C-CHANGE IN GEES: OPEN LICENSING OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUSTAINABILITY RESOURCES IN GEOGRAPHY, EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

The "C-change in GEES project" explores the open licensing of educational resources in Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences through a themed approach focusing on climate change and sustainability.

The C-change project is part of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Programme, funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and run by the Higher Education Academy and Joint Information Systems Committee in the UK. The Programme aims to make a wide range of learning resources created by academics freely available, easily discovered and routinely re-used by both educators and learners. MIT OpenCourseWare is a current example of the kind of activity this programme in the UK would like to emulate. Open educational resources include course materials such as websites, PowerPoint presentations, reading lists, virtual fieldwork exercises, photos, movies, audio files and assessments.

During the C-change in GEES project it is expected that a significant shift in culture towards open licensing, by GEES departments, will be affected. Of equal significance is the expectation that the C-change project will establish a substantial body of open licensed educational resources on "climate change and sustainability".

In addition to the open licensing of resources the project will develop case studies of practice, example workflows, procedures and policies on the legal and technical aspects of OER to support colleagues in the open release of their own resources in the future.

This project is backed by a consortium of 3 professional bodies and 7 partner institutions with the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences (GEES) (http://www.gees.ac.uk) as lead partner. The GEES Subject Centre is a UK-wide faculty development organisation which aims to promote and support high quality learning and teaching across the disciplines of geography, earth and environmental sciences in UK higher education. Based at the University of Plymouth, the GEES Subject Centre is a national and international hub for the exchange of knowledge on learning and teaching across the three disciplines. It provides a voice for the discipline communities, contributing to government consultations and policy developments.