#305 Poster

Monday 16 April 15:00 - 17:15 Bar/Conservatory

Promoting a Culture of Sharing in European Projects

Karolina Grodecka, Agnieszka Chrzaszcz & Jan Marković, AGH - University of Science and Technology, Poland

Conference Theme: Collaboration

Summary: A presentation of how Open Educational Resources can be developed with a bottom-up approach in European projects.

Abstract: The stage of development of Open Educational Resources differs not only from institution to institution but also between countries. In the USA OER repositories are a standard. They are more and more common in many western European countries. In Poland there is still little legal support for this kind of initiative. They are encouraged, but not facilitated, by state-wide regulations and funding. A quick scan of the Polish educational landscape shows that tasks are still seen as bottom-up initiatives usually conducted by several independent organisations. This type of situation is surely familiar to educators in many countries where there is little tradition of promoting open education.
Based on the experiences gained since setting up Open AGH, the first OER repository launched by the university in 2010, the authors have a clear picture of the attitudes towards OER among AGH academic teachers. They are much more willing to use resources that were developed by others than to share their own. This observation is interesting, especially in relation to OPAL and Open Educational Practices which suppose that the use of OER in higher education has not yet reached the critical threshold. In Poland the situation seems to be opposite. 
Taking the context described above the aim of this article is to fill the gap of the culture of sharing resources in the Polish educational system. The OPAL project is used as a reference point for describing good practice in Open Educational Practices (OEP), understood as production, use and re-use of OER, to raise the quality of education and training. Through participation in the European project MOSEP devoted to e-portfolios, we had an opportunity to develop course materials for trainers. At the level of the project consortium, a Creative Commons license was chosen for the course content. This decision was an entry point for the next steps towards the re-use project’s outcomes and openness. The course was translated into several languages and put on a wiki to be easily searchable and usable for educators looking for support. The next step was to hold a series of workshops for teachers and trainers organised on the basis of the initial MOSEP course structure. This allowed further steps including transferring of knowledge from MOSEP to other countries. Currently the authors are involved in the MAPPED project - a transfer of innovation from Poland to Italy, the Czech Republic and Turkey. The aim of the project is to develop online self-learning materials explaining how to use an e-portfolio in professional development. On the level of the consortium we have also made an agreement to publish the content with a CC license to give a clear right to re-use it.    
The added value of such a bottom-up approach is the wide possibility for re-use of the content. The European Commission in LifeLongLearning Program does not require open access to the project outcomes. However, as a project consortium we decided to share our knowledge with citizens as the collaboration was sustained by European funding. Also, we can guarantee the quality of project outcomes (which is in line with one of the OEP dimensions) and this offers the real possibility that new content will based on high quality.