[Open-education] Is there still an OER movement? Germany

Fri Aug 22 14:05:38 UTC 2014

Hi all

I feel one has to be a bit careful about statements about OER in Germany. Things seem to be changing fast.

Certainly the initial German response to the UNESCO OER survey work was rather negative, and was reported as that in UNESCO material, which was one reason why Germany did not make it on to our POERUP country study plan when formulated in 2011 and revised in 2012. However it became clear from just before OER14 that things were changing so we commissioned Susanne Friz in Germany to produce an updated report for us with a table of initiatives. The report is at http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Germany which links to her table at http://poerup.referata.com/w/images/Germany_OER_entities.pdf
We have not incorporated this data into our database yet but I expect to get the most important ones in Germany done in the next few weeks (there are over 12 other reports to curate also). So the OER Map in the Germany report still looks rather minimal (this uses the same database as our public OER map tool at http://www.poerup.org.uk)

I am also cautious about the comments on German teachers, if some relative comparison is being drawn with teachers in other countries - but it will depend whether we are talking about teachers in K-12 (schools) or lecturers/professors at university. Actually I think (once Susi’s report is taken into account – there is narrative in her main report too) that Germany will have a pretty respectable score for OER initiatives as compared with several other EU and OER countries

If you want to check on other countries our retrieval-focussed map is at http://www.poerup.org.uk 

Moreover as one broadens out from OER to open access, Germany is doing pretty well – as you can see from the map version of the standard OpenDOAR service at http://maps.repository66.org/ – 175 entries as I recall.

Paul

From: Marieke Guy 
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2014 12:25 PM
To: open-education at lists.okfn.org 
Subject: Re: [Open-education] Is there still an OER movement?

> It feels that there's is a big disconnection between innovative / trendy areas of open education and the coal-face work of outreach and implementation. I guess that's the conclusion of the article above. I'd be interested to know more about projects working to address this. 

Yes!

This is something I've been talking about off-list - trying to engage teachers - or basically meet teachers in the spaces where they are working. See this post on why teachers aren't using OER in Germany: http://education.okfn.org/open-education-germany/

There is an initiative in the UK that is doing this:
http://lccdigilit.our.dmu.ac.uk/2014/05/12/understanding-open-educational-resources-information-for-schools/
The plan is to educate teachers so they can use OER more effectively. Bjorn who works on the project was involved with http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/ORBIT and http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/OER4Schools

Marieke

This is something On 22/08/2014 10:52, Mick FM wrote: 

  On 22/08/14 09:44, Marieke Guy wrote:

    One talk I attended at OER14 was about how OER is moving away from something academia does to something that is led by practioners. The talk was called When two worlds don’t collide: the marginalisation of open educational practices outside academia and used the example of OERs created about autism by autism experts and doctors (not academics).  Again maybe this isn't a movement, but it could make for a sustainable model.

    I suppose there is a question to be asked about whether there needs to actually be a movement as such or whether OER work is about something more practical - getting appropriate, open licensed resources to those who need them. So do we need a community of practice rather than a movement?

  That's a good article!

  It does feel like all the research does suggest that it's time for OER to get real and become an embedded tool for communities of practice. 

  So has the research end of OER movement achieved it's aims? If so, it's still seems like there is a big gap between the theory and the practice 

  For example, at Wednesday's session for Duct Tape Uni in the evaluation at the end of the day, one of the community media trainers who was very experienced, shared that one of his take-aways from the session was that he was happy to have learned about OER and that there were searchable repositories available. This was news to him. 

  It feels that there's is a big disconnection between innovative / trendy areas of open education and the coal-face work of outreach and implementation. I guess that's the conclusion of the article above. I'd be interested to know more about projects working to address this. 

  So another question for you guys.

  Are edu-punk innovators who jump the OER ship to move on to new territories before finishing the job helping or harming open education? 

  nice one, 
  Mick

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Marieke Guy
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