Presentation of the report "Policy Approaches to Open Education" on 28 EU Member States

1. Which policies for Open Education? Insights
from the first ever study on open education
initiatives across the whole European Union
OER18 - Bristol
Fabio Nascimbeni, Andreia Inamorato Dos Santos, Paul Bacsich,
Daniel Burgos and Javiera Atenas

2. Context
Opening up Education Communication by the European Commission (2013)
OpenEdu project by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC)
Two new reports:
• Going Open: Policy Recommendations on Open Education in Europe
• Policy Approaches to Open Education

3. Report: Policy Approaches to Open Education
Study run by the European Commission’s JRC in collaboration with the
Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education of UNIR
(UNIR iTED)
First ever study on OE policies across all 28 EU MS
• State of the art in each MS
• Policy identification and snapshotting
• Interviews with policy stakeholders
• Analysis and extraction of policy ideas

4. Main results

5. 1. Vision and practice of OE in EU MS
In most MS the vision of open education is rather broad, going beyond OER
and open content, even if in a number of MS when this vision is applied into
a policy, the approach towards open education is still limited to OER.
JRC report (2016) 'Opening up education: a support framework for higher education institutions'

6. 2. Four typologies of OE policies
1. Policies focusing specifically on opening up education through the
promotion of OER and OEP
2. Policies relating to general ICT for learning with some open education
component
3. Comprehensive strategic educational policies with some open education
component
4. Polices built up as National Open Government Plans with some open
education component
“The road to open education implementation is a long one and different MS are
travelling along it at very different speeds and by using different sizes
vehicles.”

7. 3. Main barriers & enablers
Barriers
• low policy priority assigned to open education
• fragmentation of initiatives
• lack of institutional support
• absence of an open licenses national recognition scheme
• Enablers
• clear policy priority assigned to OE both at MS and EU level
• awareness-raising on open education targeting leaders and educators
• advocacy communities

8. Four examples

9. Greece: 3rd NationalAction Plan on Open
Government 2016-2018
• Within the 3rd National Action Plan on Open Government
2016-2018, Commitment 20 is on Open Education.
• Among the main planned activities:
• Study for the inventory of available OER
• Platform to provide the educational content
• Information and sensibilisation on open licenses, OER, etc.
• Organisation of and participation in educational conferences

10. Germany: Mainstreaming OER
• The German federal OER policy Mainstreaming OER has two main linked
strands.
• An Information Office comprised of a central hub and some antennas
• A country-wide staff development programme in OER, multi-sector,
delivered by a partnership of federal and state governments.
• The policy follows on from an OER Mapping project that has now concluded
and a Feasibility study on the development and operation of OER
infrastructures in education that reported in February 2016.

11. Italy: Piano Nazionale Scuola Digitale
National Digital School Plan
• The Italian National Plan for Digital Education (Piano Nazionale Scuola
Digitale – PNSD) is a comprehensive innovation strategy across Italy’s school
system.
• 35 actions organized into three pillars (tools, skills, organization) and nine
areas: access, learning environments, competences, entrepreneurship,
contents, staff training and supporting measures.
• Within the plan, Action 23 deals specifically with the promotion of OER and
with the delivery of guidelines for content production.

12. Netherlands: HO2025, de waarde(n) van weten
Higher Education 2025, The value of knowing
• Organic policy, aiming at modernising all aspects of HE by
2025.
• Openness is at the core of the strategy.
• By 2025 all teaching staff at Dutch universities make their
educational resources openly available
• the Netherlands plays a pioneering role in the world
• Dutch institutes’ recognition of each other’s MOOCs and open
courses.

13. Romania: National Open Government Plan (Virtual
School Library and Open Educational Resources)
• With the objective of improving transparency in the public
education system, the 2016-2018 National Action Plan for
Open Government has introduced a chapter on education
to help implementing the legal framework for the use of
OER created through the Law on national education no.
1/2011, called the Virtual School Library.
• By creating the Virtual School Library (work should have
started in September 2016) and defining a national policy
regarding open educational resources, the commitment
aims to increase access to quality education and foster
innovation. See Commitment 16 on pp. 51-54 of the OGP
Plan

14. Reflections & suggestions

15. Reflections from the research team
1. From OER policies, to OE policies, to policies aiming at opening up
education
2. Open education is an ecosystem (flexible but unpredictable)
3. Open Education is almost everywhere (often not with this name)
4. Policies are instruments to ADVANCE but also to CATCH UP
5. Importance of Knowing what works and what does not work
6. The importance of collaboration dimension (openness & collaboration)
7. Local Authorities have strong leverages

16. Suggestions for OE policy, at all levels
• Funding is important, but policy innovation can emerge in low-funded
environment
• OER is NOT a standard assumption
• “Openness as default” is not the way to go for many countries or institutions
• Staff dealing with business modelling must be involved

17. Full report:
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/policy-approaches-open-education-
case-studies-28-eu-member-states-openedu-policies