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POERUP: Policies for OER Uptake
Final Report Public Part
Project information
Project acronym:
POERUP
Project title:
Policies for OER Uptake
Project number:
519138-LLP-1-2011-1-UK-KA3-KA3MP-POERUP
Sub-programme or KA:
KA3
Project websites:
http://www.poerup.info, http://poerup.referata.com,
http://www.poerup.org.uk
Reporting period:
From
01/11/2011
To
30/06/2014
Report version:
1
Date of preparation:
24 October 2014
Beneficiary organisation:
University of Leicester
Project coordinator:
Paul Bacsich
Project coordinator organisation:
Sero Consulting Ltd
Project coordinator telephone number:
+44 114 235 2364
Project coordinator email address:
paul.bacsich@sero.co.uk
This project has been co-funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication reflects the views only of the POERUP project, and the Commission cannot
be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
© 2014 Copyright Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency.
The document may be freely copied and distributed provided that no modifications are made, that the
source is acknowledged and that this copyright notice is included.
Executive Summary (English)
1. POERUP’s overall aim was to develop policies to promote the uptake of OER
(Open Educational Resources) in the educational sector, to further the range
of purposes for which institutions deploy OER: opening up education,
widening access (including internationally and in particular from developing
countries), higher quality or lower cost of teaching – and combinations of
these. These policies were to be oriented to the European Union and a
specified range of countries, all but one in Europe.
2. POERUP focussed largely on the universities and schools subsectors of the
education sector, but also paid attention to the non-tertiary post-secondary
subsector (VET) – the ‘colleges’ – so often the loci of the kind of informal
learning that OER facilitates, but also crucial loci for skills development.
3. The original focus of POERUP was to focus on policies only at the ‘national’
level (including governments of top-level devolved administrations such as
Scotland or Flanders). In the progress of the project, given the increasingly
fragmented environment for education, it was also felt appropriate to look at
consortia of institutions, including with private sector actors who facilitate
change, as often in the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) space – such
as FutureLearn and OER u. However, it was not an aim of POERUP to
produce a set of policy recommendations oriented to institutions, or a set of
critical success factors for initiatives.
4. POERUP put substantial effort into understanding the state of play of OER
initiatives and the policy environment in a range of countries, within the
context of the wider development of online learning in these countries – but
cognisant also of the worldwide moves towards Open Access for research
literature and general resources and the wider “Open” context. However, it
was not an aim of POERUP to produce a comprehensive database (or map)
of all OER initiatives.
5. Indeed, POERUP was a project in the discipline of comparative education:
such a project carrying out comparative education has to prioritise. POERUP
had to decide which countries were most relevant to European Lifelong
Learning and within the set of relevant countries decide which countries would
be studied by partners and which by contracted experts paid by POERUP, or
in some cases via third parties not paid from POERUP funds. It was not an
aim of POERUP to study all countries.
6. The countries that POERUP studied came not only from Europe, but also from
each continent. Outside Europe we focussed more on countries with linguistic,
cultural or political links to countries in Europe, in particular the non-European
OECD members such as Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and the
US. There was of course much activity in the US in an ever-changing
situation: there we studied a representative set of exemplars. Developed but
non-OECD countries studied included Argentina, Thailand, South Africa and
six countries in the Middle East.
7. We knew from several former projects of this sort that the kind of global study
that POERUP did was expensive and potentially infeasible within typical
Lifelong Learning Programme budgets (circa €500K) – thus POERUP was
particularly concerned to provide value for money to the EU. A key strategy to
achieve this was to partner informally with other projects and agencies to
ensure that POERUP did not carry out any country studies, which were
already being done by other agencies. This was initially time-consuming and
led to some minor delays while other agencies carried out their processes, but
the financial benefit of avoiding unnecessary country studies was substantial
and indeed the only way that POERUP could have proceeded. There were
also other positive outcomes of the consultation process including ongoing
collaboration with IPTS, UNESCO IITE Moscow, OER U/ WikiEducator,
CommOER/Wikipedia and OER Asia, as well as with several independent
experts. An active group of experts led to three very useful workshops under
the auspices of the International Advisory Committee.
8. The first round of country studies was completed by the time of the Progress
Report, but, in accordance with the workplan, effort was held back to put into
selected update studies in 2014. This update process was a very useful
exercise and established that in the last 18 months several countries formerly
regarded doing little in OER had in fact become active – Germany in
particular. The initiatives are all documented in a large database and can be
shown on a searchable OER Map.
9. A key topic in POERUP policy work was to understand the ways in which OER
communities can develop and foster activity without sustained long-term
amounts of government funding. Particular tools for Social Network Analysis
were used to support this task. Eight case studies for OER communities were
chosen across the various education sectors for analysis by POERUP
partners, at varying degrees of depth. These include the schools-focussed
projects DigiSchool (Netherlands, linked with Wikiwijs) and Bookinprogress
(Italy); HE-focussed projects OER U (global), Futurelearn (UK) and BC
Campus (Canada); VET-focussed ALISON (Ireland) and Re:Source
(Scotland); and a specific MOOC project in informal adult learning (University
of Amsterdam). The analyses led to policy options and a series of
recommendations for effective running of such projects in future.
10. POERUP’s policy work started early (as documented in the Progress Report).
It was closely linked to discussions on Opening Up Education. Three EU-level
policy reports were produced in autumn 2013, with a summary presented at
the EU OER workshop at Online Educa in December 2013. In 2014 specific
policy documents were produced for five member states (UK, Ireland, France,
Poland and Netherlands) plus Canada. In addition to formal policy work,
informal policy discussions were held at workshops in five more member
states: Norway, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Croatia.
11. The internal evaluator of POERUP completed a full series of evaluations of
POERUP, based on reflective practice from POERUP staff and consultations
with consultants and stakeholders.
12. Future plans from members of the POERUP consortium include participation
in projects: some have started already, such as VM-PASS, eMundus,
SharedOER and D-TRANSFORM, others are as we write still in process of
submission and judgement. There are other exploitation moves under way as
opportunities develop, with a focus on the wiki and database.
Executive Summary (Nederlandse Samenvatting) –
Dutch
1. Het algemene doel van POERUP was om beleidsadvies te ontwikkelen om de
inzet van OER (open leermaterialen) in de educatieve sector te bevorderen en
om de doeleinden waarvoor instellingen OER implementeren te vergroten:
openstelling van het onderwijs, een ruimere toegang (inclusief internationaal
en met name uit ontwikkelingslanden), hogere kwaliteit of lagere kost voor het
onderwijs - en combinaties daarvan. Dit beleid is gericht op de Europese Unie
en een bepaald aantal landen, op een na alle in Europa.
2. POERUP richtte zich voornamelijk op universiteiten en scholen, maar er werd
ook aandacht besteed aan de niet-tertiair post-secundaire subsector (VET) -
de 'colleges' – gezien zij vaak de loci zijn van informeel leren wat OER
vergemakkelijkt, alsook cruciale loci voor de ontwikkeling van vaardigheden.
3. De oorspronkelijke focus van POERUP was het beleid op 'nationaal' niveau
(met inbegrip van de regeringen van decentrale overheden, zoals Schotland of
Vlaanderen). In de voortgang van het project, gezien de gefragmenteerde
omgeving voor onderwijs, werd het ook passend geacht om te kijken naar
consortia van instellingen, inclusief de particuliere sector, met name MOOC
(Massive Open Online Courses) aanbieders - zoals FutureLearn en OER u.
Het was echter niet een doel van POERUP om beleidsaanbevelingen of een
set van kritische succesfactoren voor dit soort initiatieven te produceren.
4. POERUP zette zich aanzienlijk in voor het begrijpen van de stand van zaken
van OER-initiatieven en het beleid hierrond in een aantal landen, in het kader
van de bredere ontwikkeling van online leren in deze landen - maar de
wereldwijde beweging naar Open Access voor onderzoeksliteratuur en
algemene middelen en de bredere "Open" context. Het was echter niet een
doel van POERUP om een uitgebreide database (of kaart) van alle OER-
initiatieven te produceren.
5. Inderdaad, POERUP was een project in de discipline van het vergelijkende
onderwijs: een dergelijk project van vergelijkende onderwijs moet prioriteren.
POERUP moest beslissen welke landen het meest relevant waren voor
Europese Leven Lang Leren en binnen deze reeks van relevante landen
besluiten welke landen bestudeerd zouden worden door de project partners
en welke door gecontracteerde deskundigen door POERUP betaald, of in
sommige gevallen via derden, niet betaald uit POERUP fondsen. Het was
geen doel van POERUP om alle landen te bestuderen.
6. De landen die POERUP bestudeerde kwamen niet alleen uit Europa, maar uit
elk continent. Buiten Europa zijn we meer gericht op landen met taalkundige,
culturele of politieke banden met landen in Europa, in het bijzonder de niet-
Europese OESO-landen, zoals Australië, Canada, Mexico, Nieuw-Zeeland en
de Verenigde Staten. Er was natuurlijk veel activiteit in de VS in een steeds
veranderende situatie: hier bestudeerden we een representatieve set van
voorbeelden. Van de ontwikkelde, maar niet-OESO-landen bestudeerden we
Argentinië, Thailand, Zuid-Afrika en zes landen in het Midden-Oosten.
7. We wisten van een aantal voormalige gelijksoortige projecten dat de aard van
een wereldwijde studie onhaalbaar is binnen de budgetten van het Leven
Lang Leren programma (circa € 500K) - dus POERUP heeft er zich vooral op
gericht om binnen het budget zo veel mogelijk te bereiken voor de EU. Een
belangrijke strategie was om informeel samen met andere projecten en
instanties ervoor te zorgen dat POERUP geen landenstudies deed, die reeds
werden uitgevoerd door andere instanties. Dit was in eerste instantie
tijdrovend en heeft geleid tot enkele kleine vertragingen, maar het financiële
voordeel van het vermijden van onnodige landenstudies was aanzienlijk en
ook de enige manier waarop POERUP kon voortgaan. Er waren ook andere
positieve resultaten van het raadplegingsproces, waaronder lopende
samenwerking met IPTS, UNESCO IITE Moskou, OER U / WikiEducator,
CommOER / Wikipedia en OER-Azië, maar ook met een aantal onafhankelijke
deskundigen. Het betrekken van deskundigen heeft geleid tot drie zeer nuttige
workshops onder auspiciën van de International Advisory Committee.
8. De eerste ronde van de landenstudies werd voltooid tegen de tijd van het
voortgangsrapport, maar in overeenstemming met het werkplan, werd er in
2014 een grote update gedaan van bepaalde landen. Deze update was een
zeer nuttige oefening en hierdoor werd er vastgesteld dat in de afgelopen 18
maanden een aantal landen, voorheen beschouwd als weinig actief rond
OER, in feite zeer actief geworden zijn op het gebied van OER- Duitsland in
het bijzonder. De initiatieven zijn allemaal gedocumenteerd in een grote
database en kunnen getoond worden op een doorzoekbare OER Kaart.
9. Een belangrijk onderwerp in het beleidsonderzoek van POERUP was om
inzicht te krijgen in de manieren waarop OER communities kunnen
voortbestaan zonder aanhoudende overheidssubsidies. Er werd gebruik
gemaakt van Sociale Netwerk Analyse. Er werden acht casestudies
geselecteerd in verschillende onderwijssectoren. Deze omvatten de scholen-
gerichte projecten Digischool (Nederland, verbonden met Wikiwijs) en
Bookinprogress (Italië); HO-gerichte projecten OER U (globaal), Futurelearn
(UK) en BC Campus (Canada); -VET gericht ALISON (Ierland) en Re: Source
(Schotland); en een specifiek MOOC project in informele
volwasseneneducatie (Universiteit van Amsterdam). De analyses hebben
geleid tot beleidskeuzes en een reeks aanbevelingen voor een effectieve
werking van dergelijke projecten in de toekomst.
10. POERUP beleidswerk begon vroeg (zoals gedocumenteerd in het
voortgangsverslag). Het was nauw verbonden met de discussie over de
openstelling van het onderwijs. Drie EU-niveau beleidsrapporten werden
geproduceerd in het najaar van 2013, met een samenvatting in de EU OER
workshop in december 2013 gepresenteerd op Online Educa. In 2014 werden
bepaalde beleidsdocumenten geproduceerd voor vijf lidstaten (Verenigd
Koninkrijk, Ierland, Frankrijk, Polen en Nederland) plus Canada. Naast het
formele beleidswerk, waren er informele beleidsbesprekingen tijdens
workshops in vijf lidstaten: Noorwegen, Slovenië, Hongarije, Roemenië en
Kroatië.
11. De interne evaluator van POERUP voltooide een volledige reeks evaluaties
van POERUP, gebaseerd op de reflectieve praktijk van POERUP partners en
in overleg met adviseurs en belanghebbenden.
12. Toekomstplannen van de leden van de POERUP consortium zijn de deelname
aan projecten: sommige zijn al begonnen, zoals VM-PASS, eMundus,
SharedOER en D-transformatie, anderen zijn als we schrijven nog steeds in
proces van indiening en oordeel. Er zijn andere exploitatie stappen in de maak
door nieuwe mogelijkheden, met een focus op de wiki en de database.
Executive Summary (Note de Synthèse) –
French
1. L’objectif global de POERUP était de développer des politiques pour favoriser
l'essor des REL (Ressources Éducatives Libres) dans le secteur de
l’éducation, afin d'inciter les institutions à les utiliser pour les raisons suivantes
: ouverture de l’éducation, élargissement de son accès (y compris à l’étranger,
particulièrement dans les pays en développement), amélioration de la qualité
et réduction des coûts d’enseignement – ainsi que la combinaison de toutes
ces raisons.
2. Même si POERUP concerne principalement les enseignements secondaire et
supérieur, nous avons également pris en compte le secteur de l’enseignement
professionnel et technique, souvent demandeur du type d’apprentissage
informel que permet les REL, et secteur crucial dans le développement des
compétences.
3. À l’origine, POERUP concernait seulement les politiques à l’échelle nationale
(y compris dans le cadre de gouvernements locaux tels que l’Ecosse ou la
Flandre). Au cours du projet, étant donné la fragmentation croissante des
environnements éducatifs, il nous est apparu utile de nous pencher également
sur les associations d’institutions, y compris avec des acteurs privés porteurs
de changements, comme le sont souvent les plateformes de MOOC
(formations en ligne ouvertes à tous) telles que FutureLearn et OERu.
Cependant, l’un des objectifs de POERUP n’était pas de produire un
ensemble de recommandations de politiques à l’usage des institutions, ou un
ensemble de facteurs critiques de succès des initiatives.
4. POERUP a concentré ses efforts sur l’établissement d’un état des lieux des
initiatives REL et des cadres politiques d’un certain nombre de pays dans le
contexte plus large du développement de l’apprentissage en ligne dans ces
pays et de l'engouement mondial vers le libre accès aux littératures de
recherche et à toutes les autres ressources en général, ainsi que du
développement de la culture du « libre ». Cependant, POERUP n’avait pas
pour objectif de produire une base de données exhaustive (ou un plan) de
toutes les initiatives REL.
5. En effet, POERUP était un projet d’éducation comparée : un tel projet se doit
d’établir des priorités. POERUP a dû déterminer quels étaient les pays les
plus impliqués dans le programme européen d’éducation et de formation tout
au long de la vie. Parmi ces pays, il a fallu choisir ceux qui allaient être étudiés
par nos partenaires et ceux étudiés par des experts contractuels engagés par
POERUP, ou dans certains cas par des tiers non financés par des fonds
POERUP. POERUP n’avaient pas pour but d’étudier tous les pays.
6. POERUP ne se limitait pas seulement aux pays européens ; tous les
continents étaient représentés. En dehors de l’Europe, notre attention s’est
portée sur des pays entretenant des liens linguistiques, culturels ou politiques
avec l’Europe, notamment les pays non-européen de l’OCDE comme
l’Australie, le Canada, le Mexique, la Nouvelle-Zélande, et les Etats-Unis. Les
Etats-Unis étaient bien sûr les plus actifs, avec une situation en perpétuelle
évolution : nous y avons étudié un ensemble représentatif de modèles de
références. Les pays développés hors OCDE comprenaient l’Argentine, la
Thaïlande, l’Afrique du Sud, et six pays du Moyen Orient.
7. L’expérience de projets plus anciens a montré que ce type d’étude globale
était coûteux et potentiellement irréalisable dans les limites strictes des
budgets du programme européen d’éducation et de formation tout au long de
la vie (environ 500 000 €). C’est pourquoi POERUP s’est efforcé d’obtenir le
meilleur rapport coût-efficacité pour l’Union Européenne. L’élément clé de
notre stratégie a été de créer des partenariats informels avec d’autres projets
et d’autres agences pour nous assurer que POERUP ne menait pas les
mêmes études que d’autres agences pour certains pays. Cette stratégie s’est
d’abord révélée chronophage et a entraîné des retards mineurs correspondant
à l’attente de résultats en provenance d’autres agences. Cependant, les
économies ainsi générées ont été significatives et nous ont même permis de
mener POERUP à son terme. Ce processus de consultations a aussi eu des
retombées positives, comme des collaborations régulières avec IPTS,
UNESCO IITE Moscow, OER U/WikiEducator, CommOER/Wikipedia et OER
Asia, ainsi qu’avec plusieurs experts indépendants. L’activité d’un groupe
d’experts a même débouché sur trois ateliers très utiles sous l’égide du
Comité Consultatif International.
8. Le premier cycle d’études s’est terminé en même temps que le rapport
intermédiaire mais, en accord avec le plan de travail, une pause a été
marquée pour intégrer une sélection d'études mises à jour en 2014. Ce
processus de mise à jour a été un très bon exercice qui nous a permis de
constater que certains pays –notamment l’Allemagne - réputés peu actifs en
matière de REL étaient en fait devenus actifs au cours des 18 mois
précédents. Toutes les initiatives sont consignées dans une vaste base de
données et peuvent être présenté sous forme de Carte des REL consultable.
9. Grâce aux outils de l’analyse des réseaux sociaux, POERUP a permis de
comprendre comment les communautés REL peuvent développer et stimuler
l’activité sans recourir de manière soutenue à un financement à long terme
des gouvernements. Huit études de cas de Communautés REL ont été
sélectionnées parmi divers secteurs de l’éducation pour être analysées de
manière plus ou moins approfondie par les partenaires de POERUP. Il s’agit
des projets DigiSchool (en lien avec Wikiwijs, Pays Bas) et Bookinprogress
(Italie), consacrés au primaire et au secondaire ; OER U (international),
Futurelearn (Royaume-Uni) et BC Campus (Canada), consacrés à
l’enseignement supérieur ; ALISON (Irlande) et Re:Source (Écosse)
consacrés à la formation professionnelle, et un projet de MOOC spécifique
d’apprentissage informel pour adulte de l’Université d’Amsterdam. Les
analyses ont débouché sur des options de politiques et sur une série de
recommandations pour gérer efficacement ce type de projets dans le futur.
10. Le travail de POERUP sur les politiques a débuté rapidement (comme précisé
dans le rapport intermédiaire), en lien étroit avec les discussions d’Opening
Up Education. Trois rapports sur les politiques ont vu le jour à l’automne 2013,
avec un résumé présenté à l’atelier de l’UE sur les REL pendant Online Educa
en décembre 2013. En 2014, des documents spécifiques sur les politiques ont
été produits pour cinq États membres (Royaume-Uni, Irlande, France,
Pologne, et Pays-Bas) et pour le Canada. En plus du travail formel, des
discussions informelles autour des politiques se sont tenues au cours
d’ateliers dans cinq autres États membres : la Norvège, la Slovénie, la
Hongrie, la Roumanie et la Croatie.
11. L’évaluateur interne de POERUP a effectué une série complète d’évaluations
de POERUP, basée sur la pratique réflexive du personnel POERUP et sur la
consultation des experts et des intervenants.
12. Les projets futurs des membres du consortium POERUP comprennent la
participation à des projets dont certains ont déjà débuté, comme VM-PASS,
eMundus, SharedOER et D-TRANSFORM. D’autres sont encore, au moment
où nous écrivons, en cours de dépôt et d’évaluation. Certains types
d’exploitation, notamment dans le domaine du wiki et des bases de données,
sont actuellement en développement selon les opportunités.
Table of Contents
1. PROJECT OBJECTIVES ................................................................................... 11
2. PROJECT APPROACH ........................................................................................ 12
3. PROJECT OUTCOMES & RESULTS ................................................................ 16
4. PARTNERSHIPS ............................................................................................... 28
5. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE ............................................................................... 30
6. CONTRIBUTION TO EU POLICIES ................................................................... 35
7. THE WIKI ........................................................................................................... 37
1. Project Objectives
The overall aim of POERUP was to carry out research to understand how
governments can stimulate the uptake of OER by policy means, not excluding
financial means but recognising that in the ongoing economic situation in Europe the
scope for government financial support for such activities is much less than it was in
the past or is now in some non-EU countries such as US, Canada and Australia.
POERUP did not formulate policies based on informal discussions. POERUP wanted
the policies to be evidence-based policies – based on looking beyond one’s own
country, region or continent, and beyond the educational sector that a ministry
typically looks after.
POERUP also wanted to provide education authorities, the research community and
OER initiative management with trustworthy and balanced research results, in which
feedback from all stakeholder groups had been incorporated and which was used as
standard literature. A specific objective was to help readers in charge of OER
initiatives to foresee hidden traps and to find ways of incorporating successful
features of other initiatives.
POERUP was about dispassionate analysis, not lobbying – an issue where it strove
to take a balanced view within an overall positive orientation, in respect of OER
specifically, and opening up education, more generally.
POERUP aimed to provide policymakers and education authorities above institutions,
but also OER management and practitioners within institutions, with insight into what
has been done in this area, plus a categorization of the different initiatives (major and
minor) and the diverse range of providers. The POERUP studies provided practical
and concrete information in order to contribute towards a more informed approach in
the future.
POERUP achieved this by:
studying a range of countries in Europe and seen as relevant to Europe, in
order to understand what OER activities and initiatives are under way, and
why they are continuing (or stopping, or more starting) – and taking account of
reports from other agencies and projects studying OER in other countries;
researching case studies of the end-user–producer communities behind OER
initiatives in order to refine and elaborate recommendations to formulate a set
of action points that can be applied to ensuring the realisation of successful,
lively and sustainable OER communities;
developing informed ideas on policy formulation using evidence from
POERUP and (the few) other policy-oriented studies, POERUP staff’s own
experience in related projects, and ongoing advice from other experts in the
field.
Finally, these results were disseminated and are being maintained in a sustainable
way. The project has a web site www.poerup.info and a wiki poerup.referata.com on
which country reports and other outputs were developed. This wiki is still active and
will be sustained well after the formal end of the project, as OER, under a Creative
Commons license (CC 4.0). In addition various OER Maps have been developed – in
particular www.poerup.org.uk – and will be maintained.
2. Project Approach
Country studies
The main ‘intellectual’ task in the first half of the POERUP project (2011-12) was to
decide on which countries should be studied in depth in respect of their uses of OER
and the contexts surrounding such uses. The project plan had pre-specified some
countries, but it is always a good idea to recheck one’s assumptions in a bid
submitted nine months earlier. Having discussed the matter at length, the partners
decided not to change the main countries studied, or to reallocate any country
responsibilities between partners. This turned out to be a good decision during the
first 18 months of the project.
The original plan also required partners to contract out studies for a further 13
countries to external consultants. It was more of a challenge to decide finally on
which countries to study. First, the ‘low-hanging fruit’ – countries with obvious OER –
had already been put in the main list, thanks to substantial pre-bid researches by the
team. Secondly, an early study to determine who across Europe could be ‘an expert
in OER’ suitable for the POERUP International Advisory Committee had produced
evidence that many European countries were not very active in OER. Thirdly,
POERUP had made contact with other projects and agencies – including UNESCO,
IITE Moscow and OER Asia – and it was clear that some of them had been
commissioning country studies before POERUP had even started funded work.
POERUP rapidly agreed with them that it would be a waste of overall resources to
duplicate studies but since the other projects had started earlier, POERUP did a gap
analysis to see which countries were still not covered. Fortunately for European
coherence the situation was resolved amicably. So in September 2012 POERUP
commissioned, via three of the partners, three sets of studies.
In the second half of the project, the change in workplan caused by the enforced
withdrawal of one partner and the changing pattern of national activity in OER across
Europe necessitated a reconsideration of where partner priorities lay in deciding
which new countries to study and which existing country reports to update. The
unspent subcontractor funds had been allocated to Sero and process of i) very
meticulous hiring of cost-effective contractors and ii) leveraging on results from other
projects allowed a substantial updating of many country reports and the creation of
new reports, in particularly for Germany and Ireland.
The final list of countries studied is below. It includes over half of the EU-28, plus
Norway (EEA), and in most cases two countries from each continent outside Europe.
Europe
Non-Europe
Belgium
... and
Australia
... and
Denmark
Poland
New Zealand
Bahrain
Finland
Portugal
United States
Jordan
France
Romania
Canada
Kuwait
Germany
Spain
Oman
Greece
Sweden
Argentina
Qatar
Hungary
United Kingdom
Mexico
Saudi Arabia
Ireland
United Arab Emirates
Italy
Norway, EEA
Rwanda
Netherlands
South Africa
Thailand
The report on each country can be found on the wiki under the country name – for
example for Spain at poerup.referata.com/wiki/Spain.
In addition, four continental sweeps – Europe, Hispanic America, Asia and
Commonwealth Africa – were done to try to collect OER initiatives from countries not
specifically studied.
When analysing the country reports POERUP also looked at the existing country
reports – from UNESCO Moscow on Brazil, China and Lithuania, and from OER Asia
on several East Asian countries. (All these are referenced on the POERUP wiki.)
Near the end of the POERUP project, key reports from eMundus (www.emundus-
project.eu) became available – drawing on POERUP where relevant, they updated or
confirmed existing POERUP material in some cases, but had up to date reports on
Indonesia, Russia, and Brazil for POERUP to draw on for initiatives and policies –
see e.g. wikieducator.org/Emundus/Brazil.
Case studies
The case studies work set out to understand the ways in which OER communities
can develop and foster activity without sustained long-term government funding.
Particular tools for Social Network Analysis (SNA) were used extensively in most of
these case studies.
After considerable discussion, including with potential case study sites, eight case
studies for OER communities were chosen across the various education sectors for
analysis by POERUP partners, at varying degrees of depth (some described as mini
case studies). Selection parameters included geographic and linguistic proximity to
the POERUP case study partners (in UK, Netherlands, Italy and Canada) and
coverage across the various educational sub-sectors (universities, schools, VET,
informal).
The case studies were the schools-focussed projects Digischool (Netherlands, linked
with Wikiwijs) and Bookinprogress (Italy); the HE-focussed projects OER U,
Futurelearn (UK) and BC Campus (Canada); the VET-focussed ALISON (Ireland),
Re:Source (Scotland) and a specific MOOC project in informal adult learning
(University of Amsterdam). The analyses, available from the wiki or web site, led to a
series of recommendations for effective running of such projects in future.
Policy formulation
Although POERUP was not scheduled to start detailed policy formulation until the
second half of the project, the requirements from EU entities (including IPTS and
Open Education Experts Group), UNESCO and some national governments required
that policy work in fact had to start in summer 2012. In fact a very early approach to
POERUP policy work was demonstrated in a multi-project OER workshop just before
Online Educa Berlin in November 2012 – www.slideshare.net/pbacsich/oeb-
oerwspoerupbacsich – and in some position papers to DG EAC. Further progress on
policy in 2013 was delayed by the enforced withdrawal of the partner responsible for
this task (SCIENTER), but once the replacement partner for the work was agreed
(Sero), work restarted quickly. The later policy work was closely linked to discussions
on Opening Up Education. Three EU-level policy reports were produced in autumn
2013 – the first in early September 2013 before Opening Up Education was released
and the other two soon afterwards. A summary of these was presented at the EU
OER workshop just before the Online Educa conference in December 2013.
In 2014 specific policy documents were produced for five member states (France,
Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, and UK – England, Scotland and Wales separately)
plus Canada. In addition to formal policy work, informal policy discussions were held
at workshops in five more member states: Sweden, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and
Croatia. In the Netherlands a series of 10 policy workshops were organized on
different institutions of higher education to assist in formulating an open policy.
Dissemination and exploitation
Dissemination started early in the project’s lifetime – in fact the POERUP wiki was
running even before the POERUP bid was submitted and the first page with content
on it appeared four days after bid submission. Two months after the project formally
started there was a leaflet produced for the EU Coordinators meeting in mid February
2012, and by March 2012 a systematic process of presentations at conferences had
started. Furthermore, by this time the project had consolidated the pre-bid research
and other OER-related work in the interregnum (between bid submission and project
start) so that non-trivial results could be disseminated, unusual for a project that early
in its life. It also helped that there are several experts among POERUP partners who
receive many invitations to conferences across the world. Notwithstanding, it was not
until late 2012 that presentations began to take on a deeply researched aspect.
This ‘more researched’ series of presentations started with the OER13 conference in
the UK in May 2013, the EDEN conference in June 2013 (Norway), the EIF (EFQUEL
Innovation Forum) in September 2013 (Barcelona), the Online Educa Conference in
Berlin and the Media & Learning conference in Brussels in December 2013; then in
2014 there were POERUP-related presentations at OCW14 (Slovenia, April), eLSE
(Romania, April), Networked Learning (Scotland, April), OER14 (England, April), and
LINQ/EFQUEL Innovation Forum (Crete, May) – culminating at EDEN (Croatia, June)
with a workshop on policy issues and demonstrations of the POERUP OER
databases and OER Maps. A particular feature of this set of presentations was the
substantial involvement (four events including a panel on policy) at OCWC14, the
annual conference of the US-based Open CourseWare Consortium (now called the
Open Education Consortium).
Evaluation
The internal evaluator of POERUP, Deborah Arnold, completed a full series of
evaluations of POERUP, not only a final report, but two interim reports also, based
on reflections on their practice from POERUP staff, gathered by interviews, online
evaluation surveys and activities during project meetings. In particular, during the
second POERUP partner meeting (Granada, September 2012) a systematic review
was done by the evaluator with all partners. This review facilitated the collective
identification of areas for progress and actions to be taken in order to improve
communication and mutual understanding of key project issues. The final year of
internal evaluation focussed on impact, following the recommendations of the
(external) evaluator of the POERUP Progress Report.
Project management
The POERUP project was quite long (32 months) and this means that the standard
pattern of four project meetings in an LLP project was relatively widely spaced. There
was a project meeting within two weeks of the project start (Leicester, November
2011) and then a second one in September 2012 (Granada). The third one took
place at the end of March 2013 in UK, just before the OER13 conference. The fourth
and final meeting was particularly crucial because of the need to discuss a
substantial project amendment – this was a two-day meeting held in Brussels in
December 2013. There was a long period from then until the end of the project (June
2014) but it was agreed that there would be not a formal partner meeting but monthly
online partner meetings, culminating in a set of 1:1 meetings at the EDEN Zagreb
conference in June 2014, where the main topic was how to complete the country
reports and finalise the evaluation.
In between project meetings there were a number of online meetings, with a
particularly significant and lengthy one in June 2012 and another such in January
2014 to ratify the amendment text.
3. Project Outcomes & Results
Country reports
Of the 33 country studies done by POERUP all are mounted on or linked from the
POERUP wiki. In most cases, such as Poland, the page for the country OER study is
the page for the country – thus poerup.referata.com/wiki/Poland – but in a few cases,
it was more efficient to link the country page to a wiki page such as
poerup.referata.com/wiki/OER_in_Mexico. A number of the country reports were
written by senior academics in ‘research paper’ style with very full references – it was
felt more useful (and fairer to the authors’ intentions) to mount these as PDF files on
the wiki. In some cases both were done – for example
poerup.referata.com/wiki/Saudi_Arabia and the pages/reports linked to that.
Project staff and consultants were first tasked to check the relevant country page on
the VISCED wiki so that they did not duplicate effort. In some ways it would have
been more efficient if they had updated the country page from VISCED (the
predecessor project to POERUP) in situ – however, during the key period for doing
POERUP country reports (March-September 2012) many of the same country reports
were being updated by VISCED staff as VISCED drew to a close (it ended on 31
December 2012) – and it was felt that to have a clash of updating teams would both
be unwise and also cause difficulties when it came to the evaluation of VISCED since
it would be unclear as to which contribution was from which project. In one case,
Thailand, this was done, because Thailand was not a target country for VISCED
– and the results have been encouraging. It provides a much more integrated
approach – virtualcampuses.eu/index.php/Thailand – which might be a key
pointer to how pages can be updated now that the POERUP project has finished.
In February 2014 the country reports were reviewed for topicality and accuracy.
Guidance was issued to partners and consultants were contracted to ensure that
appropriate pages were updated. In addition, brand-new country reports were
developed for Germany (poerup.referata.com/wiki/Germany) and Ireland – and two
more (Rwanda and Jordan) were adapted from work done for another project on
online learning which had been persuaded to produce these two under CC licenses.
A particular feature of the updates was the insistence that country reports were
accompanied by tables of OER-related initiatives (including MOOCs) and also tables
of relevant policies. These are all on or linked to the wiki. The policy-related tables
were usually rather brief (see later).
OER initiatives: the Gazetteer
All OER and MOOC initiatives were consolidated on a database. This is still growing
in the post-project phase, but at the date of this report the database had 501
initiatives. This number was over double the number collected by January 2013;
indeed in the Progress Report POERUP noted: “the Gazetteer of OER initiatives...
contains 229 explicitly marked entries – but there are many UK and Spain entries not
yet tagged and the US entries tagged – the Notable ones – are a small subset of all
the US OER initiatives.” The prediction then was that by the end of the project there
will be over 350 entries”. POERUP has substantially exceeded the prediction: this is
partly due to the growth of MOOC sites but also to continued growth in size of the
Open CourseWare consortium and continued growth in the number of countries
engaged in OER, with countries like Bangladesh being recent entries. In fact there
has been a resurgence of OER activity in the last 12 months across the world, but
often more at grass-roots level or with modest central funding rather than large
government initiatives.
Initial conclusions on OER initiatives were presented at OER13 –
www.medev.ac.uk/oer13/47/view/. These included:
The volume of OER activity in a country is not closely correlated with GNP or
other obvious factors – similar size countries such as UK, Spain, France,
Germany and Poland have very different amounts of OER and numbers of
initiatives.
Some countries, especially in the Commonwealth of Nations, which are
otherwise advanced in the use of ICT in education, are in fact much less
developed in their involvement in OER. Australia was then a laggard.
Several countries have a lot of OER activity but only from one or a handful of
organisations – often open universities or elite universities.
There is a continuum between OER and Open Access – particularly evident in
postgraduate study where journals are required reading for students – but in
general it is very hard to draw the line: different countries take different views.
It is now possible to quantify and exemplify these statements in much more detail,
given the vast increase in data we have, but we stand by most of the earlier
conclusions. Recent studies also validate the project’s decision early on to take a
‘broad’ view of OER – if a purist view of OER is taken, it is easy to miss
developments, e.g. in university or schools repositories, which can be ‘made into
OER’ at the touch of a button by switching off access controls.
The OER Map
By early 2013 POERUP had established a database format as a Word table for the
collection of initiatives, and this is what was used for the table of notable initiatives in
the Appendix of POERUP’s Report on Comparative Analysis of Transversal OER
Initiatives. In January 2014 this format was adapted and extended to fit the desire
from several agencies and projects for a more geographic mapping-based
representation of OER initiatives. The revised Word table below was used by
POERUP staff and consultants in 2014 to create country-based tables of initiatives:
1.
Accession Number (internal field)
2.
Initiative hashtag (created by curator)
3.
Type (e.g. OER, MOOC, Open Access)
4.
Country (of HQ)
5.
Region (within country, e.g. Flanders
within Belgium)
6.
Initiative HQ city (e.g. Brussels)
7.
Initiative name
8.
Initiative URL
9.
Initiative summary (one paragraph)
10.
Initiative owner (typically an institution like
a university or school)
11.
Initiative HQ address (postal address, but
not PO Box numbers)
12.
Geolocation (latitude, longitude – in
decimal degrees – added at curation)
13. Initiative contact person
14.
Initiative contact email
15.
Political scale (e.g. institutional, regional,
national, international)
16.
Funders
17.
Start year
18.
End year
19.
Educational Level (text)
20.
Educational Level (ISCED 1997
taxonomy, e.g. 4)
21.
Interface language(s)
22.
Resource language(s)
23.
Subject(s)
24.
Licence(s) (e.g. Creative Commons of
various types)
25.
Media types (e.g. Text, Video)
26.
Tags
The mapping system was developed in spring 2014 and first demonstrated publicly at
EDEN in June 2014. It used the open source database MongoDB –
http://www.mongodb.org. In addition to the fields mentioned above the database had
various additional fields such as ISO codes for countries, regions and languages to
facilitate data search, curation and validation. The database was loaded from a
custom Excel database derived from the Word table. The use of Excel with look-up
tables allowed substantial data validation at the curation stage. The database also
was used to load a set of pages on the wiki, one for each initiative.
Case studies
The case study research set out to understand the ways in which OER communities
can develop and foster activity without sustained long-term government funding. The
research used a mix of both quantitative and qualitative methods: a survey based on
Social Network Analysis techniques and for each case study, three in-depth
structured interviews were conducted, resulting in 18 interviews. From the inventory
(Deliverable 2.3), compiled by the POERUP project, eight case studies were
selected: seven in Europe and one from Canada. The case studies are defined as
notable initiatives in Open Educational Practices (defined as the set of activities and
support around the creation, use and repurposing of Open Educational Resources
and MOOCs). Selection criteria for the cases were: inclusion of primary, secondary,
higher education and vocational training, both long-standing and new initiatives, easy
access to respondents through partner contacts, and both national and international
initiatives. In addition to the major cases, two mini-case studies were also added to
the list, to increase the range of topics covered.
Each case study has a page on the wiki that links to the detailed report – for example
poerup.referata.com/wiki/ALISON_-_case_study
Pen-pictures of these case studies follow:
1. Digischool is a national initiative in the Netherlands that was started by two
teachers in 1995 and resulted in a collection of ‘virtual schools’ where primary
and secondary teachers can share open learning materials In 2000 they also
added an online platform to enable teachers to discuss the use of the open
learning materials in virtual communities. Around 70 teachers manage the
virtual communities (www.digischool.nl). The initiative is closely linked with
another Dutch OER initiative, Wikiwijs.
2. Bookinprogress (Italy) is based on a network of 800 teachers who create
common books in several subjects (Italian language, history, geography,
chemistry, English, physics etc.) which are then printed in the different schools
adhering to the network. The books are then distributed for a rather low price
to students and can be also distributed in digital versions. (In the final report
on the case studies this was treated as a mini-case study, as Scienter did not
complete this before their enforced withdrawsal from the project)
3. The OERu (OER universitas) is an international initiative of the Open
Educational Resource Foundation, based in New Zealand, set up in 2011, with
the aim of widening participation in higher education by accrediting OER-
based learning. The OERu is a consortium of over 30 public post-secondary
institutions (oeru.org). Alongside the consortium, OERu is enhanced by a
system of volunteers (wikieducator.org/OERu/Home).
4. FutureLearn is a private company fully owned by the UK Open University
(www.futurelearn.com). It has partnered with over 20 leading UK universities
and an increasing number of non-UK universities to form the FutureLearn
consortium. Since October 2013 the consortium has offered a range of
MOOCs focused on informal learning in a variety of subjects typically taught at
university level. In addition to partnering with universities, FutureLearn has
partnered with three UK institutions with massive archives of cultural and
educational material.
5. BCcampus is a publicly funded organization in Canada (bccampus.ca) that
aims to bring together British Columbia’s post-secondary system and make
higher education available to everyone through the use of collaborative
information technology services. BCcampus was established in 2002 by the
provincial government to provide British Columbia learners, educators and
administrators with a web-based portal to online learning programs and
services across the B.C. post-secondary system. Within this study POERUP
investigated the open education subgroup of the BCcampus project.
6. ALISON, from its start in 2007, has now signed up more than five million
students to more than 500 online courses (alison.com). It is adding another
200,000 each month and its founder is confident that this expansion could
accelerate even more and reach “a billion students” towards the end of the
decade. Based in Ireland, it is the VET equivalent to the Khan Academy in the
US. The 600 courses on offer range from touch typing, to English grammar to
Diplomas in Business and Finance. ALISON, which has never received public
funding, seems to have sound financial prospects.
7. Re:Source is an initiative of the Scottish Further Education Unit aimed at
developing OER for Scotland’s colleges (resource.blogs.scotcol.ac.uk). The
initial development work took place during 2012 and it is currently managed by
the (Scotland) College Development Network. All resources, with a few
exceptions, are held under a Creative Commons 3.0 Unported licence.
8. Introduction to Communication Science, the first MOOC (Massive Open
Online Course) in the Netherlands, is an initiative of the University of
Amsterdam’s College of Communication and the Graduate School of
Communication Science (mooc.uva.nl/portal). It was first conducted in 2013
and has also been run in 2014. The target group consists of college students
and lifelong learners all over the world.
The research outcomes were summarised in an extensive research article An
investigation into social learning activities by practitioners in open educational
practices, now available in the online IRRODL journal, at
www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1905. The outcomes include a number of
recommendations to facilitate the sustainability of community-driven OER
developments. Of these the most important are the following:
1. Open Educational Practices (OEP) communities need different social
configurations to serve different goals. However, the following organizational
model is seen by many initiatives as a wise choice: a combination of strong
institutional teams, open networks of practice and a stable community.
2. The initiative behind the community should be driven by a central and a highly
charismatic and energetic coordinator or a strong core team.
3. The core team within the community should have excellent expertise in the
creation of open educational resources and the ability to apply their expertise.
4. Even if the community is completely online and not connected with institutions
formally, the community should seek connections with institutional partners.
Such partners can serve as a bridge to the wider world of OER: translating
knowledge from this to the community, along with the practical implications.
5. Communities should try to build further on, or seek support from, an already
existing international, national, or regional strong community in the field of e-
learning, blended learning, or similar area. These existing strong communities
are often the driver for innovation and already established relationships make
it easier to share knowledge and organize events. The community also has
the opportunity to leverage on expertise from a longer lasting research group.
6. Communities should organize face-to-face workshops or conferences once a
year to bring partner institutions together: during these face-to-face workshops
participants build up a shared identity and share their practices. When the
network is established and personal relations are created, then participants
will use online technology to share knowledge about the use of OER.
7. Teachers and academic staff are still reluctant to share because of lack of
knowledge about copyright issues. Clear guidelines and the organization of
training workshops around copyright and licensing are crucial.
8. Community leaders should not underestimate the issue of time for most staff.
Creating online learning materials takes time. This will stay the biggest
constraint for teachers and academic staff.
9. If institutional support is not possible, community leaders should consider
incentives for individual contributors.
POERUP has also presented to research conferences on the theory of Social
Network Analysis that underpins the case study work, for example to the Networked
Learning conference in April 2014 –
www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/abstracts/pdf/schreurs.pdf.
Policy recommendations
In the original POERUP bid it was planned that POERUP would not enter the policy
domain until the second half of the project. However for various reasons POERUP
was propelled into the policy area much earlier. First, in April 2012 it became clear
that the UNESCO OER meeting in Paris in June 2012 was going ahead and was
inviting experts (not only politicians) to attend – and some to speak. POERUP
representatives from Sero, Athabasca, OUNL and SCIENTER were approved to
attend: they distributed POERUP leaflets, and met representatives from many other
OER analytic projects active round the world, all at minimal cost to POERUP. The
Paris meeting was best known for the release of the Declaration – approved on 22
June 2012 – and by 6 July 2012 a version of this, appropriate for benchmarking
countries’ progress towards OER, was released on the POERUP wiki –
poerup.referata.com/wiki/2012_Paris_OER_Declaration_as_benchmark.
Secondly, the European Commission in spring 2012 had issued invitations to various
experts, including from POERUP partners Sero, OUNL, EDEN and SCIENTER, to
join a new Open Education Experts Group and make contributions. A vast amount of
inputs and position papers were produced, of which some were released later via the
elearningeuropa portal. In particular Paul Bacsich prepared a paper Suggestions on
ten meta-principles for interventions aimed at providing a methodological framework
for policy recommendations, based on research in POERUP, VISCED and other EU
projects. Coupled with the policy work in VISCED this policy strand led in late 2012 to
a presentation Enabling legislation to support OEP: a realistic view from POERUP to
a multi-project workshop on OER at Online Educa 2012 – see
www.slideshare.net/pbacsich/oeb-oerwspoerupbacsich.
In early 2013 the policy writing activity was due to start, but by April 2013 it was clear
to other partners that the POERUP partner responsible for policy (SCIENTER) was in
difficulty, and after a long-drawn out process, during which they did no work despite
promises, they agreed to withdraw from POERUP with effect from 31July 2013. An
informal agreement was made between partners and discussed with the LLP office
(EACEA) as to how to proceed and so policy work restarted – but it was not until
February 2014 that the formal amendment could be processed. Notwithstanding that,
Sero took over policy work and by mid September 2013 draft proposals on OER
policy for Higher Education and VET were produced, with the first version of the
schools policy recommendations coming soon afterwards. These then went through a
long process of discussion and refinement, both with partners and with external
advisors before being finalised in June 2014.
In contrast to the recommendations from the EU for Opening Up Education, which
are cross-sectoral, the POERUP recommendations come in three flavours: for
schools (K-12, ISCED levels 1-3), Vocational Education and Training (VET, ISCED
level 4) and higher education (HE, ISCED levels 5 and upwards). There are
advantages in having a version per sector: the language can be sector-specific and
the particular obsessions of the sector (e.g. infrastructure for schools; quality regimes
for HE) can be given due weight; on the other hand it does make them hard to
summarise in a short space. To cut through this conundrum this Final Report
focusses on the VET sector (ISCED 4), which partakes in many ways of both the
opportunities and problems of the adjacent sectors.
The VET policy report makes recommendations in nine areas: communication and
awareness raising; funding; copyright and licensing issues; reducing regulatory
barriers; quality issues; teacher training and continuous professional development;
certification and accreditation; infrastructure issues; and further research into models
for sustainable OER. Together, these policy recommendations can further the
acceptance of OER in vocational education and training through:
Stimulating their supply, through encouraging bottom-up production/assembly
of OER; encouraging publishers and other content owners to make them open
access; encouraging institutional actors to set up open access repositories of
learning resources and study programmes.
Stimulating demand, through encouraging and funding research into open
learning outcomes; awareness campaigns for individuals, teachers and
trainers; public commitment, declarations (putting teeth into the UNESCO
declaration); norms legitimising a European OER/OEP/licensing framework.
Support for market functioning and transparency, through Directives for
recognition of learning outcomes and international agreements.
Stimulating knowledge development through the establishment of a quality
association and quality assurance body; training teachers, lecturers and work-
based trainers, both through initial training and CPD.
The schools policy document puts a stronger emphasis on infrastructure and
repositories; the higher education one puts a stronger emphasis on alternative
modes of provision, the international context (including beyond Europe) and the need
for perpetual innovation in teaching methods to raise quality and lower system costs.
In parallel, but somewhat later, a search took place to determine what policies of
relevance to OER there were in other countries relevant to EU. The original OER
country reports had found little evidence of national policies except in the US, despite
the optimistic statements being made in international circles and the ‘policies’ in the
OER Policy Registry (wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Policy_Registry). Thus when it
came time in early 2014 to update country reports and produce lists of OER
initiatives, POERUP decided to extend the analysts’ task by asking them also to
produce lists of OER policies. On the whole they found it hard to come up with much,
but POERUP did find evidence from a number of countries that OER policy was
again on the agenda. As the POERUP report on the topic stated:
“Only a minority of EU countries have any national OER policies and where these
exist they are often limited to open access to publicly funded research. This is
largely true of countries outside Europe: the USA is an exception, with many
national policies, but these tend to be limited in scope because of the organisation
and control of state education systems, particularly schools.
There are substantial numbers of policies about ‘open’ education at institutional
level, especially in higher education. However, there are relatively few policies in
the schools sector and almost none in the VET sector. Few policies refer directly
to OER, both at national and institutional level, but there is an increasing number
of national declarations on open access and OER. However, most of these have
yet to be translated into policies. The UNESCO Paris declaration of 2012 is often
taken as a starting point for national declarations: this has both the virtue and
drawback of being very generalised in its approach.”
The POERUP investigations and feedback from policy experts at workshops led to
some interesting discussions on the difference between policy and practice and the
dynamics of the relationship. POERUP noted: “Whilst direct action by practitioners at
the grassroots is key to changing practice in all sectors, the development and
implementation of policies at national level is important in both legitimising grassroots
movements and providing leverage – potentially through funding – for longer term
change.”
The national policy documents (for certain EU member states and Canada)
required careful timing – if written too early, POERUP could have been accused of
ignoring developments under the surface; if written too late, POERUP could have
been accused of just ‘copying’ national recommendations, or (maybe worse)
‘criticising’ them. The project resolved the balancing act by keeping closely in touch
with policy-informed people and developments in the relevant countries.
In Netherlands and Poland a somewhat stable situation was reached earlier, so
these two policy documents could go ahead. (Netherlands had made a major policy
change from OER in schools to MOOCs in HE when the government decided to
close Wikiwijs in its original form from the end of 2013.)
The situation in France remained complex, but POERUP’s French partner kept
closely in touch with policy circles. Timing was crucial, with the French government
adopting the national digital roadmap for youth, schools and universities in February
2013 and the subsequent launch of France Université Numérique (FUN) and the
Digital Agenda for Higher Education in March 2013, and the official launch of the
FUN MOOC platform. The law on Higher Education and Research passed in July
2013 make the provision of digital education a legal requirement for higher education
for the first time. With respect to OER, one of the effects of the focus on MOOCs
within FUN was the emergence of new dynamics within the existing ODL and Digital
Thematic University communities.
Canada surprised many outsiders when three provincial governments came to a
meeting of minds on OER and this allowed the Canada policy document to stabilise.
With regard to the UK, Wales was the first of the four UK nations to produce
approved policy recommendations (www.hew.ac.uk/oer-wales-cymru-a-small-nation-
with-big-ideas/), even if these were approved just for higher education – but there
were proposals covering the other sectors from a government-appointed working
group. In Scotland there was an active Open Scotland group who produced a
Scottish Open Education Declaration (openscot.wordpress.com). The Scottish
government had more pressing matters on its plate with the Referendum, but
POERUP kept closely in touch with the Open Scotland group and this allowed a
sensible document to be produced. In England there had been some useful papers
commissioned by government, especially on MOOCs for HE, and there was the
beginnings of a rebirth of policy for ICT in education with the FELTAG report and the
ETAG group (feltag.org.uk/etag/); yet a report from the Higher Education Academy
on flexible learning (which could be construed as ‘Opening Up Education’ in the UK
sense) contained only very tentative recommendations and made no reference to
OER. Fortunately discussions over many months had made it clear what institutions
would accept and this provided the basis on which POERUP mapped the EU-level
recommendations to the England context.
Dissemination
There have been over 30 presentations at events, mainly international ones, where
POERUP has been presented or featured in a significant way. Listed below are the
presentations which featured substantial analytical conclusions from the project (thus
all presentations in 2012 have been omitted).
Date and city
Event
Presenters
Titles
26-27 March 2013
England: Nottingham
OER13
Bacsich, Nie,
Witthaus,
Bacsich and
Karran
An elevator pitch world tour of OER
countries from A to Z
OER in Mexico, in the context of
Hispanic America – implications for
Europe
12-15 June 2013
Norway: Oslo
EDEN
Schreurs
How to Power-up Communities behind
OER Initiatives
24-26 September
2013
Spain: Barcelona
EFQUEL
Innovation
Forum
Pepler
POERUP – draft policy
recommendations for HE and VET
4-6 December 2013
Germany: Berlin,
Pre-conference
event
Online Educa,
EU OER
workshop
Bacsich
Policies for OER Uptake for the post-
secondary education sectors: with
emphasis on Member States
12-13 December
2013
Belgium: Brussels
Media and
Learning
Pepler
Policy recommendations for the use of
Open Educational (Media) Resources in
Europe
7-9 April 2014
Scotland: Edinburgh
Networked
Learning
Prinsen
Investigating the social configuration of
a community to understand how
networked learning activities take place:
The OERu case study
23-25 April
Romania: Bucharest
International
Workshop on
OER and
MOOCs, eLSE
Pepler (keynote)
Developing policies to stimulate the
uptake of OER in Europe
23-25 April 2014
Slovenia: Ljubljana
OCW14
Bacsich
Bacsich
Bacsich (chair),
McGreal, Mulder
et al
Schuwer et al
POERUP – Policies for OER Uptake
The POERUP external evaluation of the
FutureLearn community
National and International policies in
OER
Supporting Open Education Policy
Making by Higher Education Institutions
in The Netherlands; lessons learned
28-29 April 2014
Newcastle: England
OER14
Jeans
Bacsich
Bacsich and
Pepler
Case study on ALISON
Proposed policies to foster open
educational resources and practices in
UK higher education
A DIY kit for policy for policy formulation
for OER in HE and FE (workshop)
7-9 May 2014
EFQUEL/LINQ
McGreal and
Conversations with POERUP: What can
Date and city
Event
Presenters
Titles
Greece: Crete
Innovation
Forum
Bacsich
insights from outside Europe bring to
Europe in respect of opening up
European universities to educational
innovation?
10-13 June 2014
Croatia: Zagreb
EDEN
Bacsich and
Pepler
Initiatives and Policies for OER Uptake
(POERUP) – The Final Stocktake
By deliberate design and selection of speaking opportunities POERUP managed to
favour eastern and southern EU member states in the last 12 months, where
POERUP knew that OER was much less prevalent.
In addition a number of journal papers and book chapters have been produced:
Bacsich, P. and Pepler, G. “Learner Use of Online Content: implications for
teachers”, in Teaching and Learning On-line: New pedagogies for new
technologies, Routledge, 2013.
Pepler, G. (a book chapter, submitted after the eLSE conference) “Developing
policies to stimulate the uptake of OER in Europe”.
Schreurs, B. et al, “An investigation into social learning activities by practitioners in
open educational practices”, IRRODL Vol. 15, no. 4, 2014.
More papers are in preparation for release after the funded period ends (section 5).
POERUP did not restrict itself to face-to-face events. A number of virtual conference
events (webinars) have been done by POERUP, in particular two by Paul Bacsich
jointly with other OER experts:
24 May 2013, with a focus on policy issues on Wales: Open Educational
Resources and Practices: moving forwards, looking outwards: led by Paul
Bacsich (Sero) and Lou McGill (OER expert from Scotland): the merged
presentation is on the JSC RSC Wales site at moodle.rsc-
wales.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/6966/mod_resource/content/2/Slideshow%20from%
2024.05.13%20pdf.pdf
23 June 2014: Institutional Open Education and OER Policies, led by Paul
Bacsich (Sero) and Terese Bird (University of Leicester); Paul’s presentation
is at www.slideshare.net/pbacsich/alt-policiesbacsichjune2014 – this was the
last presentation during the funded phase of POERUP
Exploitation (during the project)
In Sero, strong links have been developed with relevant entities in the devolved
administrations, such as JISC RSC and Hwb in Wales; SQA, Re:Source and the
Open University in Scotland. This has made it feasible to write ‘grounded’ policy
documents for both these countries.
In England, there is now little activity in schools OER. In contrast, in UK universities
online distance learning is growing fast and MOOCs are active – and not only in
FutureLearn. Through its wider interests, Sero remains well-connected at senior
levels in both library and e-learning circles in universities across the UK and in fact
now has a specific consultancy arm SeroHE (www.serohe.co.uk/) involving senior
associate members including former Rectors. Paul Bacsich has recently consulted
for the Higher Education Academy in connection with flexible learning and has been
in close contact with a number of leading providers of online learning and MOOCs,
active in the UK, including several members of FutureLearn.
At OUNL, the lead department for POERUP was closely related to the Dutch
Government. OUNL, via Fred Mulder in particular, have integrated results from
POERUP in their communication with the Dutch government and discussed
implications at the policy level. OUNL was also closely involved in the Wikiwijs
project until that ceased at the end of 2013.
The University of Lorraine has meetings several times each year at the Ministry,
with which key POERUP staff have close links. The University has already presented
POERUP project several times in Ministry circles. It is closely involved with France
Université Numérique (FUN), an online learning programme with a MOOCs aspect.
Athabasca University has delivered a workshop to Alberta government officials and
HEI representatives in collaboration with Campus Alberta; and delivered an online
workshop in collaboration with the OER Foundation to faculty in over 60 countries.
AU also actively participated in a workshop on OER in British Columbia, which
resulted in an announcement of 40 OER courses to be produced for first year
students in universities. AU staff were also instrumental in facilitating the recent tri-
province agreement on OER between the Western Provinces.
The University of Leicester has delivered a number of presentations on POERUP
to a delegation of 30 representatives from the Open University China and a
delegation from India. In addition, insights from POERUP have been presented at
numerous keynotes given by Gráinne Conole, including in: Iceland, Sweden,
Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, and Germany.
EDEN ran an effective policy-related workshop, as part of its ‘Synergy’ event, in
October 2013 in Budapest with senior Hungarian experts on Hungary’s position
within the EU in terms of Opening Up Education. A follow-up ‘Synergy’ strand, in
which POERUP was represented, was run at the EDEN annual conference in
Zagreb, Croatia (June 2014).
SCIENTER, the POERUP Italian partner, had to withdraw from the POERUP project
after a long period of heading into bankruptcy. They had earlier reported for the
Progress Report that “the economic and political crisis affecting Italy has caused a
strong decrease in the investment in education and innovation and this has worsened
an already critical situation as concerns the promotion of OER in Italy, which was
already very weak before the crisis reached its peak in 2011/2012.” Indeed, this was
no doubt an issue in the bankruptcy. Interestingly, POERUP’s consultancy study on
Italy which reported in June 2014 indicated that some older OER initiatives such as
BookInProgress were still active and there were new MOOC/ OER developments –
see poerup.referata.com/w/images/Open_Education_Initiatives_in_Italy.pdf
International Advisory Committee
There is a considerable overlap between OER policy and wider e-learning policy. In
particular POERUP benefited from the VISCED International Advisory Committee
(IAC) which met just before Online Educa 2012 in November The links are now much
clearer to others thanks to the EU’s Opening Up Education announcements.
The first Advisory Committee workshop specifically for POERUP took place at
OER13 in Nottingham in March 2013.The second IAC workshop was at the EDEN
conference, Oslo, June 2013. The final IAC workshop took place during the Media
and Learning conference in Brussels, December 2013 and was positioned to draw on
the views and expertise of schools, Ministry and media experts. IAC members have
made significant contributions to the methods the project uses to classify initiatives
and have brought several initiatives to the project’s attention, often providing the
background information not easily available from desk research. In addition to the
IAC workshops and the team of consultants, POERUP also has a growing worldwide
network of advisors whom the project consults on an informal basis, most recently in
connection with minor updates of country reports and lists of initiatives.
Evaluation
The POERUP evaluator Deborah Arnold completed the final evaluation in June 2014,
based on a final round of consultations with and questionnaires to partner staff,
consultants and IAC members, and drawing on the two annual interim evaluations
run respectively in September 2012 and November 2013.
The evaluator observed that “the main activities planned have been carried out, the
deliverables are consistent with the work plan and any adjustments have been duly
justified by the project team members”, and also that “In conclusion, it can be said
that POERUP has achieved its aims, despite the numerous challenges the project
had to overcome”.
In more detail:
POERUP was an ambitious project, in terms of its scope and the sometimes
sensitive and frequently changing area of educational policy. The project faced a
number of challenges, not least the different working cultures and expectations of
partners in terms of leadership and internal communication. Further challenges on
the management side included having to deal with the impact of bankruptcy of
one partner, institutional restructuring within another and delays in resolving
contractual and financial issues. The partnership was well aware of these
difficulties and took steps to address them, although some, such as the attention
to different working cultures and the integration of new partners, could have been
dealt with more explicitly and from the outset. While the unforeseen activities did
take up a great deal of time and effort, in particular from the coordinator, the
project managed to stay on track and deliver highly satisfactory results.
Some of these actually go beyond what the initial work plan promised, such as
the data visualisation of OER initiatives and policies around the world... Reactions
to the data visualisation map during its first public showing at the EDEN 2014
Annual Conference in Zagreb would suggest that this addition is more than
cosmetic and could encourage further engagement with the question of OER
policy and initiatives as stakeholders from outside the project come forward with
their own contributions. This thus provides an opportunity for POERUP to
continue exploiting results after the project lifetime, on condition that the wiki be
suitably maintained for a sufficient period. It is the evaluator’s understanding that
such mechanisms and commitment are in place.
For more details see poerup.referata.com/wiki/D7.3_Final_Evaluation_report
4. Partnerships
Within the consortium
POERUP at its start had seven partners and at its end had six. They came from five
countries: four across Europe (UK, France, Netherlands and Hungary) as well as
Canada. Countries covered large- and medium-population ones and four EU
languages. Their political systems were different – and fluid. For two (UK and
Canada), education is devolved to semi-autonomous regions, some (like Scotland
and Wales) being similar in size to many small EU countries; for the other two,
education is organised centrally. This allowed POERUP to gain a range of
perspectives on educational issues.
The partners came from different parts of the educational and institutional universe.
There were four universities, one research-based SME (Sero) and one
network/membership organisation (EDEN).
Staff within the partners consisted of university professors/academics, consultants,
and business people – one was a former employee of a Ministry of Education who
had a key role for e-learning. Many of the staff have or had university-age and
school-age children – so for them education is not just a theoretical construct.
Several partners had worked together in the past; others are now working together
on other projects: e.g. Sero and EDEN on ODS: Open Discovery Space –
www.opendiscoveryspace.eu; Leicester and Athabasca on eMundus –
wikieducator.org/Emundus/Home; and Leicester and EDEN on VM-PASS –
vmpass.eu/the-project/partners/.
With other projects
POERUP has formed close links with IPTS, UNESCO IITE Moscow, WikiEducator
and Nordic OER. Collaboration with these and others has already been crucial to
minimise the duplication of country studies – and consequential potential waste of
public money – between agencies. Work with IITE Moscow led to the ‘archetypes’
paper – iite.unesco.org/files/policy_briefs/pdf/en/alternative_models.pdf. Contacts
with Nordic OER were useful in the updating of Nordic country reports.
Paul Bacsich was on the Advisory Committee to the IPTS-funded project
OER4Adults (oer4adults.org/advisory-group/) – closing another gap since POERUP
was not mandated to research OER in adult education – and is now on the Advisory
Committee for LangOER – langoer.eun.org, ensuring that language needs remain
highly visible in POERUP thinking.
Consultants
The consultants that POERUP used have come from Croatia, Spain, Greece, Italy,
Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Germany and the UK. Several consultants have
work experience in or were originally from a wider range of countries including
Mexico, South Africa, Thailand and the Gulf States.
International Advisory Committee
The IAC workshop participants came from Brazil, Estonia, Finland, Germany,
Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Spain,
Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.
Volunteers
POERUP is particularly grateful to the Saudi Arabian PhD student Manal AlMarwani
who provided a thorough country report on Saudi Arabia and also reports on Bahrain
and Kuwait. We wish her well in her PhD studies at the University of Lincoln, UK.
Outreach to the world beyond Europe
The project’s Canadian partner had two professors Rory McGreal and Terry
Anderson, active in OER and e-learning and with a substantial programme of
international keynotes on OER-related topics including several of specific relevance
to POERUP. Prof McGreal is of course a key part of the UNESCO OER Chairs
network and was assiduous in promoting POERUP in his presentations – e.g. to
OER Sweden in February 2013 – oersverige.se/open-education-a-global-challenge/
Within Europe, Paul Bacsich and Professor Gráinne Conole also gave many
international speeches; they went also on study trips in New Zealand and Australia
respectively, as well as shorter trips to US, Brazil, India and South Africa, on all of
which they met OER experts and policy advisors. This outreach included links not
only to institutions and government agencies but also to private providers active in
this space, and venture funds in the US, EU and India.
POERUP wishes to celebrate and recognise all its staff, consultants, IAC members,
volunteers and other advisors in its map People of POERUP, available at
mapsengine.google.com/map/u/1/edit?mid=zYG2prGO09jE.khf-Wyot-Zeo
5. Plans for the Future
Continued work on OER and MOOCs
The six active partners in POERUP are all continuing their work on OER and MOOCs
in various ways, and in all this work will of course leverage on the knowledge gained
in POERUP, on specific projects as follows:
eMundus (www.emundus-project.eu/) is an initiative supported by the European
Commission which wants to to strengthen cooperation and awareness among Higher
Education Institutions worldwide by exploring the potential of Open Approaches (e.g.
OER, MOOCs and Virtual Mobility) to support long term, balanced, inter-cultural
academic partnership for improving learning and teaching through Open Education
approaches.
VM-PASS (vmpass.eu/the-project/) aims to increase inter-institutional recognition of
virtual mobility and OCW-based courses, by:
Building on results from the OERTest project and piloting the use of a student-
held learning passport to facilitate recognition & mobility
Planning, testing and creating a recognition-clearing house to support the
verification and investigation of learning passports
Creating a typology of quality systems used in VM and OER systems, to
support the learning passports and recognition-clearinghouse
SharedOER is a study contract in progress by Sero for IPTS. Its aim is to make an
inventory of the existing cases within the context of formal education where a core
curriculum/syllabus is shared across borders (e.g. state, national, linguistic and
cultural). The study aims to locate relevant initiatives and organisations, describe
what they are working on and what have they achieved. A key focus of the study is
the Common Core State Standards initiative in the US, in order to understand the
impact that this has on the production, reuse and dissemination of OER. The study’s
aim is a ‘mapping’ of the study area in order to better understand the drivers and
hurdles that a common syllabus/core curriculum could have on the uptake of OER in
the European Union. The work leverages on the database of OER initiatives built up
by POERUP as well as wider work by Sero on ICT in schools and higher education.
SEQUENT is a consortium of EADTU and EFQUEL with ENQA. Sero is a
subcontractor to EFQUEL. The project aims to promote excellence in the use of ICT
in higher education via a focus on quality in e-learning, with a clear goal to prepare
European Universities in line with the European Modernization Agenda and to make
higher education in Europe fit better to cross-border collaboration initiatives in the
implementation of innovative and ICT-enhanced partnerships, within the context of
Opening Up Education. The work leverages on the POERUP database of MOOC
initiatives from EU actors as well as wider work by Sero staff on quality and
benchmarking e-learning, and work on the identification of universities who are
innovative in their use of ICT including (but not only) OER and MOOCs. The so-
called Declaration of Panormo by EADTU/EFQUEL was drafted by POERUP staff
and former staff in June 2014 and drew heavily on the POERUP HE OER policy
paper. In particular Recommendation 2 of the Declaration states: “The relevant
agencies should recommend to universities within EHEA that they should to improve
and proceduralise their activity on credit transfer and 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), by such national, shared and collaborative arrangements as universities
see fit to use.”
Outside these projects, the partner exploitation approaches are as follows (for more
detail see Deliverable 6.2):
In the short term the University of Leicester will continue its interest in OER
through the various OER-related research projects that it is involved with.
Although the Institute of Learning Innovation is closing and specific ILI staff
(including Professor Conole) are leaving, the University is continuing its
involvement with MOOCs via the FutureLearn initiative. (Leicester has run two
FutureLearn MOOCs to date: Richard III and Forensic Science. Two further
MOOCs are in development at the time of writing and will be delivered in the
autumn.). The University is also continuing to manage the OER-related LLP
projects it has in its portfolio.
Sero is and remains a consultancy interested, inter alia, in ICT-facilitated
change management across all sectors of formal education. Sero is already
exploiting the POERUP database and mapping technology both within the
OER/MOOC area, and more widely, in its ‘traditional’ business areas of virtual
schools, colleges and universities and the libraries/repositories that support
these. Sero is actively looking for more policy work both at national and
international level but also within institutions and mission groups – using
information from POERUP and its other consultancy work including systems
review and benchmarking. Projects including SharedOER, SEQUENT and D-
TRANSFORM are already leveraging on POERUP. Paul Bacsich has already
participated in national bid review panels in the UK and in Ireland which are
judging projects with OER aspects and is thus using POERUP expertise.
OUNL will continue its efforts on OER and MOOC with their partnership in
OpenUpEd and their offerings of MOOC's (in most cases in the Dutch
language). They are involved in several EU-funded projects on MOOCs
(EMMA, HOME and ECO). Their plan is to continue the UNESCO Chair on
OER after the retirement later in 2014 of the current chair holder, Fred Mulder.
Although the lead department for POERUP (LOOK) is being closed down
because of the Dutch government’s withdrawal of funding, and some staff
leaving, other POERUP staff staying on, in other departments, including Bieke
Schreurs, the lead researcher on the case study work.
EDEN is the largest formal European community of practitioners, academics
and scholars, with a continuity in its activities aiming to support the
consolidation of the huge knowledge base of open education, e-learning and
learning innovation. This field is subject to rapid changes, because of
developments in the technology and changing user habits and social needs.
EDEN will continue its role of credible professional and academic ‘ateliers’,
with systematic work, collection and analysis of data, mapping, intelligent
observations combined with justifyable analysis and validation.EDEN’s
contribution will come from its regular activities focussed on the professional
community: the Annual European conferences, the Research Workshops, the
scholarly publications – European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning
(EURODL) and the Members’ Portal (Network of Academics and Professionals
– NAP). A specific Interest Group may be set up at the NAP web area for the
OER policy theme, a particular POERUP follow-up.
The University of Lorraine is an active partner in the FUN initiative and plays
a key role in the new Erasmus+ D-TRANSFORM project on leadership
development in open online learning (Sero and EDEN are also involved).
Athabasca University continues to support Professor Rory McGreal as
Chairholder of a UNESCO OER Chair and also remains active in OER and
MOOCs for its own teaching purposes (with a recent C$2million budget) as
well as wider collaborations (eMundus, etc)
Dissemination
The following conferences from September 2014 will have specifically POERUP-
related activity:
1. SMART (Social Media in Academia: Research and Teaching), Universitatea
de Vest din Timișoara, Romania,18-21 September 2014: paper on ‘Opening
up Education in Romania’ presented jointly by Giles Pepler (Sero) and
Carmen Holotescu (Universitatea de Timișoara and one of the POERUP
consultants) – soon to be be published by Medimond S.r.l. - Monduzzi Editore
International Proceedings Division - a leading international scientific academic
publisher based in Bologna (Italy). ICDE/LangOER workshop on OER in less
used languages, Oslo,14 October. Paul Bacsich is an invited guest to this
workshop.
2. The EDEN Research Workshop in Oxford on 27-28 October 2014 has strong
POERUP-related aspects including a keynote contribution by Professor Rory
McGreal.
3. European Quality Assurance Forum, Barcelona, Catalonia, 13-15 November
2013. Paul Bacsich will lead one of the EADTU/EFQUEL workshops on
“quality in innovative higher education”.
4. Online Educa Berlin, Germany, 3-5 December 2014: the 20th anniversary of
this conference. Paul Bacsich is speaking on “Mapping OER, MOOCs, Open
Education and Other Kinds of E-Learning” in a session chaired by ICDE, the
International Council on Distance Education, entitled “Supporting Open
Education 2.0 – What, Why and Where?”
5. Open Educational Resources: impact and outcomes, Paris, 8-9 December
2014. Paul Bacsich will speak on the business case for OER. Rory McGreal
will also be speaking and the University of Lorraine are central to the
arrangements.
6. Open Education, Banff, Alberta, 24-25 April 2015: this is the most obvious
location at which to speak about the global OER Map developed by POERUP
and Paul Bacsich intends to submit a paper based on his mapping annex to
Deliverable 2.2.
7. OER15, Cardiff, Wales, 14-15 April 2015: Paul Bacsich is on the Steering
Committee and has many links to Welsh institutions: it is expected that there
will be a Wales-relevant POERUP paper presented as well as at least one
more general paper.
8. EDEN, June 2015. It is a little early to plan but it is very likely that some
POERUP people will speak on POERUP topics.
Exploitation Working Group and Partner Agreement
The Exploitation Working Group did not have separate meetings but Exploitation was
usually an agenda item in partner meetings. In particular there was a lengthy
discussion of initial ideas at Partner Meeting 2 (Granada, September 2012), a review
at Partner Meeting 3 (Nottingham, March 2013) and updating discussions at Partner
Meeting 4 (Brussels, December 2013) and the online meetings in September and
November 2013 leading up to that, culminating in a lengthy review at the online
meeting in June 2014. Thus a clear view was formed. At the end of the project in
June 2014, the following was agreed between partners in terms of exploitation:
1. POERUP has produced most of its outcomes and also often its work in
progress (like country reports and presentations) as public documents
licensed under Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0). Thus it has rather little private
intellectual property.
2. The nature of European education (especially higher education – MOOC
students can study anywhere) and the pan-European (or even global) nature
of the bidding mechanisms for research contracts means that traditional views
of ‘partner territories’ are not useful.
3. Consequently there would be no general Partner Exploitation Agreement
signed between partners.
On the other hand, the following specific actions, with particular operational focus on
Sero, EDEN and Athabasca, were agreed to fulfil the post-project obligations in the
original POERUP work plan:
1. EDEN will maintain the www.poerup.info web site for a period of two years
from 1 July 2014. All public deliverables and the final public report (once
available) will be mounted on that site.
2. Sero will maintain the poerup.referata.com wiki site for a period of two years
from 1 July 2014. (The site is free to host provided it remains actively edited.)
3. Sero will maintain the www.poerup.org.uk OER map site for a period of 18
months from 1 July 2014. (Hosting costs would come from other sources.)
4. Sero will maintain a small OER/MOOC secretariat for a period of two years
from 1 July 2014 and will do occasional updates of the wiki, as part of its
ongoing monitoring of the OER and MOOC domain.
5. Sero will maintain and occasionally tidy up the POERUP dropbox site for a
period of two years from 1 July 2014.
6. Following existing practice with #revica and #visced, POERUP partners will be
encouraged to continue to use the Twitter hashtag #poerup for two years.
7. Following up on informal discussions already with MENON and WikiEducator,
in the context of eMundus, Sero will engage in formal discussions with these
organisations to see whether a migration and clustering of wiki sites in the
area of ICT in education would be beneficial to (former) POERUP partners
and the user community, including the user community around the
Re.ViCa/VISCED wiki hosted by KU Leuven.The Semantic Search and
Semantic Map features are of great value in the POERUP wiki but are not
currently available in WikiEducator, or indeed the Re.ViCa/VISCED wiki or
Wikipedia. Consequently the preferred direction of travel is for the POERUP
wiki to import sections of these other wikis. (Already many of the Virtual
Campus and Virtual School entries from the Re.ViCa wiki have been
automatically imported.) Whatever the outcome of these discussions,
poerup.referata.com would be functional until at least 30 June 2016, in line
with point 5 above.
8. Following existing practice among partners, there would be no obligation
among partners to bid as a full POERUP consortium; but it would be expected
that institutions who require a partner for a bid would give due weight to the
experience of other POERUP partners.
9. Though information is not yet public it is expected that the Hewlett Foundation
are to fund an OER Mapping Hub to facilitate on a global basis the collection
and distribution of information on OER initiatives. POERUP partners Sero and
Athabasca University (in the context of eMundus as well as POERUP and
other OER-related projects at both institutions) are willing to collaborate with
this Hub so as to reduce the overall global cost of collection of such
information. Since a key part of Hewlett’s proposal is that all information is to
be available via Linked Open Data it will be relatively easy for the POERUP
wiki to consume any information produced not already on the POERUP wiki
and database. The POERUP wiki and database can already produce Linked
Open Data in a variety of formats including JSON.
6. Contribution to EU policies
Although POERUP was not scheduled to start detailed policy formulation until the
second half of the project, the requirements from EU entities (including IPTS and
Open Education Experts Group), UNESCO and some national governments required
that policy work in fact had to start in summer 2012. In fact a very early approach to
POERUP policy work was demonstrated in a multi-project OER workshop just before
Online Educa Berlin in November 2012 – www.slideshare.net/pbacsich/oeb-
oerwspoerupbacsich – and in some position papers to DG EAC. POERUP staff
attended all three of the IPTS foresight workshops on Open Education 2030 in
May/June 2013, which built on Rethinking Education and provided input into the EU
Opening Up Education initiative.
The POERUP review of current policies across the EU (Deliverable 4.1) showed that
only a small minority of EU countries have any national OER-specific policies and
where these exist they are often limited to open access to publicly funded research.
In reviewing policies, distinctions need to be drawn between (1) active, operational
policies, (2) declarations of policy intentions – often reflecting aspirations rather than
reality, (3) strategies promoted by governments and educational organisations, and
(4) OER initiatives. During the first 18 months of the POERUP project many OER
initiatives across Europe appeared to be slowing down or ending, but the past year
has seen a resurgence in many EU countries – not least in Germany, where there
are still reservations at federal level about OER, but significant grassroots and
Länder-based activity. It was against this background of “few policies but growing
numbers of initiatives” that POERUP policy recommendations were made.
The EU Opening Up Education initiative was launched in September 2013, with an
early presentation at the EFQUEL Innovation Forum, where the POERUP draft policy
recommendations to the EU for universities and for VET were also launched.
Although Opening Up Education covers a broader territory than OER, the language
of many of the ‘Key Transformative Actions’ is very similar to the POERUP
recommendations. POERUP draft policy recommendations for schools were also
completed shortly afterwards, mapped against Opening Up Education and
maintained in a beta state through presentations at conferences, the pre-conference
workshop before Online Educa 2013 and a final IAC workshop, through winter 2013
and spring 2014, with the policy recommendations modified and refined through
discussions amongst the POERUP partners and with external experts and
stakeholders, culminating in a three-part Deliverable 4.2 of final recommendations,
for universities, VET and schools.
Whilst the EU policy recommendations were firmed up, policy recommendations for
the UK, France, Netherlands, Poland and Canada were developed, derived from the
EU-wide set and tailored to the individual countries through further research on
current policies (of which there not many), workshops and webinars with key
stakeholders – e.g. www.surf.nl/themas/leren-en-toetsen/open-en-online-
onderwijs/strategieworkshops-open-en-online-onderwijs/ and other events
(Netherlands), education.okfn.org/open-education-wales/ (Wales), openscot.net/
(Scotland), the UK as a whole: www.slideshare.net/pbacsich/policies-for-uptake-of-
oer-in-the-uk-home-nations?qid=e260b5b0-920a-4d11-bca0-
019334170477&v=default&b=&from_search=11 and smaller European countries:
www.slideshare.net/pbacsich/ocwc2014-policiesbacsich-final-and-refs?related=1.
This process culminated in a multi-part report (Deliverable 4.3), of policy briefs for
each country covered.
Policy recommendations for the EU and generic member states can be grouped
under nine headings:
Communication and awareness raising
Funding
Copyright and licensing
Regulatory barriers
Quality
Teacher training and continuous professional development
Certification and accreditation
Infrastructure
Further research.
The POERUP recommendations, drafted before the launch of Opening Up
Education, aligned closely with its Key Transformative Actions, in some cases using
almost identical wording.
In the area of Quality, POERUP emphasised the need to ensure that OER meet
accessibility standards that enable all people with disabilities to enjoy equal access to
resources; this was not reflected in OUE, since accessibility is the province of a
different Directorate.
POERUP also identified areas where innovation could be taken further than the use
of structural investment funds: the Commission could not only use investment funds
to create and support new and innovative institutions of higher education focusing on
distance learning, but could also dismantle regulatory barriers inhibiting the growth of
new kinds of HE providers (e.g. for-profit, from outside the country, consortial, etc).
For specific details the reader is referred to the individual documents, all available on
the wiki and the web site.
7. The wiki
It seems already a tradition in EU projects that projects using wikis devote a section
to them in their Progress and Final Reports. POERUP did not want to break this
tradition, hence this section.
The POERUP wiki poerup.referata.com was set up on 7 March 2011, before the
POERUP bid was submitted, as part of the process of securing the name POERUP –
but it deliberately contained no content until after the bid was submitted on 31 March
2011. The wiki software at the end of the funded period was MediaWiki version
1.23.1 (25 June 2014) with many extensions including Semantic Wiki and Maps –
this is the standard offering from the Referata organisation that supplies the wiki
service.
By 7 April 2011 the wiki contained content (one page!) although no indication was
given of which specific people or institutions were promoting the POERUP bid. After
receiving notification of the success of the bid in early August 2011, a burst of activity
took place at Sero to put the workplan and basic set of research reports online, a
further 86 pages in a couple of weeks. Then activity died down while other projects
were taken forward, but appropriately, on 18 November 2011, on the second day of
the kick-off meeting, a page was created for Professor Gr inne Conole.
In fact the pop-up wiki approach has now been used by Sero and some other
organisations as a routine tool in project management and information dissemination
(see for example luoerl.referata.com/wiki/LUOERL, with its links to Mendeley). Thus
by the time the POERUP project started the POERUP wiki had a basic set of pages
and workplan and staffing information and Sero were experienced in this release of
wikis, with semantic wiki features. This meant that POERUP got off to a flying start.
The statistics below are reported as of 10 July 2014 unless otherwise noted (figures
as in the Progress Report, of 28 February 2013, are in brackets).
The POERUP wiki had 35 (28) ‘human’ users with editing rights –
poerup.referata.com/wiki/Special:ListUsers. User codes are restricted to staff
members of POERUP partners and those consultants contracted for reports and
related studies who are keen to edit direct on the wiki. The users active in the last 30
days were shown at poerup.referata.com/wiki/Special:ActiveUsers – 6 as of 10 July –
recent work had been on finishing off updates to country reports. To see what pages
a user has edited, see User contributions – e.g. for Pbacsich see
poerup.referata.com/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=&limit=500&tagfi
lter=&contribs=user&target=Pbacsich&namespace.
The wiki had 451 (317) content pages out of a total of 911 (626) – including redirects,
special pages, etc – and 50 (27) uploaded files. There had been 4828 (3791) edits
done, an average of 137 (135) per user, though unevenly distributed – note that
number of page edits is not closely correlated with activity – some users do just
minor edits and save every few minutes, some do much longer edits in one go.
The total number of page views was 373,321 (134,443). The most commonly viewed
page was the Main Page with 53, 912 (18,162) views – and the most commonly
viewed country page was Portugal with 6996 views (was the United Kingdom with
1295 views). Other useful statistics are listed at
poerup.referata.com/wiki/Special:Statistics.
As the figures show, especially total page views, there had been a doubling of
viewings in the second half of the project.
The Exploitation phase
Unlike in VISCED where the wiki was held static for some months, it was strongly felt
in POERUP that the wiki had to continue to evolve in order to foster and support the
growing level of OER-related analytic activity spinning out from POERUP, including
but not only eMundus, SharedOER, and D-TRANSFORM. (The figures in
parentheses below were the situation at 10 July 2014.)
Six weeks after the July census date, on 30 September 2014 the POERUP wiki had
1796 (451) content pages out of a total of 3566 (911) – including redirects, special
pages, etc – and 85 (50) uploaded files. There have been 10,574 (4828) edits done.
The total number of page views was 431,667 (373,321). The most commonly viewed
page continued to be the Main Page with 57,614 (53, 912) views – and the most
commonly viewed country page was Portugal with 7363 (6996) views, closely
followed by Romania and the POERUP page. Other useful statistics are listed at
poerup.referata.com/wiki/Special:Statistics.
The exploitation phase is making strong use of the semantic wiki and semantic map
features. The POERUP wiki contained 27,737 property values for a total of 57
different properties. 70 properties have an ‘own page’, and the intended data type is
specified for all of those. (For more detail see
poerup.referata.com/wiki/Special:SemanticStatistics.)
The large increase in the number of pages is due to the loading of the POERUP OER
Map database of 501 initiatives into the POERUP wiki and to the import of several
hundred virtual university initiatives, virtual school initiatives and region pages from
the Re.ViCa/VISCED wiki, combined with an active process of creation of
quantitative ‘city pages’ for many towns and cities of relevance to POERUP, based
on linked open data. This now allows information from the older wiki projects to be
represented and processed with the semantic search and mapping tools available to
POERUP.