After an endless marathon of consortium agreements and paperwork (more about those later when I’m in a better mood) it looks like I should finally be making a start on Glasgow University’s part of the HEA Biosciences Open Education Resources project. For those who don’t know the aim of the project is to release learning and teaching materials for open use by the academic community and in the process learn about the challenges and difficulties of developing and releasing open educational resources.Glasgow University’s contribution to the project will focus on resources for supporting practical field based learning in ecology, under the title Virtual Field Ecology. Fieldwork experience and skills are a vital part of any ecologists training so we’re not trying to replace these. Instead we have been building up electronic resources that support field training, by for example illustrating seasonal changes in habitats and biodiversity that can’t be experienced in a single short field course and providing permanent illustrations of fieldwork techniques that can be referenced as a reminder when needed. The main aim of Glasgow’s involvement in the larger project is to repackage the existing in-house resources so that they will be suitable for open release. The result will be Virtual Learning Environments covering aspects of terrestrial ecology, freshwater ecology, conservation in an urban environment, marine biology and tropical ecology. The VLEs will be based on 6 Glasgow University field courses run annually at SCENE (Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment) on Loch Lomond, Millport University Field Station on the Clyde Estuary, Possil Marsh an urban nature reserve within the boundaries of Glasgow city, the Andes and Amazon of Ecuador (plus filed work in Peru & Bolivia) and the Red Sea, Egypt.That’s about it for now, more updates to follow as work progresses.