UK Physical Sciences Centre Department of Chemistry University of Hull Hull HU6 7RX

Tel: 01482 465418 Fax: 01482 465418 Email: psc@hull.ac.uk www.heacademy.ac.uk/physsci

Skills

Aim:

Promote awareness and active involvement in OER in the physical sciences community

Project Lead:

UK Physical Sciences Centre

Project Partners:

University of Edinburgh University of Hull University of Leeds University of Leicester University of Liverpool Loughborough University University of Manchester Newcastle University Open University University of Plymouth University of Reading Sheffield Hallam University University of Southampton Staffordshire University Universidade de A Coruña The Institute of Physics The Royal Society of Chemistry OER Released:

To date, material equivalent to over 600 credits has been released through this project. Links to these OER can be found on our website www.heacademy.ac.uk/physsci/ home/projects/skillsforscientists

Further Information:

Full details of this project can be found on our website www.heacademy.ac.uk/physsci/ home/projects/skillsforscientists

Funding:

Skills for Scientists was funded by HEFCE through the Academy/JISC OER Programme

Physics Chemistry

Astronomy Forensic Science

for Scientists What are OER?

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials typified by having an open licence (one that means no fee or royalty will be due for use of the material.) Resources are already being shared between academics. The advantage to offering your resources for reuse as OER is that you can stipulate how they should be reused (e.g. if changes are permissible). The advantages to reusing OER is that you can avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ but still be sure that you are not infringing copyright when you reuse someone else’s work.

What is the Skills for Scientists project?

This project has been supporting academics at a range of HEIs to develop the necessary knowledge to release their physical sciences educational resources as OER.

What did Project Members do to produce OER?

Each Project Member, usually the author of the resource, had to go through four key steps:

check the resource for accessibility (content and format)

ensure the copyright holder(s) agree to the release

add metadata (data about the resource e.g. author) to the resource

share the resources using open repositories and/or Web 2.0 tools

What are the results of the Skills for Scientists project?

This project has meant that, to date, the equivalent of 600+ credits of teaching and learning material across the physical sciences has been released as OER. Not only this, involvement in the project has meant that the issue of open release has been raised and discussed in many institutions and staff are now able to produce and release OER in the future and support their colleagues in doing the same.

OER released by the Skills for Scientists project

The 70+ OER released through the project cover a range of skills in the physical sciences. Some examples are pictured on the right:

1. Mathematics for Chemistry Workbook (University of Manchester)

2. Interactive Screen Experiments - How to Use a Vernier Scale (Open University)

3. Interdisciplinary Science - Habitable Worlds (University of Leicester)

4. ChemTube3D (University of Liverpool) 5. Law-Forensic Science Crime Scenario (Staffordshire

University)

The OER can be found on JorumOpen (http://open.jorum.ac.uk) – type sfsoer into the Search box for a complete list.

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