We approach and sometimes belong to a community of practice because we share an interest, a passion, a desire to help or a need for help. One of the teachers we spoke with in preparing this course said: “I guess my philosophy is that, as teachers, we should see ourselves as a worldwide learning community. The more we can actually build upon and use and collaborate with each other, the better our students are going to benefit from.”

These are some of the benefits of sharing the materials that you create:

• Student/user feedback and open peer review
• Reputational benefits, recognition
• Benefits (efficiency and cultural) of collaborative approaches to teaching/learning
• Opportunities to work across sectors, institutions and subject disciplines
• Increased digital literacies (particularly around IPR)
• Reaching a wider range of learners

Source: Stakeholders and Benefits, Open Educational Resources Infokit, JISC CC BY-SA 3.0

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Sure you can think of other benefits, but now let’s concentrate on the ‘dark’ side. What would stop you from sharing your teaching materials? What do you think can go wrong? Do you know of any examples when the outcome of sharing was anything but advantageous? If you don’t mind sharing, post your comments in the forum below.

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