Group Admins
Description
The OpenMed project, “Opening up education in South Mediterranean countries”[1], is exploring the adoption of strategies and channels that embrace the principles of openness and reusability within the context of S-M universities (Knox, 2013; Weller, 2014). The overarching goal of OpenMed is to raise awareness and facilitate the adoption of OER and OEP in the S-M countries, with a particular focus on HE in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Palestine, fostering the role of universities as knowledge providers not only to their on-campus students, but also beyond the walls of institutions, especially towards disadvantaged groups (e.g. low-income peoples, disabled students, people living in rural areas, learners at risk of low achievement, and refugees).
The first phase of OpenMed involved a review of OEP, which have been brought together into a Compendium of case studies, complemented by interviews with experts about OEP and OER. The purpose of the Compendium is to inform the subsequent work of the project, and to help facilitate the adoption of OEP by the partners in the S-M region, other universities in each of their respective countries and, more broadly, at other HE organizations in the Arab World.
The next stage of the project is on fostering regional debates in the S-M region on what are the best strategies to embed OEP and OEP in universities. The debate will involve HE managers, decision-makers, educators and other members of staff (e.g. university librarians, IT staff) from universities in the S-M countries as well as policy makers. The Regional Agenda will define the strategic areas of action where universities should focus their open education offerings.
In order to reach this vision, a number of areas of action have been identified, and for each of these a set of recommendations for action are proposed, to include Open Content & Licenses; Open Pedagogy & Practice; Technology; Governance & Business Models and Collaborative Models between Institutions.
Our presentation will share the findings brought together in the Compendium and will discuss the outcomes to date from the Regional Agenda, and prevailing challenges to institutional business and organisational models (Pawlowski, 2013) for the creation, management, publication and reuse of OERs.
References
- Knox, J. (2013). Five Critiques of the Open Educational Resources Movement. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(8), 821–32.
- Pawlowski, J. M. et al. (2013). Open Educational Ideas: Early Stage Sharing of Educational Artefacts, EIF 2013, Barcelona, Spain.
- Weller, M. (2014). The Battle for Open. London: Ubiquity Press.
[1] OpenMed is an international cooperation project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education programme of the European Union during the period 15 October 2015 – 14 October 2018. www.openmedproject.eu.
