This project explored, in an Exeter context, the potential benefits and challenges of giving worldwide access to high quality and research-informed learning and teaching resources. Our project has provided a testbed for the challenges involved in making course materials available. Open Educational Resources (OER) do not present a departure from our existing plans; our Education and Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) strategies both focus on the flexible and open availability of learning resources. More broadly, OER addresses our other key strategies that further promote Exeter as a top research intensive university of international excellence.
The business case is identified by leveraging OER to inform and support:
• raising our profile to prospective, particularly international students in both the quality of the learning at Exeter and the stature of our staff;
• our alignment with top-10 UK research intensive universities;
• improving the level of student satisfaction with respect to the quality of learning materials;
• promoting active, independent, student focused learning which can ‘range’ across disciplinary boundaries;
• research-informed learning and teaching, including design and delivery, to encourage sharing and reusing, allied to an array of social networking tools;
• a change of focus from regarding resources as the ‘crown jewels’, highly prized and highly protected to one where the material is regarded primarily as the precursor to learning.

Keywords

OER quality · case study · research · institutional policy · accessibility · business case