It is not entirely new. In the Netherlands, higher education institutions have been sharing self-developed learning materials for reuse on the online platform Edusources for several years. ‘The OpenUp scheme now aims to boost this collaboration nationwide,’ explains Monique Schoutsen. Within Radboud University, she is OpenUp project leader together with Nicolai van der Woert; Nicolai on behalf of the Medical Faculty and Monique on behalf of the other faculties. To participate in the OpenUp scheme, they jointly submitted a grant application to the national innovation fund Npuls earlier this year. Monique: ‘ This awarded grant will give us more financial scope to expand our project over the next 18 months, so that we can further encourage the sharing and reuse of learning materials on Edusources within our education.’
More varied and efficient
That sharing and reuse involves so-called ‘Open Learning Materials’: free digital learning resources that are freely accessible to everyone or on terms of an open licence, such as the obligation to acknowledge the source. Examples of Open Learning Materials include: self-developed PowerPoint presentations, E-learnings, podcasts, knowledge clips and visual representations, such as an anatomical image for medical education. Nicolai: ‘Learning materials are generally made with community funds. If every teacher has to do that for the same subject at every educational institution themselves, the costs run high. So it is beneficial to share learning materials among educational institutions. After all, so many materials already exist, we don't need to reinvent everything ourselves. Together, we can create good teaching materials much faster and cheaper. We also make education better, more varied and more efficient. Because another teacher's approach can, for instance, help you tailor your teaching materials even better to the learning style of certain students'.
Monique adds: ‘If, for example, a student indicates that he or she does not understand certain lesson material, another teacher's teaching materials may ensure that the student in question suddenly does understand. And vice versa, your developed learning materials can be a godsend for teachers and students at other educational institutions: it is a token of appreciation and also good for your brand recognition. Of course, it is important that all shared educational resources meet quality requirements. This requires cooperation with other educational institutions. For example, a national community with teachers of the same subject can approve the learning materials and give them a quality stamp.
Impact for Radboud University
The OpenUp scheme should further strengthen such cooperation nationwide. To this end, 24 educational institutions are affiliated to this scheme, of which Radboud University is one. Nicolai: ‘Just like the other institutions, we received a grant from innovation fund Npuls to make our own plan to take learning and working with Open Educational Resources further. In addition to that grant, Npuls provides support for this by, among other things, facilitating cooperation and cross-fertilisation between the member educational institutions. This is important, because as educational institutions we can learn from each other. The aim is that in eighteen months' time, all participating educational institutions will have filled the Edusources platform with more Open Educational Resources in Dutch and English, making reuse even more attractive.
Within Radboud education, Monique and Nicolai will work on this with the OpenUp project. Monique: ‘One of the ways we will do this is by using targeted communication to familiarise more teaching colleagues with the Edusources platform and explain how they can find shared learning resources there. Every teacher, as well as every student, has standard access to it. We also want to link Edusources to Brightspace, our digital learning environment. This will allow an instructor, when creating a course, to immediately see whether there are already Open Educational Resources available on the same subject and to immediately include those materials in the course. We will also train instructors to enter Open Educational Resources into Edusources themselves. Nicolai adds: ‘In addition, Npuls has asked us to develop policy for Open Educational Resources, including in the area of teaching support and professionalisation of instructors. That policy should contribute to an increased use of Open Learning Materials within our education system in the near future.'
An impact scan shows that Radboud University is currently already broadly set up for the use of Open Educational Resources. Monique: ‘Among other things, we already have Open Science policies for making research public and accessible, our digital infrastructure is pretty much in order and, compared to other universities, we have shared the most Open Learning Materials in Edusources. In addition, earlier this year we launched a pilot for Open Textbooks, which are also among the Open Learning Materials. Nevertheless, we still have a way to go, because within our own university, for example, few learning materials are still shared between faculties.' Nicolai continues: 'That's a shame: actually, in that area, we don't even know about each other's wealth. It is up to us to make lecturers enthusiastic about sharing and reusing Open Educational Resources and make them see the added value. Hopefully, in cooperation with the other member educational institutions, we can get the imaginary snowball rolling.'
More information
Curious about what learning materials are already available? Then check out the online platform Edusources.