Description
The presentation reports the key results from a study on policy approaches to Open Education in Europe, run by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in collaboration with the Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED) at the Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (UNIR).
The study provides the first-ever EU-wide overview of the state of policies related to opening up education. Through documental research and interviews with policy-makers from all 28 EU Member States, the study has a) identified national-level policies which focus on open education, b) explored the perceptions of policy makers on the challenges and enablers for such policies and c) raised a set of recommendations at the EU and at the Member State levels.
The mapped policies aimed at opening un education fall under four typologies: a) policies focusing specifically on opening up education through the promotion of OER and OEP, b) Policies relating to general ICT for learning with some open education component, c) Comprehensive strategic educational policies with some open education component and d) Polices built up as commitments within the Action Plans of the Open Government Partnership with some open education component.
The main conclusion of the study is that most EU Member States have started some initiative with regards to open education, but there is still a long way to go to reach full mainstreaming. In most countries, the vision of open education is rather broad, going beyond OER and open content, even if often when this vision is applied into a policy, the approach is still limited to OER. Specifically, most of the analysed policies and initiatives cover many of the dimensions from the OpenEdu framework, with an outstanding role for stakeholders’ collaboration.
Drawing on the study recommendations for policy makers who want to implement structural policies aiming at opening up education in their countries, we will discuss the main barriers that can prevent open education policies from fully succeeding as well as the potential enablers for open education, showcasing a variety of policy approaches for the adoption and promotion of Open Education.
We aim, in the near future, to operationalise the identified policy good practices by designing toolkit to support the development of action plans to promote further adoption of OER all levels of education.
Inamorato dos Santos, A. Nascimbeni, F. Bacsich, P. Atenas, J. Aceto, S., Burgos, D., Punie, Y. (2017) Case Studies on Policy Approaches to Open Education. JRC Science for Policy Report, EUR 27938 EN; doi:10.2791/293408.
Inamorato dos Santos, A., Punie, Y., Castaño-Muñoz, J. (2016) Opening up Education: A Support Framework for Higher Education Institutions (pp.24-30). JRC Science for Policy Report, EUR 27938 EN; doi:10.2791/293408.