This booklet provides information about the involvement of C-SAP (Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics) in the UK-wide Open Educational Resources programme.

1. OPEN
EDUCATIONAL
RESOURCES
CASCADING
KNOWLEDGE

2. Open Educational Resources
The Joint Information Systems Evaluating the Practice of
Committee (JISC) and Opening up Resources for
the Higher Education Academy Learning and Teaching in
(HEA) are collaborating in the Social Sciences (April
the context of UK-wide Open 2009-April 2010)
Educational Resources (OER)
programme with the aim of This project has adopted
enabling higher education a critical social science
institutions, consortia and perspective on the processes
individuals to share learning of sharing digital educational
materials freely online. The are also keen to empower resources, as well as related
programme explores cultural, institutions and individual challenges. The project team
technical and pedagogical academics to improve the has endeavoured to explore
issues involved in the student learning experience ways of making educational
development, discovery and by producing relevant resources more “open” and less
use of Open Educational resources, and coordinating reliant on tacit
Resources (OER). a series of activities to help
share and recognise effective
C-SAP’s on-going involvement practice. Through the OER
in the UK OER programme projects we are also addressing
is tied to our core mission to national themes in teaching and
support teaching and learning learning, in particular student
within the discipline areas engagement, enhancement of
in the social sciences. We learning through technology
and curriculum design.

3. pedagogic practice by using • Project supporting wiki:
insights gained from the https://csapoer.pbworks.
process of peer review and com/
social science knowledge
production. The project team Cascading Social Science
has also developed a toolkit Open Educational Resources
for capturing pedagogical (August 2010-August 2011)
decisions about release and This project seeks to cascade
sharing of modular teaching support for embedding Open
content. The toolkit allows Educational Resources within
you to create a snapshot of the social sciences curriculum,
the curriculum, that is, map focusing on the relationship
your teaching practice and put between the use of OERs and
together strategies to aid reuse student engagement. Our aim
of the teaching resources. The is to develop a better process
project website includes a of using OER to support
downloadable version of the curriculum development in
mapping toolkit as well as the social sciences domain.
the case studies compiled by It puts a particular emphasis
our project partners, offering on embracing a participatory
insights into their experiences pedagogy and aims to create a
of using open resources. space for students to become
involved in creating new course
• Project website: www.c-sap. material as open teaching
bham.ac.uk/oer resources. For the most up-

4. to-date information about
our progress, see our project
blog http://csapopencascade.
wordpress.com/
Discovering Collections
of Social Science Open
Educational Resources
(August 2010-August 2011)
Here we are seeking to make
open collections of social
sciences research methods
available by embracing
Web 2.0 technology and
OER-related, sustainable
solutions. The rationale for
the project stems from the
recognition that there is a
wide range of OER materials
available to support social
research methods. However,
despite advances across
the sector, academics and
students often have problems

5. C-SAP slideshare account
http://www.slideshare.net/
csapsubjectcentre These
resources include information
on licensing and copyright,
producing accessible open
educational resources as well
as reflexive activities aimed at
members of staff, encouraging
them to become involved in
producing and re-using open
educational resources.
locating and accessing in their research methods
good quality, peer-reviewed teaching. For the most up-to- If you would like any more
resources appropriate for their date information about our information on C-SAP’s
particular needs. The project progress, see our project blog involvement in the OER
aims to examine which of the http://csapopencollections. programme, please contact
Web 2.0 technologies are best wordpress.com/ C-SAP OER project officer,
suited to support dissemination Anna Gruszczynska:
of research methods OERs. Further information a.gruszczynska@bham.ac.uk
Our aim is to explore how staff
(and students to some extent) All our resources (fact sheets,
discover, use, and potentially leaflets, presentations etc.)
re-adapt online/digital materials are freely available through

6. Project partners talk about Open
Educational Resources:
Developing a new module is always
a tricky process, in that I find that
you cannot always be sure what will
work and what won’t. I am always
really interested in finding out
more about how others approach
this, and learning different ways
to make teaching and learning
more successful. Consequently my
motivations for getting involved in
this project were premised on a need
to partly to get time inside other
people’s teaching practices (Pam
Lowe, School of Languages and
Social Sciences, Aston University).
Maybe we could start viewing
OERs more as a “sharing” rather
than as a “taking” process. Another
way of understanding the concept
of repurposing is to think in terms
of a shift from owned to borrowed

7. material, and we discussed the strategies, which consists of infuses teaching with new
ways in which most teaching typing key terms into Google perspectives and it creates
is actually borrowed as it and using whatever comes new pedagogical positions,
builds on ideas from mentors, up (Dave Harris, University not easy ones at first, but ones
students etc. what we really College Plymouth St Mark & St we should attempt to think
mean by “re-purposing” is John). about and respond to (Mª
finding a new purpose’ for Àngels Trias i Valls, Institute
an open resource – thus “re- Every time I confront myself of Contemporary European
purposing” is the dynamic about giving my work away Studies, Regent’s College,
action that encapsulates this and being used by others London).
process (Phil Johnson, The and disaggregated I find
School of Law, Justice & myself having to confront Licensed under Creative
Community Studies, University the fact I feel uneasy with Commons Attribution-
Centre at Blackburn College). some levels of sharing. NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Having said that, however, I 2.0 UK: England & Wales
In the context of my own am fairly comfortable, about http://creativecommons.org/
teaching practice, I want to use sharing a lot of my work (…) licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
openly accessible resources Open access creates a new
to encourage students to be context for sharing, and our
“syllabus independent”, or, constructions of academic
less grandly, to be able to find personhood, value, intellectual
good quality materials in a rights, struggle with adjusting
convenient electronic form, to to it, it is like an elephant trying
wean them away from their to get through a needle hole. I
current inefficient search think that to release and share

8. C-SAP, Nuffield Learning Centre, University of Birmingham, B15 2TT.
0121 414 7919
www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk
www.heacademy.ac.uk