SCORE is based at the Open University and funded by HEFCE as a three year project (2009-2012) to support individuals, projects, institutions and programmes across the higher education sector in England as they engage with creating, sharing and using open educational resources (OER).

SCORE draws on the OU's experience from a range of successful OER projects, including OpenLearn which by April 2008 had published 5,400 learning hours of course content in the LearningSpace and 8100 hours in LabSpace (an area allowing easy remixing, translation and redeposit by registered users). The OER published covers a full range of Open University subject areas from introductory to postgraduate level. All of this content is available for reuse by learners and teachers under an open license.

The SCORE project will extend this collection, reflecting sector priorities in its selection of new material and support individuals, projects and institurtions in publishing into LabSpace and dissemination across other collections and repositories.

SCORE aims to:

• disseminate skills for populating and maintaining open content sites;
• build evidence of the impact of open educational resources in higher education
• support the establishment of a legal framework to address IP/rights management issues;
• support the creation of common standards for the design of content and sites, facilitating exchange of materials across the sector;
• deepen sector-wide understanding of the needs and behaviours of users of open content material, and disseminate national and international research findings;
• facilitate engagement of UK OER activities within international developments, particularly the Open Courseware Consortium and the European MORIL Project.

Outcomes

SCORE expects to provide:

• 36 SCORE fellowships to fund project activities which inform and influence policy and practice around OER creation, sharing and use;
• an additional 3,600 hours of OER content;
• an enquiry-based support and advice service;
• a range of events to support dissemination across the sector;
• a vibrant Web 2.0 based virtual community.

SCORE activities will draw on OU activity in OER, nationally and internationally (e.g. the OLnet project) and OER activities in the UK (e.g. the UK OER projects).