Phase 2 of the JISC/HEA jointly funded UK OER programme was launched in October 2010. The aim of this second phase of funding was to build on the lessons learned in the pilot phase - across institutions, individual academics, and subject areas - about the release of open educational resources. The focus was more explicitly on collation of existing open resources, and cascade of the practices identified as beneficial in the pilot phase, though material has continued to be developed and shared/released. To address the gaps in knowledge of OER use that were identified in that earlier phase, modest research and technical work was funded to examine how OERs are discovered, used and re-used by academics, and to a lesser extent by students.

JISC and the HE Academy awarded funding to a team based at Glasgow Caledonian University to undertake evaluation and synthesis of the second phase. The same team had supported the OER Pilot programme, and produced the Final Synthesis and Evaluation Report from that round of funding. In this round, the team again engaged with participating projects throughout the programme to support their evaluation processes and help in the identification of key lessons and emerging themes. Evaluation & synthesis was an iterative, two-way process and included liaison not only with project teams and their evaluators but also with the programme management team, the various support teams, and concurrent OER initiatives.

The Pilot Phase Synthesis Framework was adapted and re-used to capture common issues and highlight differences across the different strands of funding, as described in the Phase 2 approach section.

Keywords

digital literacies · open educational practice · Open Educational Resources · professional learning