OER14 Pre-conference

Had a lovely afternoon train ride up to Newcastle through such varied countryside and looking at the programme for OER14 the journey was symbolic of the varied presentation in store for conference delegates. I first attended the conference in 2010 when much of the discussion was about OERs, licensing, repositories, OCW and sustainability. Since then MOOCs have taken off big time, more and more institutions have open access mandates, discussions now turn to policy and navigating the murky landscape of research publishing. In parallel there is still considerable innovation taking place internationally with OER use and reuse, the stories often giving a reality check for many of us working in funded resourced institutions, despite the challenges we have had to face more recently. However, my challenge for next couple of days is deciding which presentation to go to and finding a power point to charge my devices, which are much smaller than in 2010.