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Much of the current literature related to Open Educational Resource (OER) development and practice concentrates on higher education, although a growing body of work is also emerging for the primary and secondary school sectors. This article examines the user perspectives of teachers and teacher educators, regarding: discovery of teaching resources; what they know about OER; their sharing practices; and their perspectives on resource quality and trust. The research was done in the context of the Open Resource Bank for Interactive Teaching (ORBIT), a JISC-funded Phase III OER project at the University of Cambridge. ORBIT is an OER Resource Bank containing more than 200 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) focused lesson ideas for primary and secondary teachers as well as serving as a resource bank of OER to be used by teacher educators in a variety of settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates some pedagogical strategies for developing Open Educational Resources (OERs) using the knowledge mapping tool Compendium. It also describes applications of Knowledge Maps to facilitate meaningful learning by focusing on specific OER examples. The study centres on the OpenLearn project, a large scale online environment that makes a selection of higher education learning resources freely available via the internet. OpenLearn, which is supported by William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, was launched in October 2006 and in the two year period of its existence has released over 8,100 learning hours of the OU's distance learning resources for free access and modification by learners and educators under the Creative Commons license. OpenLearn also offers three knowledge media tools: Compendium (knowledge mapping software), MSG (instant messaging application with geolocation maps) and FM (web-based videoconferencing application). Compendium is a software tool for visual thinking, used to connect ideas, concepts, arguments, websites and documents. There are numerous examples of OERs that have been developed and delivered by institutions across the world, for example, MIT, Rice, Utah State, Core, Paris Tech, JOCW. They present a wide variety of learning materials in terms of styles as well as differing subject content. Many such offerings are based upon original lecture notes, hand-outs and other related papers used in face-to-face teaching. Openlearn OERs, however, are reconstructed from original self study distance learning materials developed at the Open University and from a vast academic catalogue of materials. Samples of these "units" comprise a variety of formats: text, images, audio and video. In this study, our findings illustrate the benefits of sharing some OER content through knowledge maps, the possibility of condensing high volumes of information, accessing resources in a more attractive way, visualising connections between diverse learning materials, connecting new ideas to familiar references, organising thinking and gaining new insights into subject specific content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]