Yes, it’s that time of the year again! We might have been a bit quiet on the social media front recently but rest assured there’s been lots going on behind the scenes. Here’s a little round up of some of our highlights over the past year. And of course, we’d also like to thank you all for your continued support and wish you all the very best for the holidays and 2018!

Open Textbooks in the UK? 

We’re excited to be collaborating with our friends OpenStax and the Open Textbook Network as part of the Hewlett-funded UK Open Textbooks project. Joining forces with Viv Rolfe (UWE) and David Kernohan (WonkHE) we’ve been testing these successful models of open textbook mainstreaming by conducting adoption workshops and promoting OpenStax open textbooks at events and conferences across the UK and Ireland over the past few months. If you’re at ASE or HEA STEM in January 2018 look out for our stand (DS21) or poster session, respectively. You can also find out more about our past and forthcoming workshops and get a taste of what we’ve been doing over on the project’s website.    

We’ll be reporting back in more detail in the New Year but in the meantime, if you’re an educator based in the UK and use textbooks, we need your help and would be grateful for your participation in our short survey! So grab a cuppa and we’d love to hear your experiences.

GO, GO, GO-GN 

It’s been another successful year for GO-GN, the Global OER Graduate Network. With 70 members, our numbers continue to grow. Congratulations to everyone who successfully defended their vivas over 2017!

In March GO-GN returned to beautiful Cape Town for its annual workshop prior to OE GlobalCheck out this Storify about the workshop and read some of our fantastic students’ experiences. Throughout the year there’s been a number of webinars showcasing the work of our PhD researchers, and with experienced speakers such as Laura Czerniewicz, Sukaina Walji, Rory McGreal, Jan Neumann and TJ Bliss. If you’ve missed any of our first Wednesday of the month sessions, you can catch up here.  

Want to find out more? Hear from some of our members on what impact GO-GN has had or find out more about their research. And of course, if you are researching open education as part of your PhD studies and you are not a member of GO-GN yet, find out more about how to join. We’d love to have you on board.

Get Mappin’ 

The OER World Map project continues to go from strength to strength.  As the community grows, new functionality has been introduced – including ‘lighthouse’ projects which showcase good practice or exceptional achievement and the facility for sharing tools and publications.   The project recently joined the Open Education Consortium. If you haven’t added your project, initiative, event or yourself to the map yet, don’t delay and contribute today!

MOOC-tastic 

We’re contributing to the ERASMUS+ BizMOOC project in collaboration with colleagues from across Europe. Raising the profile of MOOC via research into the level of awareness, use and collaboration between business, HEIs and third sector organisations the project has produced a collaborative living resource: MOOC Book. We also developed one of the three pilot MOOCs Learning with MOOC for Professional Development which is available via the OpenLearn Create platform.

OEP in Scotland 

At the end of this summer the 3-year Scottish Funding Council project Opening Educational Practices in Scotland (OEPS) came to an end. Responsible for the research strand of the project highlights included the delivery of workshops (Thinking about Open) across Scotland, the development of the open course Becoming an Open Educatorwhich received an Honorable Mention in the Course/OCW/MOOC Category at this year’s Open Education Awards for Excellence, and the creation of a range of case studies showcasing open practice.

Open Innovation and Open Practice

The OOFAT Models project took place this year – a collaboration between OER Hub and the Forschungsinstitut für Bildungs- und Sozialökonomie (FIBS) in Germany.  The team have assembled a global collection of open innovation and open practice which will be published shortly.  In the meantime, you can learn more about the project and results from the EADTU conference proceedings (see p.278 onwards).

Out and About    

The team have been out and about participating in many open education events over the past year. Bea co-chaired the IV Workshop Recursos Educativos Abiertos (WREA) in Argentina, together with colleagues from Brazil and Uruguay. One of the outcomes of this collaboration has been a call for papers for a special collection in the Journal of Interactive Media in Education with a focus on open education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Interested in participating? You have until March 17th to submit your piece.  

Rob participated in OpenEd17 in Anaheim, California in October whilst Bea, Nats and Martin headed to ICDE’s World Conference for Online Learning in Toronto. Meanwhile across the pond here in the UK, the team were also out in force at OER17 in April, participated in EADTU and MozFest in the autumn and headed to Inverness in May to explore “openness, space and place in Higher Education” at the joint UHI/OEPS hosted Porous University event exploring “openness, space and place in Higher Education.”

Engagement  

Finally, we’ve contributed to a number of publications this year, including Openness in Education: A Beginner’s Guide and the edited volume Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. We also shared experiences of open research and Twitter with colleagues here at The Open University (OU) during Open Education week and Open Access week and celebrated Year of Open in style with colleagues from across the OU sharing their ideas and experiences of openness. Find out more and catch up here!