The Open Education Handbook is a collaboratively written living web document targeting educational practitioners and the education community at large that has been written over the last 18 months.

Earlier today we had a great Open Knowledge Community session presenting the Open Education Handbook and talking about its future.

The Google Hangout link for the session is still available and contains the video and chat. The video is also on YouTube and embedded below and the slides are available on Slideshare. The Working Group Call etherpad was used for notes before and during the session.

During the session facilitated by Christian Villum from Open Knowledge I presented the Open Education Working Group and gave some background and history on the handbook the group has written. Rob Farrow from the Open University talked about his role in editing the handbook, which allowed us to create a 2014 instance online and in PDF and ePub format.

Martin Poulter from WikimediaUK and Joe Paulger from FLOSS Manuals also joined us and talked about the ways in which they are moving the handbook forward into 2015 and taking it out to the wider community. Martin has already started work moving the Open Education Handbook into Wikibooks and Jo has plans to deliver the handbook as a FLOSS manual but also allow the current version in booktype to be ‘sucked’ into FLOSS manuals (using a direct link) via a new front end she is developing.

There was some really interesting discussion on the challenges of creating a handbook and keeping current and relevant; and on the different approaches that can be used to embed it in to the community. It became apparent that for the handbook to stay alive it will end up being forked (in the software development use of the word), with possible different version popping up over the web. Although there were differing opinions on this there was agreement that the ideal is to let the handbook ‘fly’ and to try and get support for an initiative to create a definitive 2015 version later down the line that revisits the various versions.

There was also a suggestion from Mick Chesterman that we create a splash page for the handbook similar to the one used by http://collaborative-futures.org/. This is something I will definitely do and I hope to update the Open Education Handbook Page in the new year!

Below are some of the useful links shared during the session:

• Do it Academy – a resource open to all to browse and share resources on digitial skills, media productions and getting your message out there.
• http://oerresearchhub.org/2014/11/19/oer-evidence-report-2013-2014/ – brings together a range of evidence around the research hypotheses of the product and provides an overview of the impact OER is having on a range of teaching and learning practices.
• The Battle for Open – a book written by Martin Weller which offers some excellent insights into the open education movement and beyond.
• Wikibooks – the open-content textbooks collection that anyone can edit.