Open Education 2014

The University of Tasmania is the only University in the Australian State of Tasmania and has a reputation for learning and research that is international in scope, vision and standards. UTAS has recently endorsed to share the unique expertise of UTAS teachers through openly sharing developed educational resources with the broader academic community and develop further resources through the use of high quality content sourced from experts around the globe through Open Educational Resources (OER).

In 2012 the University of Tasmania stepped into Open Educational Practice (OEP) by leading a national project to develop an OER repository for sharing educational resources among a community of Adaptations Scholars, in Australia and internationally. In 2013 UTAS began testing further environments for the use of OEP including its first MOOC "Understanding Dementia". The MOOC served as an initial endeavour by the University of Tasmania School of Medicine and Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre to develop an open unit with associated OER.

Based upon a substantial literature review and analysis of results from Adapt, Dementia and other projects UTAS developed a technology enhanced learning and teaching White Paper that provided a centrally endorsed strategy for the implementation of sustainable OEP. The paper introduced key purposes for implementing OEP accompanied by a set of enabling principles. This new strategy disaggregates traditional elements of higher education delivery at UTAS and provides a sustainable blended model incorporating open, online and face to face delivery.

This presentation provides an account of the cultural, technical, legal, qualitative, and policy barriers the University of Tasmania has encountered in the development and implementation of OEP through nationally led open education projects. The presentation then continues to describe how open education strategies and using OER have been translated into value propositions for the institution and centrally embedded into evolving practice and policy.