17 October 2011
The Open Sustainability in Education Resource (OSIER) project, funded by the Higher Education Academy and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), is now fully open. Currently it has around 175 resources for the teaching of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Global Citizenship (GC) available for download. It forms part of a UK-wide programme of development and distribution of Open Educational Resources (OERs).
The OSIER repository gives undergraduate, postgraduate and CPD educators access to search, download and re-use ready-made printable, audio and video resources on topics spanning literacy and numeracy to outdoor studies. Practitioners can also share their experiences of using particular resources and offer feedback.
Dr Wishart, Project Director, based at the Graduate School of Education says:
“To date there have been over 1500 resource downloads and the feedback about OSIER’s potential has been very positive. We invite educators to use it for their teaching and learning activities. Re-using educational materials not only saves time and budgets but also enables practitioners to access a wider range of resources and explore new ways of teaching and learning”.
Read more about Dr Jocelyn Wishart
Further information:
OSIER has six partners in academic institutions and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Global Citizenship (GC) networks across the UK including: Bangor University, University of Bristol, London International Development Centre (LIDEC) Institute of Education, London South Bank University, St Mary’s College, Queen’s University Belfast and University of Strathclyde.
OERs are teaching and learning materials that have been made freely available for people to use. Although they remain copyright, they are licensed to the academic community to re-use under the conditions specified by a series of Creative Commons licences.
OSIER encourages resource donors to maximise the opportunity for others to re-use their resources in different forms. It recommends use of the CC-BY-NC-SA licence, that specifies that the resource must be attributed, should not be used commercially, and that any derivative works should be shared under a similar licence.
