OERu/Planning/POERUP OERu case study

Dear OERu colleagues

I am writing to you with my University of Leicester (UK) hat on, this time as a member of the European Commission-funded research project called POERUP (http://www.poerup.info). One of the aims of POERUP is to investigate the communities behind Open Educational Resource Initiatives, and so the project partners are carrying out seven case studies of significant OER networks or communities. One of these case studies will be on the OERu community. The research process is being led by the Open University in the Netherlands. The team at the University of Leicester (Prof. Grainne Conole, Dr Ming Nie and I) will do the data-gathering and analysis.

I am therefore writing to ask you if you would be willing to contribute to the case study by responding to a survey questionnaire. The questions are about how you experience your participation in the OERu community, and your thoughts on some of the characteristics of this community. It should take you about 20 minutes to complete the survey, and we would be grateful if you could do so by May 31, 2013. To access the survey, please go to http://www.ou.nl/web/look-onderzoek/poerup1.

Once the case studies have been completed, we aim to write one or two publications for journals under CC licences. We will keep you informed of progress on any such publications, and will invite your comments along the way.

Thank you so much for participating in this research, and thereby contributing to a greater understanding of the OER field. We know you are busy and we very much appreciate your participation!

Gabi Witthaus

Institute of Learning Innovation

University of Leicester