#304 Poster

Monday 16 April 15:00 - 17:15 Bar/Conservatory

Reuse and Repurpose: the life story of an (open) educational resource

Andy Lane, The Open University, UK

Conference Theme: Impact

Summary: How some educational resources on systems thinking have been re-used and repurposed both within an institution and by other institutions.

Abstract: This poster relates the life story of a particular educational resource that went from being closed to open but which exemplifies the value of reuse and reworking of educational resources. T551 Systems Thinking and Practice: A Primer has a long and varied history as an educational resource. It came into being in 1999 as a study pack that acted as a ‘common’ educational resource to be used across a number of separate modules at The Open University dealing with systems thinking and practice. However, as a primer on the subject it had first been planned and designed by a team of academic staff and then created by the author by re-using educational material drawn from over 25 years of previous modules dealing with systems thinking and practice. Thus T551 was a ‘mash-up’ of materials that had been developed and used with students over many years, materials that had been truly tested out as useful.
As well as being a common resource for students this study pack was also available to buy from The Open University for use by other institutions, while the ‘host’ modules had also been licensed for use by other institutions so that the study pack was used by their students as well. When the author became the Director of OpenLearn at The Open University he chose part of T551 as being suitable for open publishing under a Creative Commons license in 2006. Since being published as a Study Unit on OpenLearn it has been regularly viewed in situ or been downloaded as well as being rated and reviewed by users. In addition to this individual activity in situ T551 was also reviewed and accepted onto the Temoa website run by the Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico in 2008 and has been incorporated ‘as-is’ into 3 courses they offer. Using these and other examples the poster will highlight the educational practices that have enabled some particular educational material to be used and reused for over 30 years in different forms and formats within and across institutions but also how openness has now multiplied the effective reach of those materials around the world.