Fostering communities of open educational practice: lessons from the Support Centre for Open Resources in Education

The initial flush of interest in open educational resources per se has now moved on to discussions and actions that place open educational resources (OER) within a wider set of (open) educational practices (OEP). This new focus on educational practices has encompassed the drivers and barriers to the adoption of appropriate policies and practices within higher education institutions and how best practices within one institution may help foster enhanced practices in other institutions. This paper describes the activities and outcomes of one such funded initiative to use the expertise of an early adopter of OER and OEP (The Open University) to help foster HE sector wide communities and networks of practice within England in particular but across all of the United Kingdom. This initiative was the Support Centre for Open Resources in Education (http://www8.open.ac.uk/score/), which, over a three period, has initiated a series of activities and events that have involved several hundred educational practitioners from the majority of the HEIs in England. While this single institution-led initiative has benefitted form there being a companion sector wide initiative (UKOER) led by two national organisations SCORE has succeeded in raising the profile of OER and OEP within UK HEIs by assisting existing communities of practice and by creating new communities of practice that are forming a much larger network of practice that will be sustained into the future by many of its participants. We will set out the key lessons underlying this success