Policies for OER Uptake for the post-secondary education sectors:with emphasis on Member States

Paul Bacsich – Sero Consultingand members of the POERUP policy team

EU Pre-Educa Workshop, 4 December 2013, Berlin

Just one slide on POERUP

follows....

Achievements

• Inventory of more than 400 OER initiatives worldwide

• 30 country reports (11 major)

• 7 case studies including Wikiwijs, ALISON (Ireland), OER U (global) and FutureLearn (UK mostly)

• 3 EU-level policy documents for universities, VET and schools

• In progress: 9 policy documents for UK (x3), Ireland, France, Netherlands, Spain, Poland – and Canada

KA3 ICT

This presentation

• Summarises our initial policy recommendations for HE and FE/VET

• Within a wider context of formal education• Correlated to the European Commission’s

Opening Up Education policy recommendations

POERUP Opening Up Education• Three sets of policies• Sector-specific wording e.g.

Bologna, ENQA• EU level but mainly as a generic

Member State template• Vary in applicability at MS level

(size, etc)• Focus more on OER but in a much

wider context• Evidence base possibly more

global?

• One set of policies• Uniform thus generic wording

• Mainly EU (Erasmus+ and H2020) with some on Member States

• Vary in applicability at MS level (size, etc)

• Focus on a somewhat wider context (of OUE)

• Evidence base more EU-focussed?

POERUP: Three types of intervention

• interventions that link OER to open access (to research and to standards)• interventions that foster important phenomena

(including access, cost and quality; but also others such as development and informed citizenry) that OER is said to facilitate • interventions that serve to reduce or dismantle the

barriers to creation of innovative institutions and innovative practice (including OER, MOOCs and open educational practices).

Recommendations A (#1–#7)

• Innovation• Accreditation of institutions (2)• Quality agencies• Competency-based education• Accreditation of Prior Learning (2)

Recommendations B (#8–#18)

• Funding (4), mainly EU-level• Intellectual Property (4)• Teacher training (2)• Further research

Innovation

The keybut only at scale

Innovation – innovative institutions

• Since the era of building open universities there has been little visible activity in creating innovative institutions

New?-build institutions opening up education

Innovation – recommendation• The European Commission should set up a

competitive innovation fund to set up one new “European” university each year with a commitment to “low-system-cost” online education around a core proposition of open content.• OUE: Support innovative teaching and learning

environments, including through the use of structural and investment funds (ESIFs)

• OUE: Establish a European Hub of Digitally Innovative Education institutions... complemented by a specific European Award of Digital Excellence

Accreditation and quality

“Outside the rules”or

“Within the (new) rules”

Accreditation of institutions – new accrediting bodies and mutual recognition

• The European Commission should work to reduce the regulatory barriers against new kinds of HE providers (e.g. for-profit, from outside the country, consortial, etc)– OUE: Ensure that transparency and recognition

instruments for formal education are adapted to new forms of learning including validation of skills acquired online

Quality agencies

• Quality agencies in ENQA should focus more on integration of new modes of learning, copyright and removing implicit bias from regulations– OUE: Ensure that transparency and recognition

instruments for formal education are adapted to new forms of learning including validation of skills acquired online

Accreditation of prior learning

• The Commission should recommend to universities that they should to improve and proceduralise their activity on APL (Accreditation of Prior Learning) including the ability to accredit knowledge and competences developed through online study and informal learning, including but not restricted to OER and MOOCs

• Large Member States should set up an Open Accreditor– OUE: Ensure that transparency and recognition instruments for

formal education are adapted to new forms of learning including validation of skills acquired online

• But what does this lead logically to?....

THIS INEVITABLY LEADS TOCompetence-based, not time-based assessment

• The Commission and related authorities developing the European Higher Education Area should reduce the regulatory barriers against new non-study-time-based modes of provision: in particular by developing a successor to Bologna based primarily on competences gained not duration of study– OUE: Ensure that transparency and recognition instruments for formal

education are adapted to new forms of learning including validation of skills acquired online

Funding and costs

Still neglected....

Funding mechanismsGeneral agreement with OUE but we recommend also:• The European Commission should foster work into

standardised syllabi EU-wide for undergraduate degrees in certain professions (e.g. medicine, nursing, mathematics, IS/IT) and... foster the developments of common bases of OER material to support these standards: open repositories and open textbooks

• Member states should increase their scrutiny of the cost basis for university teaching and consider the benefits of output-based funding for qualifications

Other important issues

Intellectual Property/CopyrightTraining/Staff Development

Research

Intellectual Property Rights

• Standard Creative Commons license for EU and all member states

• Technological methods to provide more and standardised information on IPR to users of digital educational content

• Mass EU-wide multi-level education campaign to educate education staff on IPR issues

• Study the issues around the non commercial restriction and make appropriate recommendations

Initial academic training and CPD

• Development of online initial and continuous professional development programmes for teachers, focussing on online learning with specific coverage of distance learning, OER, MOOCs and other forms of open educational practice, and also IPR issues– OUE: Support teachers in acquiring a high level of digital

competences and adopt innovative teaching practices through flexible training, incentive schemes, revised curricula for teachers' initial education and new professional evaluation mechanisms

Innovation and research into the benefits of OER

• The Commission should fund research into the verifiable benefits of OER, with greater efforts to integrate analyses with ongoing research on distance learning, on-campus online learning, and pedagogy– OUE: European Commission support for better

knowledge and stronger evidence-based policies (four detailed points)

Thank you for listening

Paul BacsichFor the POERUP policy team

Policies in preparation for/with UK(x3), Ireland, France, Netherlands, Spain, and Poland;

We want to work with other EU/EEA/LLP countries too