Dear colleagues,

We invite you to participate in an exciting consultation process about open educational resources (OERs).

The OPAL project is an international network to promote innovation and better quality in education and training through the use of open educational resources.

We have collected 58 case studies of OER initiatives and from these abstracted a set of associated open educational practices (OEPs). Open educational practices are defined as the set of activities and support around the creation, use and repurposing of open educational resources. We have identified eight OEP dimensions:

•    Strategies and policies
•    Quality Assurance (QA) models
•    Partnership models
•    Tools and tool practices
•    Innovations
•    Skills development and support
•    Business models/ sustainability strategies
•    Barriers and success factors

We would like to invite you to become involved in an online consultation around this work. In particular, we are seeking views from the community about the dimensions we have derived and also the OER case studies. An online space has been set up to facilitate this consultation process.

Please do also circulate this more widely via your professional networks.

Gráinne Conole
Professor of e-Learning
The Open University UK

12 May 2010