After a talk point and a poll, the Guardian Professional Higher Education Network wants to give the subject of open access the full consideration it deserves.

To coincide with Open Access Week, on Friday 21 October, from 12–2pm BST, the live chat will consider the various ways in which higher education can become – and is becoming – more open. We will consider what the challenges ahead might be and what policy shifts, as well as cultural shifts are needed.

Guardian Q&As or live chats are always informal and the aim is to share knowledge, experience and allow us to curate a ‘best bits’ full of interesting tips/links on the given subject from our network and for our network.

The free workshop explores the potential of open educational resources (OERs) in developing and accrediting university teaching. David Kernohan, JISC’s E-learning Manager is the guest speaker. Participants will work with learning materials developed in UCL’s CPD4HE project (Funded by the HEA and JISC) and create their own OERs.

• Register now
• Download the programme
• Further information

Our dissemination events (a workshop and webinar series), supported by the HEA and JISC through the UKOER programme, have been confirmed.

1. Lunchtime Webinar, Thursday 23 June, 1.00-2.00
   Open Educational Resources – Rights and Licensing Issues for Practitioners
2. Lunchtime Webinar, Thursday 7 July, 1.00-2.00
   Open Educational Resources and Accredited Programmes
3. Workshop, Tuesday 12 July, 10.30-16.00
   Academic Developers Sharing Open Resources
4. Lunchtime Webinar, Thursday 21 July 1.00-2.00
   Accrediting your HE teaching – gaining professional recognition

Details of these events can also be downloaded as a PDF from the project documentation page.

Come and join us to share our CPD4HE experiences of developing teaching materials for release as Open Educational Resources.

We enjoyed our internal OER event yesterday –  a joint effort between the CPD4HE and DHOER teams, and part of the UCL Teaching & Learning Network (TLN) programme.

Ulrich Tiedau and I gave a short introduction to OER and the UKOER programme. This was followed by contributions from Simon Mahoney (DHOER) and June Hedges, Man Yang and Rosalind Duhs (CPD4HE).

Between us, we covered individual and institutional motivations for releasing and using OERs, IPR and Risk, the processes involved in developing and releasing OERs and the issues we have encountered in our different roles (teaching, technical development, licensing).

We also formally launched the OER@UCL website.

Three members of the project team attended the “Before You Start: OER, IPR and Licensing Workshop” which was held at UCL on 24th November.

Led by two members of the OER IPR Support Project Team, the workshop provided an overview of copyright and other IPR issues. It also covered the different types of Creative Commons licences, the obligations to JISC and how we can embed good IPR practice into existing processes.

I found the workshop very helpful. For those who couldn’t attend, here is the link to OER IPR Support where more information and resources can be obtained:
http://www.web2rights.com/OERIPRSupport/

This workshop on Tuesday 23 was an opportunity to find out about other OER projects in our strand and to hear the latest on the UK Professional Standards Framework (PSF) from the HEA. We also found out that the consultation on the new PSF is due to begin this week.
One good outcome of the meeting was that the HEA agreed to produce a set of tags for the UKPSF standards, core knowlege, activities and values. If we all use these tags it should help potential users identify useful resources.