Open Research course logo (CC-BY 4.0 OER Research Hub)

It’s now been a couple of weeks since we formally ended our four-week Open Research course on P2PU … And what a month it was! We had 139 people sign up to the course, which looked at the theory and practice of open research, how you can be ethical and open, how to disseminate in the open and open reflection. You can view the course materials here.

From the very first discussions about the course last fall with Jane Park at Creative Commons to the team brainstorming the course early in 2014, spending several months co-authoring the course and developing assets, going through School of Open’s community review, getting the course up on the P2PU platform, creating our badge, and running the course itself, it’s been a fascinating and rewarding process. Collaboration was central to building the course and as an earlier blog post shows continuous evaluation and input was essential to make Open Research possible.

As a team we’re still reflecting on the experience of creating and running the course, but would like to thank everyone who contributed, commented, reviewed materials and participated. The range of course participants, from all over the world and with all kinds of backgrounds and interests in open research, who joined us on the Hangouts and commented in the forums or used the course Twitter hashtag (#openresearch) was quite amazing and it was a privilege to work with so many people who were keen to share their ideas and experiences during the course.

We look forward to building on the success of this first iteration of Open Research, while also looking at where we can improve the material and course design. A post-course survey, forum comments and blog posts by participants as well as the team’s reflections will all feed into this review process. In addition, if you did not participate in the course but have suggestions or feedback, we would welcome your thoughts via this Hackpad. A second facilitated version of the course is planned for early 2015 and a stand-alone version will also be made available.

Thanks again to everyone who made the course possible!