First of all a big ‘thank you’ to all those who responded to last year's consultation about potential projects for phase 2 of the Higher Education Academy/JISC Open Educational Resources programme. Your responses indicated that the sharing of fieldwork education resources was seen as highly desirable within the GEES community. Thanks also to those who identified or offered their fieldwork resources as potential open educational resources. We are happy to announce that the Open Fieldwork project is now in full swing, and will be running until 31st July2011.
The aim of the Open Fieldwork project is to identify existing fieldwork open educational resources (OER), and to draw them together to allow easy discovery and free reuse in the GEES and wider HE community. Such resources might include virtual field courses, information on field sites, support and assessment material, BS8848 risk assessments, field skills and other good practice for the running of fieldwork. In summary the Open Fieldwork project will:
Identify collections of fieldwork OER;
Produce guidance for the community on how to make fieldwork resources suitable for open release;
Build on existing and established communities of practice around fieldwork by stimulating and supporting OER practice where appropriate.
Explore technical approaches to make fieldwork OER more discoverable;
Produce guidance for the community on light touch ways to enhance discovery of fieldwork OER including advice on geotagging and creating metadata;
If you have existing fieldwork resources that you think might be suitable for open release, are interested in becoming part of an open fieldwork education community, would like to get involved with or simply require further information about the project, please contact Mike Sanders (Project Manager) or Alison Stokes (Project Officer), or visit the Open Fieldwork project website. We look forward to hearing from you!
Open Fieldwork Project website: www.openfieldwork.org.uk
Mike Sanders: [email protected] (01752 584533)
Alison Stokes: [email protected] (01752 587912)