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![Session logo of Promise of OER – Opening Educational Practices in Scotland [736]](http://oer15.oerconf.org/wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-core/images/mystery-group.png){kind=avatar}
Description
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland (OEPS) is a new three-year project funded by the Scottish Funding council (www.oepscotland.org). The project, led by the OU in Scotland, involves the whole Scottish Higher Education Sector. It will draw on and expand existing pockets of good practice and encourage stronger collaboration between Higher Education, Further Education, organisations and communities in Scotland to realise the benefits of OER. It will support develop and open practices, evaluating their role in supporting widening participation and transitions between different phases of the learning journey.
The poster draws on existing examples of open practice in its broadest sense to explore the shift in narrative focus as the OER movement matures from enabling content to be open to consider what open content enables. Using examples of work conducted in Scotland it looks at the how OEP informs approaches to partnership with organisations in the workplace and community settings, extending what openness means, to consider how it informs the notion of “the expert” in collaborative content development, and looking at how teachers have employed participatory design approaches to the design of learning journeys.
We suggest this sense of openness has the potential to:
- provide a variety of pathways from informal to formal learning,
- widen participation in education,
- provide opportunities for learners to access a broader curriculum and relevant skills development,
- reduce duplication and costs through creating a culture of collaborative development and reuse across the sector
The poster also looks at how the project will enable these open educational practices through fostering developments within a peer support network, specifically through the development of a new online portal for OEP in Scotland, outreach and awareness raising activities.
