The Opening Educational Practices in Scotland project is a three-year initiative led by the Open University in Scotland to promote open educational practices. It includes analyzing current practices, hosting events, developing an online hub for sharing resources and best practices, creating open educational resources, and researching barriers and economic models related to open education. The project aims to extend thinking about open practices to include learning design, co-creation, social and peer-supported learning, and networks.

1. Opening Educational Practices in
Scotland
Pete Cannell and Ronald Macintyre

2. 2
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
The Project
• Opening Educational
Practices in Scotland
is a three year project
led by the Open
University in Scotland
but involving all of the
higher education
sector.

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Project objectives
The project encompasses a number of activities over a
three year period (2014-2017):
• Analysis of current open educational practices
• Events programme across Scotland to raise awareness of OEP
• Development of an online hub to encourage and share best practice in
open education
• Development of a small number of high quality OERs of particular
benefit to Scotland
• Badging of informal learning
• Learning design for widening participation
• Research and evaluation building strong evidence base
• Evaluation of various economic models of openness

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Extending how we think of OEP
• The evidence that OEPS is building on suggests that it may be
useful to think of practice as including:
• Learning design and pedagogy
• Opportunities for co-creation
• Social Context
• Collective and peer supported learning
• Networks

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Four emerging themes
• Scholarship and dissemination of knowledge /openness as a
public good/ social mission
• Understanding and overcoming barriers to engagement with
OER in widening participation contexts
• Social practice
• The ladder of engagement – towards remixing and reversioning

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Scholarship and dissemination of knowledge
• Creation of exemplar OER
Building on models of co-creation (emphasis on
Learning Design) e.g. Caring Counts
• Importance of development embedded in networks
Strengthens design and heightens impact
• Scottish Association for Marine Science/ UHI - Seaweed
• Glasgow University (Crichton Campus) – End of Life
Academic communities in which specialised knowledge
is shared and developed – driver of obligation for public
engagement/ social mission – potential for reuse

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Understanding barriers to engagement
• Widening participation as well as widening access
• Working with partners in the third sector, unions,
colleges and universities
• ‘Traditional’ WP barriers (situational, institutional and
dispositional) intersect and interact specific
characteristics of digital environment

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
• Developing evidence that models of collective engagement and
pedagogical approaches that all peer support and interaction
are critical
• Hosting these on www.oeps.ac.uk (OEPS hub)
• Builds on concepts of trusted gatekeepers in WP practice
• Working with gatekeepers to co-develop models of practice –
identify appropriate material and provide structures and
pathways to scaffold support
• Shifts the boundaries of the university – example of work with
Scottish Union Learning and Union Learning Representatives
(the gatekeepers in this context)
Social practice

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Towards remixing and reversioning
• In working with lots of partners we’ve found that initially
the challenge is to engage with the first of the 5Rs – in
truth ‘free’ is the primary interest – ‘open’ lags behind
• Through engagement with issues around enabling use
– interest in remixing and reversioning starts to emerge
• Interested in whether technology is now such that the
barriers to making material ‘your own’ are shrinking to
the extent that users can remix and reversion at much
lower cost
• Developing small pilots with the new tools on
OpenLearn Works (soon to be OpenLearn Create) to
test these ideas.

10. Contact Us: Email:
OEPScotland@open.ac.uk
Twitter: @OEPScotland
Blog: www.oepscotland.org
Community hub: www.oeps.ac.uk