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Open Education at UCL

Open Science maximises the potential of research and education outputs by allowing researchers to reuse and repurpose outputs in novel and innovative ways. Open education specifically applies to the products and outputs of teaching and training, including work by students.

What is Open Education?

"Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial, and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared, and adapted in the digital environment. Open Education maximizes the power of the Internet to make education more affordable, accessible, and effective" (SPARC Open).

What is an Open Educational Resource?

Open educational resources (OERs) are digital and reusable learning/instructional objects produced through teaching and training activities. This can include recorded lectures and seminars, handouts, essays, diagrams, animations, videos, presentation slides, reading lists, and so on. They do not have to be a full course but can be individual items created by staff to aid teaching and learning, or student-generated content which showcases teaching output. Anything that can be reused for teaching and training is an OER.

Why embrace Open Education?

Embracing Open Education has many benefits for teaching, and beyond. It can impact your professional growth and enable you to:

  • Showcase your work to a wider audience and demonstrate the quality of teaching and student-generated content.
  • Make a substantial and diversifying contribution to the direction of your discipline.
  • Strengthen your professional reputation, by raising the profile and increasing impact of your teaching and learning, i.e. meeting requirements of the Academic Promotions Framework and Open Education commendation at the UCL Education Awards.
  • Help sustain UCL's civic and founding commitment to be open and accessible to all.
  • Share your work and allow others to collaborate in improving the quality and value of education and research.
  • Discover innovative approaches to teaching and learning.

Further reading – UCL resources