Our guest post this week comes from Natalia Madjarevic, Academic Support Librarian (Economics) and LSE Research Online Manager

This week is the first Open Education Week (5-10 March 2012), raising awareness of open education and how it is used in teaching and learning around the world. Open education, as defined by the Open Courseware Consortium, ‘seeks to create a world in which the desire to learn is fully met by the opportunity to do so’.  A significant component of increasing access to education around the world is sharing open educational resources (OERs). This could be materials such as course materials, lecture slides, workbooks, video lectures on an open access platform.

There are a number of significant global OER initiatives including MIT’s OpenCourse Ware initiative and the Open University’s OpenLearn. You can also find OERs from around the world on the OER Commons website. UNESCO also recognise the value of OERs, arguing that they ‘provide a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education as well as facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building.’ It can be particularly helpful for new teachers to see examples of how others teach a specific topic or theory in their discipline. Open educational resources can also be used by students to support their learning.

LSE Library recently launched LSE Learning Resources Online, for open sharing of teaching and learning materials. The service complements LSE Research Online where staff can deposit research publications in open access format. Where possible, OERs will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareLike licence, which means the original author will get credit and anyone reusing their materials will also need to share them under an open licence.

Content already in LSE Learning Resources Online includes a set of digital and information literacy resources from the Centre for Learning Technology and LSE Library. We are currently adding Conor Gearty’s The Rights’ Future project, an academic blog exploring the human rights ideal and comprises of a collection of learning resources, a representation of the collaborative online project which comprised of weekly instalments.

If you’d like to include your own content in the service then please contact the team in the Library: lselearningresourcseonline@lse.ac.uk. If you are looking to find open educational resources to inspire your own teaching then we suggest you start by browsing the UK learning resources database Jorum. A list of OER initiatives is also available from the JISC OER Infokit website. You can also find material licensed under Creative Commons Licences from the CC search service .

Useful Links
LSE Learning Resources Online: http://learningresources.lse.ac.uk/
UNESCO OER website: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-resources/
JISC OER Infokit: https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24836480/Home