Beyond the first steps: Sustaining Health OER Initiatives in Ghana

The introduction of open educational resources (OER) in two Ghanaian universities through a grant-funded project was embraced with a lot of enthusiasm. The project started on a high note and the Colleges of Health Sciences in the two universities produced a significant number of e-learning materials as health OER in the first year. Growing challenges such as faculty time commitments, technological and infrastructural constraints, shortage of technical expertise, lack of awareness beyond the early adopters and non-existent system for OER dissemination and use set in. These exposed the fact that institutional policy and integration was essential to ensure effective implementation and sustainability of OER efforts. Informed by the early OER experiences at the two institutions, this paper proposes that institutions in low resource settings perhaps need to pay close attention to awareness creation, initiative structuring, funding, capacity building, systemization for scalability and motivation if OER sustainability is to be achieved.

Women in police services in the EU: facts and figures 2012

The Institute for Public Security of Catalonia (ISPC), the only state-funded education and research centre for police in Catalonia-Spain, developed in 2012 a comparative study on Gender diversity in police services in the European Union. The study is an update of the research Facts & Figures 2008 that was carried out by the European Network of Policewomen (ENP), a non-profit organization that works in partnership with colleagues from police and/or law enforcement organizations in its member countries to facilitate positive changes in the position of women in police services. To gather the 2012 data, the ISPC invited EU Member States’ police services to cooperate in the study answering a 10- ITEM questionnaire. The questionnaire was the same tool used in 2008 by the ENP. In February 2012, the ISPC sent the questionnaires through Cepol National Contact Points’ network. In order to include as many police services as possible in the study, the ENP also supported us to gather some of the data. Altogether we received questionnaires from 29 police services corresponding to 17 UE countries. Besides, we used data from open sources about England and Wales police services and the French National Police. In this document you can find: first, the tool we used to collect the data; second, the answers we gathered presented per country; finally, some comparative tables and graphics developed by the ISPC. Countries: Austria, Belgium Cyprus, Denmark, England, Wales, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Swden.

Use of open educational resources at the UOC

The Open University of Catalonia (UOC: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) is currently implementing its 2009-2014 Strategic Plan, which devotes an entire section to open educational resources. The working group on this topic is drafting a report that establishes the objectives to be met, analyses the current lay of the land and sets out the actions required to meet the objectives. This paper examines each of these three points.

MultiCampus Open Educational Resources : the case of OER-HE

In this paper we address the implementation strategies regarding Open Educational Resources within a multicampus setting. A comparison is made between 3 institutions that are taking a very different approach: K.U.Leuven, which is a traditional university, the Open Universiteit (Netherlands) which is in the process of starting up the Network Open Polytechnics, and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. We are looking deeper into the pedagogical and organizational issues involved in implementing an OER strategy and show how OER holds the promise of flexible solutions for reaching at first sight very divergent goals.

Barriers and Motivators for Using Open Educational Resources in Schools

In an explorative study, we investigated on German schoolteachers how they use, reuse, produce and manage Open Educational Resources. The main questions in this research have been, what their motivators and barriers are in their use of Open Educational Resources, what others can learn from their Open Educational Practices, and what we can do to raise the dissemination level of OER in schools.

The role of mentoring in facilitating the process of repurposing OER

This paper presents the initial data analysis of a research that is work in progress. It discusses the role of mentoring and peer support in facilitating the process of repurposing open educational resources (OER). It also reports on the lessons so far learned from the analysis of two distinct but related case studies on working with learners to use and disseminate OER.

CRM and higher education : developing a monitoring system to improve relationships in e-learning environments

Peer-reviewed

Broadening the CRM domain of application to higher educational (e-learning) environments

In this paper, we reflect about the broadening of the field of application of CRM from the business domain to a wider context of relationships in which the inclusion of non-profit making organizations seems natural. In particular, we focus on analyzing the suitability of adopting CRM processes by universities and higher educational institutions dedicated to e-learning. This is an issue that, in our opinion, has much potential but has received little attention in research so far.

Barcelona Open Ed 2010. Conference abstracts book

Abstracts book of the Open Education Conference 2010 (Barcelona, 2-4 November 2010). In English, Catalan and Spanish.

Free Technology Academy : a Joint Venture of Free Software and OER

The decision to publish educational materials openly and under free licenses brings up the challenge of doing it in a sustainable way. Some lessons can be learned from the business models for production, maintenance and distribution of Free and Open Source Software. The Free Technology Academy (FTA) has taken on these challenges and has implemented some of these models. We briefly review the FTA educational programme, methodologies and organisation, and see to which extent these models are proving successful in the case of the FTA.

Big and Little OER

Much of the attention around OERs has been on institutional projects which make explicit learning content available. These can be classified as 'big OER' but another form of OER is that of small scale, individually produced resources using web 2.0 type services, which are classified as 'little OER'. This paper examines some of the differences between the use of these two types of OER to highlight issues in open education. These include attitudes towards reputation, the intentionality of the resource, models of sustainability, the implicit affordances of resources and the context of their hosting sites.

AgShare : Building Community and Content with Multiple Partners

Michigan State University and OER Africa are creating a win-win collaboration of existing organizations for African publishing, localizing, and sharing of teaching and learning materials that fill critical resource gaps in African MSc agriculture curriculum. By the end of the 18-month planning and pilot initiative, African agriculture universities, faculty, students, researchers, NGO leaders, extension staff, and farmers will participate in building AgShare by demonstrating its benefits and outcomes and by building momentum and support for growth.

Reaching the Heart of the University : Libraries and the Future of OER

University libraries are well positioned to run or support OER production and publication operations. Many university libraries already have the technical, service, and policy infrastructure in place that would provide economies of scale for nascent and mature OER projects. Given a number of aligning factors, the University of Michigan (U-M) has an excellent opportunity to integrate Open.Michigan, its OER operation, into the University Library. This paper presents the case for greater university library involvement in OER projects generally, with U-M as a case study.

OpenSpires : Opening up Oxford like never before

Oxford University learning technologies group offer a model for effective practice in creating and using OER in research-led teaching environments where academic practice includes dissemination of research which aids/supplements teaching but is not primarily designed as a teaching resource. The University is perceived by many people to be an exclusive institution. It is certainly unique and complex, with characteristics and traditions established over 900 years. An Oxford education offers an exciting combination of privilege and open-mindedness. The role and sustainability of open education technologies in this environment is subtle. Any strategy to effectively encourage the uptake of OERs must be informed by original thinking and reflection about the culture of the organisation. The OpenSpires project was a successful initiative to establish a sustainable set of policies and workflows that would allow departments from across the University of Oxford to regularly publish high quality open content material for global reuse.