5.6 If you want to know more ...

Understanding open practices and open educational resources

To develop your understanding of OER and OEP further, you could:

• Delve deeper into the concept of ‘openness’ and where ‘open’ changes your approach to different (e.g. open access, open data or open research) Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] offer a great range of courses developed and run by the community on different topics such as copyright and open licensing.
• Work through the Creating open educational resources course on OpenLearn.
• Take a look at Edutopia’s ‘Open educational resources (OER): resource roundup’, which gives an overview of how and where to look for different types of OER, or open material for particular occasions or themes (e.g. national holidays).

Using open educational resources

Here is a selection of resources to explore:

Measuring impact

• This CETIS publication gives great advice on how to measure the impact of OER (see p. 69). 
• The OER Research Hub researches the impact of OER on learning and teaching and also curates other evidence for OER impact.
• The Open Education Group’s Review Project brings together peer-reviewed research on OER. 

Open pedagogy

• Viv Rolfe reflects on open pedagogy and her participation in the University of British Columbia’s course Teaching with Wordpress in ‘The pic-a-mix of open education’.
• Check out ‘The pedagogy of open learning’, a section of the Creating open educational resources course on OpenLearn.
• You may remember Natalie Lafferty from earlier in the course. Read her presentation on ‘Students as producers of open learning’, which gives more background and insight into Dundee University’s medical school students as co-creators of OER.
• Jesse Stommel’s presentation ‘Open door classroom’ explores ‘… the ethical and pedagogical considerations in having students use open resources but also on learning in public, doing public work, and engaging with open learning communities.’ If you’re interested in more hands-on activity and maker spaces, read Laura Fleming’s ‘A librarian’s guide to OER in the maker space’.

Twitter, blogging and social media

• The European Commission funded Open Education Europa is curating and compiling a list of best practice from across Europe. 
• Find out more about ‘30 innovative ways to use Google in education’. 
• Interested in improving your Twitter skills? Read ‘Tweet like a ninja – updated!’ by Gwyneth Jones, aka The Daring Librarian.
• Interested in external and internal engagement at your organisation or institution? Read Dave Webster of the University of Gloucestershire’s ‘Lessons learned: how departmental social media use in universities needs to evolve and grow’.

Open research and digital scholarship

• The OER Research Hub course on Open Research on P2PU covers the meaning of open research, how to be ethical and open and disseminating and reflecting in the open. 
• ‘Why open research?’ takes you through the main reasons for ‘going open’ whilst providing lots of great practical advice and resources. 
• The P2PU course Open Science: An Introduction course explores what open science is. 
• Curious about what specific terms mean? The Right to Research Coalition has created an Open Research Glossary for you to consult.
• Thinking about ethical issues? Read ‘The ethics of digital scholarship’ by Martin Weller, or download his book The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Scholarly Practice.
• Still wondering why open access makes a difference? Read ‘Why I don’t care about open access to research – and why you should’ by Michael White.

Open tools

Here are some open tools that you could use or incorporate appropriately into your teaching:

• ‘Open source software’ (Wikipedia definition) 
• ‘101 open source tools for developers’
• ‘Examples of open source software’ 
• GitHub (for code) 

Open data

• Want to find out more about open data? Read the Open Data Institute’s ‘What is “open data” and why should we care?’ or check out this Q&A with Marieke Guy (formerly of Open Knowledge Foundation).
• The Open Data Handbook sets out the case for using and releasing data in the open and provides useful information on what you need to consider.
• OpenDataScotland.org has made a range of open datasets available, whilst the Open Knowledge Foundation has listed organisations and public bodies in Scotland that release data openly in its Open Data Catalogues. 
• The Open Data Research Network’s ‘Exploring the emerging impacts of open data in developing countries’ is mapping the different uses and impacts of open data around the world.
• Find out more about using Figshare to share your data and research.

Open accreditation and open badging 

Find out more about different ways open badges are being utilised by these organisations and initiatives:

• University of British Columbia’s Open Badges UBC
• The Open University’s badged open courses
• Caring counts: a self-reflection and planning course for carers
• Social Partnerships Network courses
• Understanding Parkinson’s for health and social care by Parkinson’s UK and the OEPScotland project
• Development impact & you: learning modules – DIY Learn online learning programme in innovation.