After Jorum: The Fragmentation of OER Infrastructure in UK Higher Education
More than a decade ago, the UK’s higher education sector stood at the forefront of the global Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. Institutions, supported by national bodies such as Jisc and HEFCE, worked collectively to fund, create, and distribute open learning materials. Central to this was *Jorum*—a national OER repository intended to make these resources findable and shareable across institutions.
But Jorum was decommissioned in 2016, and with it, a key pillar of the UK’s shared open education infrastructure disappeared. In its place, a highly decentralised ecosystem has emerged: one characterised by institutional silos, inconsistent sustainability, and limited discoverability.
In this post, I reflect on what this shift has meant for UK higher education, and how the current state of OER provision reveals the tension between institutional autonomy and sector-wide collaboration.
The Rise and Decline of a National Platform
Funded by Jisc and HEFCE, Jorum was launched in 2005 as a centralised repository for sharing learning and teaching materials openly across the UK HE and FE sectors (Jisc, n.d.). For a time, it represented a shared commitment to public good through open access to educational content. At its peak, it hosted thousands of resources across disciplines and institutions.
However, Jorum also faced difficulties: inconsistent contributions, limited engagement from academic staff, and discoverability issues despite its ambition. By the time of its closure in 2016, institutional repositories and personal platforms were on the rise. The closure marked a shift away from the ideal of a collective national OER infrastructure.
A Fragmented Present
In the absence of a central repository, the UK now hosts a diverse range of institution-specific and global repositories. Notable UK-based examples include:
- Open.Ed (University of Edinburgh): A comprehensive OER platform aligned with UNESCO’s 2019 Recommendation on OER (University of Edinburgh, n.d.).
- OpenLearn (The Open University): A longstanding and globally significant repository offering full-length courses and micro-learning opportunities (Open University, n.d.).
Other institutions, such as Heriot-Watt University, have previously hosted open education pages, though many of these are now inactive or inaccessible (No longer available, 2025).
International repositories have gained increasing prominence in UK HE usage:
- OER Commons – An international platform aggregating OER from institutions globally.
- MERLOT – A curated repository with peer-reviewed resources.
- OpenStax – A key source for openly licensed digital textbooks, particularly in STEM fields.
While these platforms offer considerable value, they reflect and reinforce the global shift toward decentralised provision.
The Cost of Decentralisation
The decentralisation of OER provision has produced a number of challenges:
- Discoverability: With resources dispersed across dozens of platforms, educators face real difficulties in finding suitable materials. Metadata quality, inconsistent search functions, and limited interoperability all contribute to this problem.
- Sustainability: Maintaining an institutional OER presence requires long-term resourcing, but without policy incentives or visible uptake, many universities deprioritise such efforts. Former national support structures—both technical and cultural—have not been replaced.
- Loss of shared practice: Centralised repositories like Jorum didn’t just store resources; they fostered cross-sector dialogue. Their disappearance has narrowed opportunities for collaboration and reuse.
Where Next? Rebuilding Without Re-centralising
The idea of simply reviving a platform like Jorum may seem appealing—but the world of digital education has changed. What is needed now is not necessarily a single national repository, but interoperable systems that connect the growing number of institutional and subject-specific collections.
Efforts to support federated discovery, build open metadata standards, and develop cross-institutional OER networks may provide a more flexible, resilient alternative. Sector bodies such as Jisc and the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) could have a renewed role here—not by owning infrastructure, but by enabling interoperability and alignment.
There is also an opportunity to embed OER production and sharing more deeply into academic work through recognition, professional development, and authentic student co-creation.
Conclusion
The UK’s retreat from national OER infrastructure has not spelled the end of open education. But the fragmentation that followed the closure of Jorum has left a vacuum—one that affects discoverability, collaboration, and the sustainability of open practice.
To move forward, we must recognise that decentralisation alone does not equate to openness. Without shared frameworks, discovery tools, and sector-wide commitment, even the most well-intentioned OERs risk being lost in the noise.
References
Jisc (n.d.) Open Educational Resources (OER) Programme. Available at: https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24838291/Open%20Educational%20Resources%20Programme (Accessed: 29 March 2025).
MERLOT (n.d.) Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. Available at: https://www.merlot.org (Accessed: 29 March 2025).
No longer available (2025) Heriot-Watt University – Open Educational Resources page. Formerly available at: https://www.hw.ac.uk/uk/services/is/learning-teaching/oer.htm (Accessed prior to 2025).
OER Commons (n.d.) Open Educational Resources. Available at: https://www.oercommons.org (Accessed: 29 March 2025).
OpenStax (n.d.) Free Textbooks for College. Available at: https://openstax.org/ (Accessed: 29 March 2025).
Open University (n.d.) OpenLearn. Available at: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/ (Accessed: 29 March 2025).
University of Edinburgh (n.d.) Open.Ed – Open Educational Resources. Available at: https://open.ed.ac.uk (Accessed: 29 March 2025).
UNESCO (2019) Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER). Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Available at: https://en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/oer/recommendation (Accessed: 29 March 2025).