Open Educational Resources for Professionals: A New Era in the Training and Development of Legislative Counsel

This paper discusses a current project to develop open educational resources (OER) for legislative counsel in countries of the Commonwealth of Nations. The project is the latest step in a 20-year old distance education program for those professionals. The paper explores best practices for investment in freely available OERs for use by professionals and students who are involved in open access and online learning environments. The creation and deployment of the OER raised many of the key issues faced by many current organizations, including the tension between openness and quality, and the relationship of OER to accreditation. Findings describe the importance of chunking information appropriately, tackling the separation of core knowledge from local contexts, and managing integrity while operating in the domain of open source materials.