Open Nottingham
In implementing the Open Nottingham programme, the University of Nottingham has strategically embraced an agenda of open access to teaching.
With benefits such as efficiency savings, promotional opportunities and enhancement of the student experience, Open Nottingham is designed to foster increased use, reuse and publication of Open Educational Resources (OER) by staff and students across the university.
It aims to improve the understanding of what impact OER has on teaching and learning and to measure the effectiveness of open resources as a promotional tool.
Open Nottingham is centrally funded and has senior sponsorship, and long-term sustainability is a key consideration in all developments. It is an established part of the University’s Five Year Strategy and supports a number of the institution’s published objectives. For example, the expansion of the institutional repository ‘U-Now’ is listed as a goal under the Social Responsibility objective. Providing access to a rich supply of resources has a direct impact on student satisfaction through the Excellence in Education objective. Open Nottingham also feeds directly into the Internationalisation strategy of Knowledge without Borders.
There are a number of initiatives that fall under the umbrella of Open Nottingham. Some make use of formal creative commons or open source licensing; others adopt a less formal, but equally open philosophy.
What are Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials that are freely available, usually via the web for use and for modification. Often made available through creative commons licences, OER is a way of sharing knowledge and expertise by making aspects of an institution’s approach to teaching available to other academics and making the content of that teaching available to anyone with an interest in learning.
U-Now
U-Now is the site that houses the University's collection of Open Educational Resources. You can either view resources on the site or download them to your computer.