As you’re probably aware 2017 is #YearOfOpen … a 365 day celebration of open education and the anniversary of a number of key milestones in its development, including  the Cape Town Declaration, 15 years since the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and the 5th anniversary of the Paris OER Declaration.  We’re excited to announce that, in addition to all the excellent events happening around the world, we’ll also be hosting a Year of Open event here at The Open University, UK (OU) on Tuesday 20 June 2017! 

Join us as we celebrate openness at the OU with a series of lightening presentations from colleagues across the university, exploring what openness means to them and their roles. Speakers include:

Openness and the OU Library: How the Library is Supporting Openness at the OU (Nicola Dowson, Library Senior Manager (Research Support) and Dan Crane, Research Support Librarian) 

Opening Educational Practice beyond the OU: Open Platform and Practices (Anna Page, Senior Producer: Open Education Projects) 

“Openness demonstrated by the Opening Educational Practices in Scotland project, working with partners creating open online courses and further developing OpenLearn Create to support open practices, online course building and hosting.”

From Theory to Practice: An Open Educational Journey (Tim Seal, TESS-India Technical Director) 

“How UK based advocacy with the Support Centre for Open Resources in Education (SCORE) lead to global implementation.”

Ethics in Knowing: Rationales for Openness (Rick Holliman, Professor of Engaged Research)

“In this talk I will briefly introduce three rationales for openness within Higher Education (normative, substantive and instrumental), and explore how they can be deployed at strategic and operational levels.”

The second half of the afternoon will be led by our very own Martin Weller; discussion will focus on how we can shape open at the OU.

Don’t miss it! We will be live streaming the event via Periscope and a recording will be available via our YouTube channel shortly afterwards. So, mark the date and we do hope you can join us. A more detailed final programme will follow shortly… watch this space!

Image credits:The Year of Open logo is licensed CC BY 4.0.