This document discusses the potential benefits of using open educational resources (OER) in curriculum design. It notes that traditional university teaching is often based around lectures and limited resources, whereas OER allows for unlimited resources. It suggests OER could enable more flexible curriculum designs by allowing lecturers to take advantage of the variety of available resources and shift away from the role of 'guru' to that of a guide. The document advocates exploring how flexible patterns used in some subjects could be adopted more widely and provides some examples of OER repositories and tools that could support more open approaches to teaching.

1. Introduction to OER ORIC – Open Educational Resources for the Inclusive Curriculum http://www.oric.brad.ac.uk

2. Who needs me? http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutOpenE/205913

4. Another USA example:Connexions

5. Resources for learning and teaching limited by library budget; Limited range of resources available; Focus on print/text materials; Lecturer seen as ‘guru’/expert; Lecturers see themselves as ‘responsible for my module’ (consider the psychological and emotional implications of ‘ownership’). An argument for OER:Traditional University teaching is based on:

6. Lecture is seen as the main vehicle for introducing and ‘overviewing’ each topic or section of the module; Workshops and seminars follow the lecture; Lectures are ‘personally crafted’ and owned (and may take up significant amounts of time); Students depend on ‘good lecture notes’. And so …

7. Thanks to OER and Web 2.0, resources are no longer limited! And What about different roles for the lecturer, such as: ‘Guide on the side’ ‘Meddler in the middle’ But …

8. Unlimited resources?

9. A personal example: teaching Zimbardo’s prison experiment

10. Are we making use of the variety of resources now available? Are we taking advantage of this availability in our curriculum design? And so what …

11. The more important consequence:potential for new flexibilities … Sounds familiar? Is this the pattern in your establishment?

12. The more important consequence:new flexibilities …

13. New flexibilities … one possibility Can we adopt more flexible patterns like this in every subject area?

14. Jorum is the major UK site (supported by JISC) Merlot is an American equivalent OpenLearn is the OU initiative with both information and tools (e.g. their own concept mapping tool - Compendium) See slide 9 for some further links. And finally: more useful sources