Passing the flame with OER
One of the most satisfying things about working in OER is how often the answer to an enquiry we receive is yes. Yes, you can share your teaching materials. Yes, you can reuse open licensed works. Yes, we can help you do these things.
Once recent enquiry involved all of these yes answers. An alumni of the School of Geoscience had emailed his former lecturer Prof. Ian Main explaining that he had just been accepted to a lecturer position at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar (Senegal). He was the first geophysicist within the department of geology, and part of his ambition is to put in place an environmental and exploration geophysics research centre.
All fantastic news!
The part where the OER service came in is that the alumni was contacting Ian to ask if he would share with him the seismic practical that he had used when acting as a tutor for Ian’s ‘Introduction to Geophysics’ course. So Ian contacted us to ask if this was ok. Was it ok for him to share learning and teaching materials he’d created for The University of Edinburgh to an alumni now working for another institution?
YES!
We pointed Ian towards our OER Policy, discussed permissions as the handouts has also been edited by another lecturer, and how to choose a licence for the handouts.
Shortly afterwards Ian was able to reply back to the alumni and send on the newly open licensed handouts to be used by students on the other side of the world.
Huzzah!
The seismic interpretation practical has now also been uploaded and added to our very own OER showcase and is available for use under a CC BY licence for any other students, alumni, or teachers to adapt and reuse.
Header image: Photo by Jeremy Bishop from Pexels
