With the academic year beginning and the nights drawing in (well, here in the UK at least) it’s a good time to share with you what we’ve been up to and where we’ll be over the coming few months. openresearch

First up, keep your eyes peeled for the promised Fall launch of our Open Research course open textbook in the next few weeks. We’ve been experimenting with Pressbooks, incorporating participant contributions and all the latest info to make this the ultimate version of our successful 2014 and 2015 iterations of the course.

GO-GN 
We kicked off our latest round of #FirstWednesdayofMonth webinars with some cracking sessions. Rajiv Jhangiani (Kwantlen) reviewed open education research in August followed by Shironica Karunanayaka (OUSL) giving us the latest on the ROER4D research into the impact of OER on student educator practice in September. Finally October saw us (temporarily) switch to the second Wednesday of the month to join Martin for the Cátedra Telefónica-UNIR hosted webinar on The New Open Education. And there’s more awesomeness to come: mark the date and join us for The Self as an Open Educational Resource with Maha Bali and Suzan Koseoglu on 2 November… all welcome!
Preparations are also underway for next year’s workshop at OE Global, Cape Town, South Africa. Watch this space!
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland (OEPS) 
September saw the launch of the Becoming an Open Educator open badged course which takes a closer look at open education through the lens of open educational practice (OEP). Co-developed by the OEPS team, the course was community reviewed and launched on 1 September 2016.
We were also excited to publish our initial findings, infographics and open datasets for the research we’ve conducted into awareness of OER and OEP in higher education and the college sector in Scotland. Review our headline findings for the HE survey and college surveys.

OER World Map 

The OER World Map goes from strength to strength with the community continuing to grow and a lot of interest from people expressing their intention to contribute to the map. You can get involved by signing up!  bizMooc project venue by Martin

ExplOERer

The award winning course Learning to (Re)Use Open Educational Resources has been translated into Swedish and Polish and is currently being developed into an eBook.

Out and About 

Whilst Martin headed to Rome, Italy for a bizMOOC project meeting in early October, Bea and Beck headed up to Scotland to visit the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) in Inverness and the College Development Network (CDN) in Stirling to conduct Thinking about Open workshops on behalf of OEPS during September. Beck and Bea are currently working on an openly licensed pack of the workshop so keep your eyes peeled for its publication in the next couple of weeks! UHi by Rob

Rob also paid a visit to Inverness to participate in the 5th OERu partners meeting hosted by UHI.  Did you manage to catch Rob’s open research agenda session?

Come say hello… we’re on tour! 

Come and talk all things open and find out more about what we’re up to as we hit the road over the coming months:

This week sees EADTU host The Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference in Rome, Italy. Look out for Bea who will be talking about how GO-GN is developing the next generation of open education researchers at 14.00 on Thursday 20 October (Global OER Graduate Network: Raising the Profile of Research into Open Education);

In early November it’s time for this year’s Open Education conference. Martin and Rob will be flying the Hub flag in Richmond, VA. We’re excited to be concluding our Open Research agenda work over the past year at 11.30am on Friday 4 November whilst also presenting Different Aspects of the Emerging OER Discipline post-lunch on Thursday 3 November. Don’t miss it!

Finally, look out for Beck if you’re in Washington DC for this year’s OpenCon from 12-14 November.  The early career academic professionals and student conference for all things open … it’s going to be awesome!

 

Image credits: Inverness College UHI by Rob Farrow (used with permission) and BizMOOC project meeting venue by Martin Weller (used with permission)