The Nordic Alliance for Open Education - State of the art, challenges and opportunities

• Are the Nordic countries forerunners in Open Education? What is the state of the art, barriersand opportunities of Open Education in the Nordic countries? What are necessary actions onpolicy, institutional and individual levels? These are the main questions of this paper.Open Educational Resources are discussed widely on a global, European and even Nordiclevel. UNESCO, which has coined the term Open Educational Resources (OER) some 10 yearsago, published in June 2012 a global agenda for OER, the Paris Declaration (adopted by OERWorld Congress). The Declaration shows the importance of Open Educational Resources andgives recommendations to governments and institutions around the globe. The EuropeanUnion has started a large-scale initiative on “Opening Up Education”(http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/documents/consult/open_en.pdf).The concept of OER seems promising, potentially leading to educational collaborations,having potential for stimulating innovation in education, reducing cost of education, andbroadening access to education for all. However, the awareness on the opportunities of usingOERs is still low in the Nordic countries. In contrast to Open Access (for publications) orOpen Source (for software development), OER are not yet broadly known and accepted /adopted. It is highly necessary to combine the initiatives and ideas of open approaches. This isthe case at a user level as well as on policy level (see also Clements & Pawlowski, 2012).Therefore, it is important to promote OER to governments at all levels as well as toinstitutions.The Nordic countries seem to be a good ground for openness and sharing: the Nordiccountries share many values related to education and technology development; the political and governmental institutions are quite similar – there is also a tradition for exchange ofknowledge and solutions between the countries.In this paper, we briefly give an introduction to OER and reflect on the state if the art of OpenEducation in the Nordic countries. In expert workshops by the Nordic Open EducationAlliance, barriers and possible interventions to overcome them were explored. Based on these,we formulate recommendations as well as propose implementation actions. This study isbased on a position paper from the Nordic Open Education Alliance(http://www.nordlet.org/?=position).

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Lärande (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Learning (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

open educational resources

OER

university

education

e-learning

educational technology

Pedagogics and Educational Sciences

Pedagogik och Utbildningsvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)