Open Educational Resources: the challenges of ‘usability’ and copyright clearance

Abstract

AbstractThis article reflects on the experiences of Keele University's participation in repurposing teaching materials for open access as part of the GEES consortium within the Higher Education Academy/ JISC Open Educational Resources (OER) pilot project. The team at Keele contributed over 100 separate OER, principally PowerPoint slide sets, reading lists and activity sheets across a number of climate change and sustainability-related themes. This paper explores some of the challenges that arose in the ‘repurposing’ of existing teaching materials for open access, including the issues of end-user usability and obtaining copyright clearance for image intensive resources. The paper concludes with advice for those interested in making existing or new resources suitable for open access.