant investment that has already been made in digital content by providing ways to reuse and repurpose existing resources and to demonstrate how they can be used for teaching and learning;
  9. Support for new modes of online learning, such as those that involve the use of web 2.0 tools and mobile devices.

Contact Information

OER Team