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Subproject: Open Educational Resources

The aim of this subproject is to develop the production, publication, sharing, and use of open educational resources at Linnaeus University. From an international perspective, entities like UNESCO and the EU strive to create education of good quality that is equitable and sustainable, and that provides opportunities for lifelong learning for everyone. Open educational resources constitute an important part in the pursuit of sustainable education.

Description of the subproject

The subproject Open Educational Resources (OER) aims to contribute to the university’s continued development towards an open science system with open and accessible teaching resources for learning and development.

There are various definitions of the term “open educational resources”. In our work with the subproject, we use UNESCO’s definition, from 2019:

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.

This definition implies that all types of produced teaching materials, scholarly literature, research data, and software/code used for research purposes can constitute open educational resources if they are published under an open license. The subproject focuses on the production of teaching materials, as well as on the publication, use, and making available of such materials. The materials can range from individual course components, such as recorded lectures, podcasts, and written materials, to entire course packages.

The purpose of the subproject is to enhance infrastructure, support, and incentives for the production and use of open educational resources.

The objectives of the subproject are:

  • to pursue increased understanding and enhanced competence regarding OER as part of open science, through communication, educational efforts, creation of forums for exchange of experiences, etc.
  • to propose ways to make open educational resources produced at the university visible and available to teachers, students, and the public
  • to give suggestions for the development of equal support for the production of open educational resources
  • examine conditions and opportunities when it comes to promoting the production and publication of OER in LnuPLay, DiVA, and other tools within Lnu
  • to initiate training on copyright and Creative Commons licenses
  • to collaborate with the subproject on recognition of qualifications to ensure that the production of open educational resources is reflected in principles for recognition
  • to examine how curation and quality review of OER can be managed at the university
  • to participate in national and international collaboration on issues of common usage and development.

Get involved!

You are welcome to get involved in the work on open science. If you have questions about the subproject or would like to learn more about how you can get involved, please contact the subproject manager Ann-Katrin Perselli.

Ongoing work in the subproject Open Educational Resources

The work from January to March has involved several meetings, both nationally and locally, with individuals identified as having strategic roles when it comes to open educational resources (OER). These meetings have primarily been conducted via Zoom and been reported to the other subproject participants. The purpose of these meetings has been to gather information about conditions and opportunities for developing a culture of sharing OER at Lnu as well as for national collaboration.

There are already OER produced at Lnu. At the University Library there are, for instance, many instructional videos and guides. There are also teachers who produce both lectures and courses (e.g., MOOCs) as open resources. Some of these are posted on YouTube, others are published on one of the university’s learning platforms, and still others are embedded on the university’s various web pages. This makes them difficult to find unless you know exactly what to look for. It would therefore be desirable to be able to gather all OER produced at Linnaeus University in a system/on a platform that is capable of handling these types of educational resources and that can make them easy to find for everyone with the help of the right metadata. One of the subproject’s objectives is thus to explore the conditions for such a system to be implemented. So far, few – if any – Swedish universities have a system that makes OER accessible and usable for all.

During spring 2024 we are conducting interviews with teachers and other staff, to investigate the needs for support and training on how production, publication, licensing, sharing, and usage can be carried out, and how this may affect existing support structures, services, and coordination within Linnaeus University. To promote the production, publication, and sharing of OER, the process needs to be made simple and efficient. Often, a lack of knowledge about things such as copyright and Creative Commons licensing is a barrier to becoming an OER producer.

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