Between 2009 and 2012 the UK Higher Education Funding Council funded a series of programmes to encourage higher education institutions in the UK to release existing educational content as Open Educational Resources¹. The HEFCE funded UK OER Programme was run and managed by the JISC and the Higher Education Academy. The JISC CETIS “OER Technology Support Project”² provided support for technical innovation across this programme. This book synthesises and reflects on the approaches taken and lessons learnt across the Programme and by the Support Project.

• The Higher Education Funding Council for England, (HEFCE)³ distributes public money for higher education to universities and colleges in England, and ensures that this money is used to deliver the greatest benefit to students and the wider public.
• The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)⁴ supports higher and further education by providing strategic guidance, advice and opportunities to use information and communications technology (ICT) to support research, teaching, learning and administration. JISC is funded by all the UK post-16 and higher education funding councils.
• The Higher Education Academy (HEA)⁵ works with universities and colleges, discipline groups, individual staff and organisations to help them deliver the best possible learning experience for students.
• The Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards (CETIS)⁶ are globally recognised as leading experts on interoperability and technology standards in learning, education and training. They work with clients and partners to develop policy and strategy, providing impartial and independent advice on technology and standards across a wide range educational issues including open educational resources.

This book is not intended as a beginners guide or a technical manual, instead it is an expert synthesis of the key technical issues arising from a national publicly-funded programme. It is intended for people working with technology to support the creation, management, dissemination and tracking of open educational resources, and particularly those who design digital infrastructure and services at institutional and national level.

The book is the result of a two and a half day writing session facilitated by Adam Hyde of Booksprint⁷.

This work is released under Creative Commons BY 3.0⁸ license.

1. JISC / HEA Open Educational Resources Programmes, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/oer ^{^}
2. JISC CETIS OER Technical Support Project Team: Dr Phil Barker, Ms Lorna M. Campbell, Mr Martin Hawksey and Mr R. John Robertson. ^{^}
3. HEFCE, http://www.hefce.ac.uk/ ^{^}
4. JISC, www.jisc.ac.uk ^{^}
5. HEA, http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ ^{^}
6. CETIS, http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/ ^{^}
7. Booksprints.net, http://www.booksprints.net/ ^{^}
8. CC BY 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ ^{^}