Smart 2014-v1 - Opening up Education in Romania

Opening Up Education in Romania

Carmen Holotescu, Universitatea Politehnica din TimisoaraGiles Pepler, Sero Consulting

SMART conference, Timisoara20 September 2014

OER Definition

[…] „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

UNESCO (2002)

unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002136/213605e.pdf

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,

videoand animation.”

OER/OEP Initiatives in Romania

poerup.referata.com/wiki/Romania

acces-deschis.ro

CCR was launched in September 2, 2008, with the help of ApTI(The Association for Technology and Internet)

http://ro.creativecommons.org/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ro/

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Romania

National OER initiatives

2. OER in the Government ProgrammeThe Government Programme for 2013-2016 adopted in December 2012 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; in 2014 the Romanian Government has adopted the National Strategy on Digital Agenda for Romania

3. Romanian Coalition for OER Launced in October 2013, gathering persons and organizations that support and promote the concepts of open access and OER - http://www.acces-deschis.ro; organized the National Conference for Open Education in April, 2014

1. 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).

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

Open Educational Resources / Practices (1)

- "OER Awareness Activities for Librarians and Academics in Romania", funded by CC Affiliate Project, implemented in 2013-2014 by ApTI Association for Technology and Internet, Soros Foundation Romania and National Association of Libraries and Librarians in Romania: workshops/events related to OER/MOOC, two guides

- Projects and sites that offer information/workshops about copyright issues, open licenses and OER: Open Educational Resources Policy in Europe http://oerpolicy.eu/?s=romania, http://kosson.ro, http://acces-deschis, http://copy-me.org, http://www.ordu.ro, http://dreptuldeautor.noisieu.ro/creative-commons

- Different products developed under CC licenses http://ro.creativecommons.org

- Digital resources on the KEP portal created by teachers and pupils in the pre-university system, by using different Web2.0 technologies, guide “OER for different disciplines” http://tinyurl.com/KEPOERguide

- KEP launched two guides in 2012, having as central topics the OER and collaborative technologies (Web2.0) in education: "Integration of new technologies in education" and "Using ICT for educational activities"

- Open journals related to open education are http://iteach.ro/experientedidactice, http://www.elearning.ro

- Open materials and discussions around them:

http://forum.portal.edu.ro, http://didactic.ro, http://e-scoala.ro, http://www.dascali.ro, http://educatie.inmures.ro

Open Educational Resources / Practices (2) - Teachers trained in KEP, Didatec project (

http://ctmtc.utcluj.ro/sites/didatec_ ) received certificates, acknowledging also their skills in using/creating OER

- Training/courses related to open educational pedagogies are offered by Moodle Romania, Didatec, iTeach, Sloop2desc, ActiveWatch Media Monitoring, UPT Technology Enhanced Learning hosted by Cirip.eu, Compendiu.ro - links at http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Romania#Regional_OER_initiatives

- Proposals for MOOCs: - UniCampus http://unicampus.ro - under the

initiative of University Politehnica Timisoara, Unicampus is a project developed by the Association of Technical Universities from Romania

- Credis Bucuresti with a MOOC platform based on Google Apps

- MOOCs integrated in Blended Courses (Holotescu, Grosseck, Cretu and Naaji, 2014)

- Projects under CC licenses for Informal Learning / Serendipity: Romanian Encyclopedia http://enciclopediaromaniei.ro , Veioza Arte http://veiozaarte.ro - a video sharing platform acting as an open source production house for the Romanian cultural scene, Local Records http://www.localrec.ro are collections of audio products, Brașov Creative Commons Film Festival http://bvccfilmfest.tumblr.com

- City Projects http://cityprojects.ro - community proposing/working on software projects for local communities/ smart cities, based on open data

- Most of the national projects related to OER are designed / implemented for the pre-university level, while in academia they are implemented by a universities or a group of universities

Strengths in Romanian OER initiatives

Romania is active in the OER movement: • trainings/courses related to OER and OEP organized for both pre-university

and university sectors• proposals at a governamental level related to OER and Web2.0, more for

pre-university – but not yet in formal policies• national events related to open resources produced by pre-university

teachers; national guides were published too• directories with open resources (more numerous for pre-university level)• projects in development for MOOCs at university level and for continuing

education• strong communities/events for open source, open access, open data, open

licences.

POERUP collections and links

Inventory of more than 500 Open Education Initiatives worldwide – mapped at http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Open_Street_Map_version_of_release_7_database

33 country reports – almost all updated in 2014 at http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Countries

7 case studies including FutureLearn, ALISON, and OER U3 generic policy documents: HE, FE (VET) and schools – full documents

available at end of September 2014 at http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Main_Page

OER in contextE-learning

Distance learning

OERMOOCs

Strategies must cohere

Flexible learning

Opening Up Education: OEI (Open Education Initiatives)

• Widen access to education at all levels, both formal and non-formal, in a perspective of lifelong learning (thus contributing to social inclusion, gender equity and special needs education); by the promotion and use of OER and OEP

• Improve cost-efficiency of teaching and learning outcomes; through greater use of OER and OEP

• Improve quality of teaching and learning outcomes; through greater use of OER and OEP

POERUP: some summary recommendations

• Foster innovation and cost-analysis• Ensure quality review is mode-neutral• Systematise APL/APEL including introducing an Open

Accreditor• Move from time-based to output-based measures:

Bologna-bis• Review teacher training and CPD

Why policies?Because...

1. Business planning2. Allocation of scarce resources

3. We have them for everything else!

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

• 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 KEP Recommendations 2007(**) from POERUP 2014

Recommendations (1)

Recommendations (2)• 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) (**)

(*) from KEP Recommendations 2007(**) from POERUP 2014

Thank you for your attention!

Giles Pepler Carmen Holotescu