Open educational resources (OER) have the capacity to deliver quality learning materials to meet the challenges presented by the current higher education landscape. In the UK, open education is allowing individuals to tailor their learning experience to their requirements, be they undergraduates or staff undergoing continual professional development.

To ensure the OER are fit-for-purpose, high-quality, and maintain currency, especially in rapidly developing professional areas, engaging partners outside of the education sector is a necessity. How best to engage with these partners is one aspect that is being investigated by the HALS (Health and Life Science) OER project at De Montfort University, part of the UKOER Phase 3 programme.

For HALS we have identified a number of potential partners for OER development outside the classical education sector, including both commercial and public sector organisations, and professional bodies. As part of HALS we are exploring the benefits and barriers of establishing these partnerships, and the level of contribution desired and provided.

Our results to date show that the level and type of engagement of partner organisations varies considerably and depends on variety of factors such as organisational attitude, perceived need and benefits to the partner, infrastructure support and crucially the nature of the contact and the willingness of individuals to engage and deliver. The work is on-going to evaluate more fully the nature of these partnerships and the benefits to educators and learners involved.

Keywords

OER partnerships · Open Educational Resources