Together with my colleagues of the austrian wide OER-working group we published our findings about “Recommendations for OER Integration in Austrian Higher Education” at this year EADTU 2016 conference.
Abstract:
Open Educational Resources (OER) are considered an important instrument to increase access and to facilitate the reuse of learning content. Educational institutions, especially those in Higher Education, play a crucial role in the production of OER, since they are the main producers of learning materials. To foster this production, a national strategy or at a least a national commitment to OER is necessary. Moreover, due to the very strict copyright law in Austria, this achievement is of high importance and necessity. In this publication, we will introduce recommendations for the integration of OER in all Higher Education institutions in Austria; these were developed by a national workgroup consisting of different stakeholders (government, library, funder, Higher Education and special interest groups). The overall aim is to achieve sustainability for the educational sector, especially with regard to the usage of learning materials by different lecturers as well as institutions. The cooperation among various stakeholders on different levels needs to be in the centre of all further efforts, which should be based upon six explicit requirements:
- Mandatory commitment to OER
- Establishment of a nationwide information platform for exchange and cooperation
- Establishment of nationwide educational programmes for different stakeholders
- Establishment of national OER badges
- Targeted financial and structural promotion of OER
- Establishment of OER strategies within each institution and as a comprehensive approach
Each requirement will be described in more detail and a roadmap will illustrate how OER can be successfully integrated at Higher Education institutions in the next ten years.
Reference: Ebner, M., Kopp, M., Freisleben-Deutscher, C., Gröblinger, O., Rieck, K., Schön, S., Seitz, P, Seissl, M., Ofner, S., Zimmermann, C., Zwiauer, C. (2016) Recommendations for OER Integration in Austrian Higher Education. In: Conference Proceedings: The Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference, EADTU 2016, pp. 34-44