What do you need? A collaborative approach to understanding OER requirements across all stakeholders

This workshop aims to start bridging the gap between users, producers, infrastructure managers and policy makers to make their individual requirements and perspectives visible to decide on possible next steps for the institutions to turn Open Education into practice

Analogous to activities in the area of Open Access and Open Data in research which are largely already institutionally anchored, Open Educational Resources (OER) are beginning to establish themselves in European higher education. These are meeting with increasing interest among teaching staff, students and management levels. In addition to building up competence in the use and creation of OER, their availability is of central importance to ensure the acceptance of OER. Thus, in addition to publications and research data, there is an increasing demand from policy makers concerning sustainability to make teaching content available long term and for everybody. Furthermore, university staff itself also make demands on OER and their infrastructure as well as the accessibility of OER.

Important to note in this process of building OER infrastructure and services is the diverse affiliation of the involved stakeholders (e.g. staff of e-learning centres, central IT services or libraries) among their higher education institution. In order to successfully support research and teaching staff in the sense of Open Education and Open Science the interdisciplinary cooperation of these departments is required.

Key Learning outcomes:

Participants will …

1. understand the importance of OER and the need for institutional anchoring and infrastructure development to ensure their availability in higher education.
2. gain insight into successful interdisciplinary cooperations between e-learning centres, central IT services and libraries, and how this collaboration can generate synergies between Open Education and Open Science.
3. be able to identify the diverse requirements and perspectives on OER from different stakeholders, including users, producers, infrastructure managers, and policy makers.
4. engage in discussions and exchange ideas on the development of infrastructure and services for OER to support university teaching and research in the long run.
5. be able to generate synergies between Open Education and Open Science and to decide on possible next steps for their institutions to turn Open Education into practice.