Presentation at OER16, Edinburgh

1. OER 16 - Edinburgh
Connecting Resources and Users -
requirements for a federated cross-sectorial infrastructure
for OER
Richard Heinen
University Duisburg-Essen – Learning Lab
Ingo Blees
DIPF – German Eduserver

2. Requirements for a federated cross-sectorial infrastructure for OER
- Feasibility study for OER-Infrastructures
- Data acquisition: interviews and workshops
- Evaluation of OER from different educational sectors
- Model for an OER-Infrastructure and its coordinated development

3. Objective of the Feasibility Study
„The study has the objective of identifying…
• sector-specific and cross-sectoral
• need, acceptance, technical and organisational requirements
• concerning a central infrastructure - for Open Educational
Resources (OER)
• or one linking distributed inventories as alternative and
• specifying the necessary system components, i.e. a repository or
a referatory or a combination of both.”
Political background: 2015 Report of the working group on OER of

4. Study Design. Mixed Methods
• Literature synopsis
• Good practice analysis (in other countries e.g.
http://www.wikiwijsleermiddelenplein.nl/, Klascement, NDLA)
• Guided interviews (50 Interviews)
• Sector specific expert workshops (60 participants)
• Collaborative review of first draft of report (16 experts from all
four educational sectors)

5. Players
Public Authority
• School
• Universities
• Further Education Institutions
• Library Centres
• Education Servers
• […]
Commercial
• Publishers
• Media Producers
• Content Providers
• Chambers
• […]
Communities, Initiatives
• Networks
• Cooperations
• Individual Actors
Social Partner
• Foundations
• Church
• Associations
• Unions
• […]
Types of Stakeholders

6. • Legal transparency and certainty
• More efficient usage of existing material, e.g. from scientific
sources and cultural institutions
• Timeliness
• Individualization, differentiation within classes
• Cooperation of teachers (sharing culture)
• Participation in education (lifelong learning)
Potentials of OER are confirmed

7. • Significance of OER
• Current state of OER provision
• Need for support
• Expected added value of OER
Differences in the Educational Sectors

8. School:
• Significance high, German discourse on OER began in school sector
• Many initiatives and tracks for practical use of OER materials and also for
platform usage.
Significance of OER
Higher Education:
• Significance is acknowledged and rising
• Growing digitisation of learning raises the need for digital educational media
Vocational Training and Adult Education:
• OER has become a topic in these sectors‘ discourse
• In practice minor significance but increasing in Adult Education

9. Current State of OER Provision
School:
• Various highly developed platforms, that make content available and offer
options for content producers to store, edit and download OER materials
Higher Education:
• In single initiatives or pilot projects are first trials like networks, online
courses, self learning units.
• Open approach already established in the field of Open Access
Vocational Training und Adult Education:
• Sparse material: there is freely available material e.g. for language learning
and also material created with public funding but which is yet no real OER

10. Need for Support
School:
• Advancement of communication and exchange between stakeholders i.e.
public services, publishers, teachers and the OER‐Community is needed in
order to support legal certainty in OER use, quality assurance and the
expansion of a suitable collection of digital educational media.
Higher Education:
• The already existing materials would have to be enhanced for becoming
OER and be supplied into a networked OER infrastructure.
• Need for legal certainty in creating and using OER
• Cooperation of higher education institutions needs encouraging political
cues
Vocational Training and Adult Education:
• Need for know-how, content and capable platforms for storing and
discovering
• Networking between institutions und single initiatives

11. Expected Added Value of OER
School:
• Short term: there are already numerous initiatives and platforms that can be
supported and advanced by a powerful and sustainable infrastructure for
aggregation and distribution of OER.
Higher Education:
• Middle term: material must be produced and be made available
• Quality enhancement of teaching by increasing the stock of digital learning
units
• Improved visibility and attainment of new audiences
Vocational Training und Adult Education:
• Long term: material must be created, platforms must be built
• Incentive schemes and supportive measures for more acceptance of digital
learning
• If requirements are met a high added value can be expected.

12. Main Result
• A central repository would not be functional and not be
accepted in communities.
• To overcome the fragmented landscape of existing repositories
and to realize cross-sectoral synergies…
• …a network of reference systems seems to be a promising
approach…
• MDES (in German: MDAS)

13. Rep
Rep
Rep
School
Higher Ed
VT/ AE
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep Rep
Repositories collecting and
providing resources

14. Rep
Rep
Rep
School
Higher Ed
VT/ AE
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep Rep
Ref
Ref Ref
Ref Ref Repositories collecting and
providing resources
Referatories collecting
metadata

15. Rep
Rep
Rep
School
Higher Ed
VT/ AE
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep Rep
Ref
Ref Ref
Ref Ref
Exchange is missing between
referatories and cross sectors

16. Rep
Rep
Rep
School
Higher Ed
VT/ AE
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep Rep
Ref
Ref Ref
Ref Ref
Metadata-Exchange-Service
can collect and translate
metadata
MDES

17. Rep
Rep
Rep
School
Higher Ed
VT/ AE
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep
Rep Rep
Ref
Ref Ref
Ref Ref Cross sectoral referatories can
be established
Repositories can us extended
metadata
MDES
Ref
Ref
Ref

18. Ref. 1
User generated
Ref. 2
automatically
aggregated
Ref. 3
Editorial Staff
Ref. 4
filtered
MDES
Referatories Repositories

19. coordination
Coordination of stakeholder,
documentation of standards and APIs

20. advisory board
coordination
Stakeholder from all educational sectors
Discussions about standards and APIs

21. round table
advisory board
coordination
Integration of OER-Community

22. Recommandations – Summary
Federated network of reference systems
Coordination of stakeholder
Increased visibility and findability of OER
Increased quality assurance by transparent metadata
creation by different users
Informational open Ecosystem

23. References
Heinen, Richard; Kerres, Michael; Scharnberg, Gianna; Blees, Ingo; Rittberger, MarcA federated reference
structure for open informational ecosystems, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, in print , 2016.
Blees, Ingo; Hirschmann, Doris; Kühnlenz, Axel; Rittberger, Marc; Schulte, Jolika; Heinen, Richard; Kerres,
Michael; Scharnberg, GiannaMachbarkeitsstudie zum Aufbau und Betrieb von OER-Infrastrukturen in der
Bildung, Frankfurt, 2016.
Kerres, Michael; Heinen, RichardOpen Educational Resources and Informational Ecosystems: «Edutags» as a
connector for open learning. MedienPädagogik, Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung -
Themenheft: Educational Media Ecologies , 24 , S. 154-173, 2014.
Kerres, Michael; Heinen, RichardOpen Informational Ecosystems: The Missing Link for Sharing Educational
Resources, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16 (1), S. 24-29, 2015.
Heinen, Richard; Blees, Ingo; Kerres, Michael; Rittberger, MarcOpen educational resources and social
bookmarking: Connecting Users and Editors (Konferenzbeitrag)Stracke, Christian; Ehlers, Ulf-Daniel;
Creelman, Alastair; Shamarina-Heidenreich, Tatiana (Hrsg.): Changing the Trajectory - Quality for Opening up
Education - Proceedings of the International EIF / LINQ Conference 2014, S. 33-40, Logos Verlag, Berlin, 2014.
Kerres, Michael; Heinen, RichardOpen Informational Ecosystems: The Missing Link for Sharing Educational
Resources, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16 (1), S. 24-29, 2015.
http://bit.ly/OER16-ET
Der Vortrag von Ingo Blees und Richard Heinen ist lizensiert unter einer
Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International Lizenz.