Author Archives: Daniel Diekmann

On Wednesday, 10 May 2023, twillo and MMKH, in partnership with KNOER, will hold an online symposium on the topic of awareness and incentive tools for OER (Open Educational Resources). Participation is free of charge, registration is possible until 9 May, 6pm.

Event description

Universities have so far fallen far short of their potential in the development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER). Numerous factors hinder greater use of free teaching and learning materials. The lack of awareness of OER, the limited role of OER in teaching development, concerns about OER use and generally rather timid visions for the development of higher education contribute to the slow progress in awareness and implementation of open forms of teaching and learning. Only a few higher education institutions offer comprehensive measures to support OER at their own institution and a differentiated OER advisory service. In many cases, central institutions for supporting teaching do not have sufficient resources to advise teachers on the use and development of OER in line with their needs. Existing incentive instruments in the area of teaching rarely specifically include the area of OER. In many cases, there is a lack of clear ideas about teaching and learning contexts in which the use of OER makes sense.

Against this background, this online symposium will look at examples of how higher education institutions are already supporting the use of OER and which awareness and incentive instruments can contribute to a broader integration of OER into teaching practice in the future. The event will address these questions and discuss them together with the speakers and participants. Participants will be involved via direct question opportunities and the chat.

This event follows on from the joint event “Opportunities and challenges in quality assurance of OER” by HIS-HE and MMKH from 2021.

Further information can be found on the event website.

Presentation of the Cooperation Network OER (KNOER) at the U:FF, 27.04.2023 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:05 p.m.

In the session “Establishing OER in higher education teaching together – the cooperation network KNOER” you will gain insights into current developments around OER in higher education teaching. A special focus will be on the Cooperation Network OER (KN-OER.de).

The motto of the 2023 University:Future Festival organised by the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung and the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre is “Heads up”.
The free event will take place in Berlin on physical stages across Germany as well as digitally.
One of the physical stages is in Bochum and is coordinated by the NRW state portal ORCA.nrw. There, the focus is on the track “Vision & Openess”. Questions here are:

How is university teaching made open?
What good practices are there in Open Educational Resources (OER)?
How do OER reach a broad audience?
What are the very long lines of development, what will higher education look like in 20 years? And what can policy-makers do to support positive developments?

You can find more information on the event website.

A digital (via zoom) OER symposium for teacher education took place on 23.02.2023 from 10 AM – 3 PM. This symposium was organised by the universities of Duisburg-Essen, Cologne, Dortmund, Siegen and Paderborn. Please make a note of the date. You can register for the conference and find more information about the programme on this page from mid-January.

The OER symposia are organised by the ORCA.nrw state portal network on the initiative of the AG Prorektor*innen. They bring together teachers from the subject communities for an exchange of experience and knowledge on Open Educational Resources. Teachers from NRW who are currently implementing extensive OER projects themselves report on their practical experience.