The Higher Education Funding Council for England has announced a new initiative that could jumpstart wider OCW production in England:
HEFCE has announced an initial £5.7 million of funding for pilot projects that will open up existing high-quality education resources from higher education institutions to the world.
The Higher Education Academy and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) will work in partnership to deliver the 12-month pilot projects. These will run at institutional, subject and individual level along with accompanying support services. The projects will be formally launched in April 2009.
I’m a bit unclear reading the announcement on whether there will be a call for proposals as they distribute this money, or whether the pilot projects are being developed centrally (can any Brits translate the phrase “Invitations to tender” for me?). But in either case the funding is bound to intersect with OpenCourseWare initiatives:
Open educational resources could include full courses, course materials, complete modules, notes, videos, assessments, tests, simulations, worked examples, software, and any other tools or materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge. These resources will be released under an intellectual property license that permits open use and adaptation.
As a result of this agreement institutions will be encouraged to share and reuse learning content - enhancing productivity for educators and students. Ultimately we hope that learning materials and resources will be shared universally - locally, nationally and globally, to support learning.
While we’re talking England, incidentally, we should note that OpenLearn is doing some incredibly interesting stuff over there already. If you haven’t already, check OpenLearn out.
Well I’m not really good at the financial, budgets side of projects, but my understanding of “Invitations to tender” is that they get people to tell them what they’ll do if they get the money, then decide who to give it to, sit back and watch what happens (no central development, though they might fund some university collaborations if any come forward). Its a pretty standard way that JISC works.
Thanks Jenny!
Just to follw up what Jenny said, there will be a call out for HEIs to submit proposals, probably within a confined amount of money but with some direction as to waht type of proposal is wanted (say 15 projects each up to £250k to do x and 15 projects up to £100k each to do y). Through this guidance and the selection process there will be some central orchestration of what happens overall, but the specific proposals will come from those wanting to do something.
Very well said jenny & andy. Thanks