We were joined by over 200 members for our webinar on building an OER movement in the UK.

We heard from David Beales, at Brunel University, who discussed his experience working with the Open Education Network in the US, and bringing this over to the UK. Brunel are now working in partnership with Sheffield, Leeds, York and Coventry to find what open resources are suitable for the UK market on the Open Textbook Library.

Dominic Broadhurst, from University of Salford, also spoke about their move into textbook publishing and cited the pricing and availability of textbooks as a driving factor in this decision, although there are also a lot of barriers to open publishing, including time and resources, quality issues and scaling it up.

Dave Ernst and Barb Thees from Open Education Network outlined their support for their four UK members, and outlined the workshops and training they undertake to support authors in writing textbooks, as well as their community outreach work. They are looking to build a community of practice in the UK and Ireland going forward.

Chat transcript and comments