Een opengeslagen boek en een oranje muur
Een opengeslagen boek en een oranje muur

Radboud University is participating in edusources pilot

"Open science and open education will become the norms, provided national security is not compromised in the process." This quote from the 2021 coalition agreement shows that, as far as the government is concerned, there is a great need for open and online learning resources. But how do you make digital learning materials 'open'?

By putting them on Brightspace? No, because then they won't be available to everyone. By uploading them to YouTube? That's better, but then how will people find them? And maybe they are not videos but some other kind of learning materials you want to share. Besides, who checks for quality and copyright infringement?

National platform edusources

Fortunately, the Acceleration Plan Towards digital (open) educational resources also asked itself this question and, partly at the request of the participants of this working group, a national platform was created to share digital learning materials openly.

That platform is called edusources and already contains almost 10,000 high-quality digital learning materials from higher education. Quality and copyright are controlled by working together in communities. These communities consist of a permanent group of lecturers who provide and check the content, and librarians who add metadata and check the materials for possible copyright violations.

Radboud pilot

Radboud University has been participating in the pilot of edusources since October 2022. There are currently two communities within our university: Neerlandistiek (led by Prof Marc van Oostendorp) and Wijze woorden (led by Prof Bé Breij). The communities are already filled with a fair amount of digital learning materials. If you are curious, you can find the materials in edusources.

Participate yourself

Would you like to start your own community within your field or otherwise explore the possibilities? Then contact pilot coordinator monique.schoutsen [at] ru.nl (Monique Schoutsen). The pilot runs until October 2023.

More information on edusources can be found on the website of SURF.