Last week the University of Edinburgh’s Information Services launched Open.Ed http://open.ed.ac.uk, a website devoted to showcasing open educational resources at the university.

The website and the University’s accompanying OER Vision have three strands:

For the Common Good

• Teaching and learning materials exchange to enrich the University and the sector.
• Support frameworks to enable any member of University of Edinburgh to publish and share online as OER teaching and learning materials they have created as a routine part of their work at the University.
• Supporting members of University of Edinburgh to find and use high quality teaching materials developed within and without the University

Edinburgh at its best

• Showcasing the highest quality open learning and teaching.
• Identifying collections of high quality learning materials within each school department and research institute to be published online for flexible use, to be made available to learners and teachers as open courseware (e.g. recorded high profile events, noteworthy lectures, MOOC and DEI course content).
• Enabling the discovery of these materials in a way that ensures that the University’s reputation is enhanced.

Edinburgh’s Treasures

• Making available online a significant collection of unique learning materials available openly to Scotland, the UK and the world, promoting health and economic and cultural well-being.
• Identifying a number of major collections of interdisciplinary materials, archives, treasures, museum resources to be digitised, curated and shared for the greater good and to make a significant contribution to public engagement with learning, study and research (e.g. archive collections drawn from across disciplines, e.g. History of Medicine/Edinburgh as the birthplace of medicine/Scottish history/social change).
• Developing policy and infrastructure to ensure that these OER collections are sustainable and usable in the medium to longer term.

Open.Ed also includes useful How To Guides and up-to-date blog posts from prominent open practitioners. The site allows users to search for OERs or browse by collections from the University’s colleges.

Highlights include Professor Clive Greated’s fluid mechanics videos; Our History, a growing online history of the University of Edinburgh and its people; and 5 minute teaching videos, short videos of University of Edinburgh staff discussing the values that underpin their teaching.

You can follow the University of Edinburgh’s OER Service on twitter here: @OpenEdEdinburgh