Presentation at WCES.info conference, Malta, 6-9 Feb 2014. It describes Romanian initiatives related to Open Educational Resources (OER). We refer to a national report developed by @cami13 under the umbrella of the European project POERUP, based on a documentary research and a field work research. Although the aim of this presentation is to focus on the state of the art of OER in Romanian education system, our goals are to promote a background of research about the use of OER in universities; to contribute to a better knowledge of teachers’ and students’ perception and practices on the use of OER in academic life; to suggest key aspects and make suggestions on how to integrate OER and MOOC in HE area. The Romanian Report can be found here: http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Romania. For more information about the POERUP project, go to see http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Main_Page.

1. The power of the three words
and one acronym: OER vs OER
(I’m not an Ogre of the Enchanted Realm
of cyberspace. I’m an Omnipresent
Educational Rescuer - because I use the OER!)
oral presentation by
Carmen HOLOTESCU & Gabriela GROSSECK
at 6th World Conference on Educational Sciences
06-09 February 2014, Malta
photocredit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/99353930@N00/4742226415/in/set-72157623425016221

2. OER Definition
UNESCO (2002)
[…] „the open provision of
educational
resources, enabled by
information and
communication
technologies, for
consultation, use and
adaptation by a community
of users for non-commercial
purposes.”
unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-resources

3. What are OERs?
Open Educational Resources
„are any type of educational
materials that are in the public
domain or introduced with an
open license.
The nature of these open
materials means that anyone can
legally and freely copy, use, adapt
and re-share them. OERs range
from textbooks to curricula,
syllabi, lecture notes,
assignments, tests, projects,
audio, video
and animation.”
unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002136/213605e.pdf

4. Current Projects related to OER

5. Open Education Europa
Opening up education through new technologies
openeducationeuropa.eu
„ICT tools, Open Educational
Resources, and open practices
allow for an increase in the
effectiveness of
education, allowing for more
personalised learning, a better
learning experience, and an
improved use of resources.
Such measures also promote
equity by increasing the
availability of knowledge.
Ultimately, opening up
education may lead to a
situation where all individuals
may learn
anytime, anywhere, with the
support of anyone, using any
device.”
ec.europa.eu/education/policy/strategic-framework/education-technology.htm

6. SCALE CCR: Up-Scaling Creative Classrooms in Europe
Main Outcomes:
• A mapping framework of ICT-enabled innovation for
learning
• The Creative Classrooms concept and reference
parameters
• A set of policy recommendations for mainstreaming
of systemic, ICT-enabled innovations in Education
and Training (E&T).
s.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/EAP/SCALECCR.html

7. OEREU: Open Education Resources and Practices in Europe
Specific objectives:
•
•
•
•
•
Study the sustainability and business
models of OER and OEP initiatives
Build a classification of OER initiatives
and practices, and a detailed and
critical assessment of the
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities
and threats
Contribute to the analysis of the
socio-economic impacts that OER and
OEP can have on the education
systems
Implement a participatory foresight
methodology, based on targeted
stakeholder consultations, in order to
develop visions and scenarios on the
future of Open Education
Derive policy recommendations
is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/EAP/OEREU.html

8. poerup.referata.com
POERUP: Policies for OER Uptake
„POERUP is focused on filling the following two gaps in research:
• The end-user–producer communities behind the OER initiatives and
what (or who) it is that actually provides the energy that make OER
initiatives work or not. At present there exists little experience in
how to best support the communities behind these initiatives or
what they actually want or do.
• Policies that governments and agencies (international, national and
regional) should adopt in order to best foster creation and uptake
of OER.”
„OER-based learning, seen as an extension of online
education, provides opportunity for everyone to access high quality
education at relatively low cost” (POERUP, 2013)

9. OER Initiatives in Romania

10. http://ro.creativecommons.org/
CCR was launched in
September 2, 2008, with
the help of ApTI
(The Association for
Technology and Internet)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ro/
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Romania

11. National OER initiatives
•
Knowledge based Economy Project
OER educational policies (recommendations in 2007)
• OER and OEP: The activities in the KEP project have led the schools towards a shift in
focus from the resources themselves towards the practices associated with the
creation, use and management of OER: that is, open educational practices (OEP).
• OER in the Government Programme
The Government Programme for 2013-2016 adopted in December 2012
(http://www.gov.ro/upload/articles/118981/program-de-guvernare-20132016.pdf) specifies that Ministry of Communication and Ministry of Education will
collaborate to support the innovative integration of Web2.0 and Open Educational
Resources in education.

12. Regional and institutional OER initiatives
Related to FLOSS (Free / Libre / Open
Source Software)
• Groups
• Conferences/Events
• Courses / Trainings / Research
• Linux distributions and Open
Source projects development
Related to OER, OEP and Open
Content/Access
Courses / Trainings / Programs
Open Content / Open Access /
Communities for OER and OEP
Studies

13. Open Educational Resources Framework (1)
Are licensed under: (*)
• various Creative Commons Licenses
Are created using:
• Collaborative applications
• Open Source Software
Are distributed on:
• Specific directories/repositories/portals
• Social Media platforms
Cover: (*)
• A large range of topics
Are used at different educational levels: (*)
• Pre-university
• University
• Adult Education
• Personal Development/LLL
• Informal Learning / Serendipity (?)
• Smart Cities
Are found using:
• Specific search engines
• Directories
• Linked Data
Are influenced/supported by
policies/recommendations at different levels: (*)
• UNESCO / global
• European
• National
• Regional
• Institutional
Granularity:
• Little (distributed on SM platforms, collections of
digital assets: curricula, syllabi, assignments, tests
projects)
• Big (open online courses, open textbooks)
• MOOCs
Format: (*)
• Text
• Audio
• Video
• Multimedia
• Simulations
• Animations
Assessed/evaluated by: (*)
• Quality procedures
• Peer-reviewing
• User-driven models
Proposed to evaluate OER Projects – dimensions marked with (*) are presented in (POERUP, 2013), the others are original.

14. Open Educational Resources Framework (2)
Use different patterns of:
• Certification
• Accreditation
Enable / are connected with:
• Open access
• Open content
• Open educational practices / open pedagogy /
open collaboration
• Mobile learning
Require:
• Teachers training / courses
Have as verbs:
• Create
• Use
• Adapt
• Exchange
• Share
• Reuse
• Collaborate
• Personalize
• Mix
• Evaluate
• Validate
Are funded/financed by: (*)
• Institutions
• Foundations
• Projects
• Governments
• Partnerships
Are promoted by:
• Case studies
• Best practices
• Research
• Events/conferences/workshops
• Communities of practice
Foster:
• Acquisition of specific competences needed by
teachers and learners to adopt open
educational practices
• Lifelong learning and social inclusion
Challenged by:
• Low digital fluency of faculty
• Relative lack of rewards for teaching (HR, 2014)
Proposed to evaluate OER Projects – dimensions marked with (*) are presented in (POERUP, 2013), the others are original.

15. From POERUP elevator pitch: 26 countries in 26 minutes, slide 11
http://www.slideshare.net/witthaus/poerup-elevator-pitch

16. Strengths in Romanian OER initiatives
Romania is active in the OER movement:
• trainings/courses related to OER and OEP organized for both preuniversity and university sectors
• proposals at governamental level, more for pre-university –not yet
in formal politics.
• national events related to open resources produced by preuniversity teachers; national guides were published also
• directories with open resources more numerous for pre-university
level
• strong communities/events for OS and OD
• proposals for MOOCs: at university level: Credis, UPT (Andone,
2014) and for LLL (Holotescu et al., 2013).

17. • The educational content which already
exists, mainly in AeL/SEI, should be used
more intensive by teachers and students:
connections with curricula, the skills they
develop should be more clear; encourage
and support the sharing of best practices;
should be licenced under CC (*)
• Create a repository with the educational
projects in which Romanian schools,
universities and educational organizations
have participated, under CC licencies (*)
• Public outputs from European Commission
programs should be made open, for
example using Creative Commons licenses
(**)
• Collaborations between schools and
universities in regards to OER projects (**)
(*) from Recommendations 2007
(**) from POERUP 2014
Recommendations (1)

18. •
•
•
•
•
•
Partnership of Ministry of Education
with publishers, broadcasters, libraries,
cultural institutions to provide open
access to their own resources (*)
All teachers training programmes
should contain topics related to OER,
new licenses and tools to create
educational materials in a collaborative
manner (*)
Encourage a competitive market for
educational resources production,
guarantee transparency of supply and
equal opportunities to market actors;
Define a set of quality criteria (*)
Budgets for digital education should
include money for developing and
maintaining OER (**)
OER should be allowed on approved
materials lists (**)
Encourage Europe-wide validation of
learning acquired online (not only via
OER and MOOCs) (**)
Recommendations (2)
(*) from Recommendations 2007
(**) from POERUP 2014

19. Thank you for your attention!
Carmen Holotescu
Politehnica University
Timisoara, Romania
Twitter: @cami13
Gabriela
Grosseck
University of the West