Dia 1

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Towards European-wide Quality and Benchmarking of
Open Educational Resources Kees-Jan van Dorp
George Ubachs European Association of Distance
Teaching Universities (EADTU) Kees-Jan.vanDorp_at_E
ADTU.nl George.Ubachs_at_EADTU.nl
SCOP 2007 Open Educational Resources as an
Instrument for achieving Education for All
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Agenda

• Part One Consortium of New Generation OER
• Consortium introduction
• Consortium stages
• Consortium progress
• Consortium outlook

• Part Two Proliferating Quality and
  Benchmarking
• The problem at hand
• Some results
• Tool support needed
• E-xcellence

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Consortium introduction

• Consortium philosophy
• A new generation open educational resources
• Stimulate, extend, and expand the use of OER in
  Europe
• Provide lifelong learning with a new gateway to
  university education
• Widen the participation in higher education in
  line with the Lisbon agenda
• Brand lifelong open and flexible learning
  throughout Europe
• Share and build on scientific and expert
  knowledge of OER

• Consortium aspiration
• A new generation open educational resources
• No traditional face-to-face education
• Didactic model based on distance education
• Specifically designed, developed for distance
  learning
• Courses with intrinsic broad pedagogical
  coverage
• Unique pathway from non-matriculated to
  matriculated
• Successive multilingual versioning and
  localisation
• Content and registration a distributed model
• Content mobility and virtual mobility
• Strong partnership

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Consortium introduction
Consortium extends Open invitation to learn

• Consortium tangibles
• Members providing a broad offer of open courses
• Universities increasingly into mode of informal
  learning
• Interconnectivity between formal and informal
  learning
• (bridging two modes of learning)
• Transfer of courses between member institutions
• (translation and localisation)
• Overarching portal pointing to national OER
  portals
• Best practice and progress support for the
  partners
• (variety of attitude, commitment, and growth
  path)
• Policy-making institutionally, nationally, and
  European

Academic appetite
N
Y
Off-campus learning
N
Y
Informal
N
Y
Utilise open resources
Learning privileges
N
Y
Enter formal programme
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Consortium introduction

• European Association of Distance Teaching
  Universities
• The Open University (English)
• Open Universiteit Nederland (Dutch)
• FernUniversität in Hagen (German)
• Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance
  (French)
• Network per l'Universita Ovunque (Italian)
• Universidade Aberta (Portuguese)
• Moscow State University of Economics, S and I
  (Russian)
• Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
  (Spanish)
• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
  (Spanish/Catalan)
• Anadolu university (Turkish)

Governance structure
Consortium composition
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Consortium stages
- An analogy -
How did we as a Consortium start? One year
agojust born, small, fragile analogous
to ????

1. Conception phase
2. Embryonic phase
3. Infant phase
4. Maturation phase
5. Adult phase

Where do WE stand? (have we matured yet)
risks
Fragile entity
Robust entity
learning and experiencing
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Consortium stages

• Organisation-related
• Characteristics of organisations strategies,
  structure and funding methods
• Changing organisational needs and perceptions
• Current ICT infrastructure context
• Maturity of new technologies available
• Commitment and support within different echelons
  
• Staffing, experts and project experience

Potential factors influencing Consortium
maturing

• Content-related
• Availability, size and complexity (rework)
• Technical and definitional issues (exchange
  strategies)
• Intellectual property rights (third party
  rights)
• Availability of pacing and learning schedules
  (learner support)
• Content shelf-life and annual releases
  (renewal)
• Quality assurance systems

• Process-related
• Project costs and funding
• Planning and time-span
• Governance structure
• Project management
• Project team expertise
• Project staffing stability

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Consortium progress
Operations

• Core group meetings
• - Core Group Meeting (June 30, 2006) at The
  Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
• - Core Group Meeting (August 25, 2006) at
  FernUniversität Hagen, Germany
• - Core Group Meeting (November 9, 2006) at
  European Association of Distance Teaching
  Universities (EADTU)
• - Core Group Meeting (December 20, 2006) at
  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium
• Core Group Meeting (February 2, 2007) at at
  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium
• Task Force meetings
• Task force Meeting (February 22, 2006) at
  EHSAL, Brussels
• Task force Meeting (September 13, 2006) at
  EHSAL, Brussels
• Task force Meeting (January 15, 2007) at
  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium
• Task force Meeting (May 14, 2007) at
  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium
• EC Consultations
• DG Information Society and Media, eContentPlus
  Workprogramme 2006,
• Consultation meeting, Luxembourg, 6 April 2005
• Preparatory stakeholder meeting Directorate
  General Education and Culture (DGEAC)

Strategy policy
Politics
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Consortium progress

• Achievements awareness, commitment, embedding
• Building a consortium model
• Ways of working, sharing, partnering
• Individual partners, collective strength
• Addressing benefits of OER
• Initial framework for adoption

• Achievements wide-spread dissemination
• Press, Blogs, etc foregrounding members
• Forums, conferences, national and European
• Frontrunner dissemination by EADTU members
• Propagating OER in Conferences

Online Educa Berlin 2006 (UK OU, UOC, EADTU) EU
e-Learning Conference Helsinki 2006 (UK OU,
Miskolc NHRDC, OUNL, EADTU) EADTU Annual
Conference Tallinn 2006 (UK OU, FernUni, UNED,
e-Collegium, NHRDC, UniNettuno, UOC, EADTU) Open
Education Conference Utah 2006 (UK OU,OUNL,
EADTU) EduMedia Conference Salzburg 2007
(EADTU, OUNL) SCOP Conference Heerlen
2007 (EADTU, OUUK, OUNL)

• Achievements satellite initiatives and spin-offs
  
• Institutes touching ground with local OER Task
  Forces
• Increased look-out for funding opportunities
• Installation and appointment of OER
  professionals
• (EADTU, ICDE, UNESCO, etc.)
• Inflow in national bodies international
  consortia
• High-end consultations with Commissions Cabinet
  
• ODL into OCW Consortium recognition

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been
a true process catalyst for mobilising
individual partners and to provide for
dissemination, sparring and support
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Consortium progress
translate French online courses in German,
Spanish and English
Member commitment.now taking off
generate no less than twelve 1 ECTS courses
planning to adopt and to localize in Russian at
least 20 courses
number of courses in the portal will increase
progressively within time
planning to create at least 10 multilingual
courses
extending beyond Europe to Latin America and
the United States
make available one or two courses for MORIL
activities
.I guess we are on the right track!
co - production system to realise courses in a
multilingual format
all OER courses already developed will be made
available
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Consortium outlook
Consortium building Here do WE stand
Project Roll-out

• Agreement on project Master plan
• Consolidation of critical course mass
• Diversification of funding sources
• Assuring availability stability of staff

Robust entity
learning and experiencing
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Consortium outlook
Arent we forgetting something? Long term
Consortium success depends on the learners
appreciation Individual quality perceptions and
personal course satisfaction The key to
retention of your visitors and learners
myQuality
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Proliferating Quality and Benchmarking

• The problem at hand
• Autonomous, self-study courses?
• Many OERS, much variation what is myCourse,
  what is myQuality, where is myPedagogy?
• In search of Bioinformatics some sort of an
  introduction
• (actually searching Bioinformatics, a quick
  reference for dummies, pedagogically-rich,
• visual learning elements, a fast forward course)
• How do I select? My Search and Learning time to
  be devoted, is limited
• Many results, but unfortunately disappointing
• OER Blogs, Lecture notes (classroom based),
  Hyperlinks (not working),
• Literature references (buy textbook)..But no
  coherent course!
• Finally, I found one coherent course!
• But no Quality Metadata

Coherent course, self-study what is fit for
myPurpose where is myPedagogy
searching for myQuality
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Some results of my humble exercise
Bioinformatics some sort of an introduction
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Tool support needed
OER urgently requires tangible and
ready-to-deploy quality instruments built upon a
European (or Global) platform with national
recognition
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E-xcellence
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E-xcellence

• QA in HE and is receiving a lot of attention at
  institutional, national and European level
• Still missing QA specific to e-learning
• Criteria based on ease of access
• New forms of interaction (students and staff)
• Flexibility, personalisation and other
  pedagogical aspects that are more relevant to
• e- learning
• They express the added value of e-learning to HE
• Especially, with the leap towards new generation
  OER

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E-xcellence

• E-xcellence in e-learning is
• Complementary to other national quality
  assurance systems
• related more to content, staff and
  infrastructure
• Optimising the learning process and offering
  assurance to stakeholders
• that e-learning provision is of high quality

E-xcellence has established A framework of
quality criteria for the development, operation
and evaluation of e-learning programmes An
appropriate set of performance indicators,
parameters and guidelines by which the quality
of e-learning programmes can be measured by
assessment A definition of threshold and
excellence level
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E-xcellence

• Set of (33) European benchmarks
• They cover institutional, pedagogical, technical,
  ethical and management aspects of e-learning
  organised into the three main categories of
• Management(institutional and programme levels)
• Products(curriculum, course design and delivery)
• Services(student and staff support)
• An important aspect of E-xcellence is that it
  offers a European-wide
• set of benchmarks, independent of particular
  institutional or national
• systems, and with guidance to educational
  improvement

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E-xcellence
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E-xcellence
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E-xcellence
Cutting-edge developments European OER
Consortium European Quality
Consortium
Join in
European Association of Distance Teaching
Universities (EADTU) the Open University (OUUK)
Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNL) University
of Oulu (OULU) Centre National d'Enseignement à
Distance (CNED) Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
(UOC) Universidad Nacional de Educación a
Distancia (UNED) Estonian Information Technology
Foundation (EITSA) National Council for Distance
Education (APERTUS) Network per l'Universita
Ovunque (NETTUNO) European University
Association (EUA) The eLearning Industry Group
(eLIG) Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatie
Organisatie (NVAO)
European Association of Distance Teaching
Universities (EADTU) Open Universiteit Nederland
(OUNL) The Open University (UKOU) FernUniversi
tät in Hagen Network per l'Universita Ovunque
(Nettuno/UniNettuno) Universidad Nacional de
Educación a Distancia (UNED) Centre National
d'Enseignement à Distance (CNED) Anadolu
University Universidade Aberta Moscow State
University (MESI) Universitat Oberta de
Catalunya (UOC)

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Towards European-wide Quality and Benchmarking of
Open Educational Resources Kees-Jan van Dorp
George Ubachs Kees-Jan.vanDorp_at_EADTU.nl George.U
bachs_at_EADTU.nl
Thank you !
SCOP 2007 Open Educational Resources as an
Instrument for achieving Education for All