... The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has announced an initial £5.7 million of funding for pilot projects that will open up existing high-quality education resources from higher education institutions to the world.
The Higher Education Academy and JISC will work in partnership to deliver the 12-month pilot projects. These will run at institutional, subject and individual level along with accompanying support services. The projects will be formally launched in April 2009.
Dr John Selby, Director of Education and Participation at HEFCE, said, ‘... If the pilots are successful, we will have demonstrated that we could significantly expand the open availability and use of free, high quality online educational content in the UK and around the world. ...’
Open educational resources could include full courses, course materials, complete modules, notes, videos, assessments, tests, simulations, worked examples, software, and any other tools or materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge. These resources will be released under an intellectual property license that permits open use and adaptation. ...
Dr Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary at JISC said, ‘This is the first time that a project of this nature will have been undertaken on this scale, collaboratively across an entire national educational sector. We want this 12-month pilot to be a success to enable the education community to benefit from world class e-learning resources.’ ...
This project will be jointly managed by the Higher Education Academy and JISC. Invitations to tenders will be issued from both the Higher Education Academy and JISC in early December 2008.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 10/21/2008 07:13:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
