Celebrating our first Open Educational Resources (OER)

The launch of The AI Crisis in Higher Education: A Strategic Proposal, by Dr Mark Carrigan, brought together academic colleagues, invited guests and Library representatives in the Muriel Stott Building on Tuesday, 13 October.

The event featured an address by Dr Carrigan, Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning and Student Experience (Digital Education) and Senior Lecturer in Education at the Manchester Institute of Education, followed by a panel discussion with Jennie Blake, Library Associate Director for Teaching and Learning, and Dr Helen Beetham, Lecturer in Digital Education. Together they offered thought-provoking perspectives on the challenges and opportunities that artificial intelligence presents for higher education.

A recording is available to view now.

This publication marks the first OER published as an output of the Library's Imagine 2035 anchor project, Flip to Open. The project has also supported the publication of two further OER:

Exploring the Foundations of Financial Reporting: Amara’s Journey as a Student Entrepreneur by Alison Zimmer and Dr Oluwatoyin Dosumu, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance, the Alliance Manchester Business School.
Fashion Product Development: Foundations, Processes, and Practice by Dr Rachel Parker-Strak, Reader in Fashion Buying and Merchandising and Rachel Studd, Reader in Design, Department of Fashion, Business and Technology.

Reflecting on the publication of their OER, Alison Zimmer said:

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We’re so excited to see 'Amara' published as an OER. From the very beginning, we wanted the story to reach as many students and educators as possible. 'Amara' introduces the foundations of financial reporting, but it is also about the experience of being a first-year student, recognising how exciting, overwhelming and sometimes daunting that transition can be. We hope students will learn from Amara’s experiences while also feeling reassured and supported by them. Publishing through Pressbooks means the resource is freely accessible beyond Manchester, while fellow accounting educators can also clone and adapt it for their own students and contexts. Pressbooks has given us a really accessible way to bring together the story with reflection activities, interactive quizzes and images, in an e-book that we hope students will enjoy exploring.

Alison Zimmer

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All titles are freely available to read in our Pressbooks Catalogue and are available in Library Search. These publications demonstrate the potential of open publishing and the ways in which OER can support teaching and learning. They also highlight the opportunities that will be available through the Library's forthcoming OER Programme.