Work Groups

OER Quality WG

Description:
In the context of the KMK working group on digitisation, a sub-working group on the topic of the quality of OER was constituted in 2020, which is composed of representatives of different OER initiatives of the Länder and has the common transfer of experience as its overarching goal. Within the framework of the sub-working group, different quality dimensions are considered and the respective criteria for quality assurance and development are compared and discussed. The working group on OER quality is coordinated by the MMKH in Hamburg with the support of the HIS-HE from Lower Saxony.

Contact:
Do you have any comments or remarks? Then feel free to contact your contact persons, Marc Göcks or Michael Menzel, whose contact details can be found on the website of the WG (see below).

Website:
https://www.oer-repo-ag.de/oer-qualitaet/

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Arbeitsgruppen, Work Groups

OER repositories and referatories working group (“Repo-AG”)

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

In this working group, several federal states have joined forces to develop common standards for the technical infrastructure for OER repositories (e.g. common metadata standards) and to benefit from the mutual exchange of experience. In addition, work is being done on the interoperability of the state-specific OER repositories and platforms so that the supply of OER at universities can be increased.

CONTACT:

https://www.oer-repo-ag.de/kontakt/

WEBSITE:

https://www.oer-repo-ag.de/

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Work Groups

OER Production and Programmes WG

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:

The OER Production and Programmes WG aims to promote OER production at universities.

The WG met for the first time at the end of 2022. The second meeting of the WG took place on 27.01.2023.

CONTACT:

Do you have any comments, questions or would you like to participate in the working group? Then please contact Peter Rempis (peter.rempis@uni-tuebingen.de).

 

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Work Groups

OER Policy and Governance WG

Contact:

Do you have questions, comments or would you like to participate in the WG? Please contact Markus Deimann (markus.deimann@rub.de) or Konrad Faber (faber@vcrp.de).

Documentation of previous meetings of the OER Policy and Governance WG Meeting

18.10.2022, 10:00 A.M. TO 12:00 P.M.: KNOER INTERNAL PRELIMINARY MEETING
  • In this preliminary meeting, KNOER-internal preliminary considerations for the WG OER Policy and Governance were made.
15.03.2023, 10:00 A.M. TO 12:00 P.M.: 1ST MEETING OF THE AG
  • Participants of the meeting: Alexander Claus, Bildungsportal Sachsen; Markus Deimann, ORCA.nrw; Daniel Diekmann, ORCA. nrw; Martin Ebner, TU Graz; Konrad Faber, Virtual Campus Rhineland-Palatinate; Martina Gerhard, Duale Hochschule Gera-Eisenach/eTeach-Kontaktstelle; Marc Göcks, Multimedia Kontor Hamburg; Sophia Hercher, HessenHub; Frank Homp, University of Bielefeld; Alexander Kobusch, FH Bielefeld; Noreen Krause, twillo; Martin Lentz, Virtual Campus Rhineland-Palatinate; Sandra Schön, TU Graz; Jacqueline Schulz, University of Jena.
  • Contents of the meeting:
    • During the first public meeting of the OER Policy and Governance WG, Sandra Schön and Martin Ebner (Graz University of Technology) first gave a brief input, followed by Alexander Kobusch (Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences) and Frank Homp (Bielefeld University). The input by Sandra Schön and Martin Ebner addressed developments and activities in the context of OER in the Austrian higher education area, while Alexander Kobusch and Frank Homp addressed fundamental aspects such as the purpose of OER policies or development processes in their input in addition to the current status in NRW.
    • Following the input phase, organisational aspects were discussed, which included, among others
      • Collecting questions and current topics as possible content for the WG;
      • The objectives and working methods of the WG as well as possible members;
      • The further procedure.
  • Results of the meeting:
    • Frequency of WG meetings: The WG meets once per quarter in a 3-month rhythm. The next date in the period June 2023 will be communicated promptly to all participants of the WG meeting and furthermore on the KNOER website.
    • Possible contents for the WG: Overview/monitoring of developments in the field of policy/governance in the DACH region; impact of policies.
    • Goal: Possibility for exchange in a protected space
    • Possible members & their contributions to the WG: The WG is open to all interested parties. In the meeting it was suggested to involve the “chairs” of the other OER “strongholds” or OER portals (https://open-educational-resources.de/oer-repositorien-und-referatorien-an-hochschulen/).

References from the session:

  • Ebner, Martin; Schön, Sandra; Ebner, Markus; Edelsbrunner, Sarah; Hohla, Katharina (2022). Potential Impact of Open Educational Resources and Practices for Good Teaching at Universities. The OER Impact Assessment at TU Graz. In: Michael E. Auer, Andreas Pester, Dominik May (Eds.), Learning with Technologies and Technologies in Learning. Experience, Trends and Challenges in Higher Education, Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, Volume 45, Cham: Springer, pp. 79-99. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-04286-7_5
  • Ebner, Martin, Orr, Dominic and Schön, Sandra. “OER Impact Assessment: A framework for higher education institutions and beyond. Approaches to assess the impact of Open Educational Resources” Open Education Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 2022, pp. 296-309. https://doi.org/10.1515/edu-2022-0018
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News

Cooperation network kn-oer.de mentioned in the recommendations of the German Council of Science and Humanities on digitisation in teaching and learning

At the beginning of July 2022, the German Council of Science and Humanities published the comprehensive paper with recommendations on digitisation in teaching and studies. It clearly addresses the great potential of digitisation to improve the quality and flexibility of teaching. The Federal Government and the Länder are called upon to establish a cross-Länder infrastructure with a focus on open educational materials (OER). In this way, teaching and learning materials can be shared and further developed across university and state borders with legal protection. The cooperation network KN-OER, an association of seven federal states with their platforms, is addressed here:

  • Baden-Württemberg: Central Repository for Open Educational Resources (ZOERR)
  • Hamburg: Multimedia Kontor
  • Hesse: HessenHub
  • North Rhine-Westphalia: Open Resources Campus NRW (ORCA.nrw)
  • Rhineland-Palatinate: Virtual Campus (VCRP)
  • Saxony: Education Portal
  • soon also Thuringia: eTeach Network

With OER, teaching and learning materials can be used free of charge, adapted to one’s own needs and disseminated further. Access to education is considerably simplified through OER and lifelong learning is also possible independently of formal education programmes. Free access means that materials can be effectively checked for their quality.

With a special search index for OER, those materials that best fit one’s own requirements can be identified from the abundance of available materials. The state portals are committed to ensuring that materials are not only available in the long term, but that they can also be easily updated. In this way, collections of OER materials can be built up that are particularly relevant for basic subjects.

In order to use the potential of OER more comprehensively than before, work is being done on the interoperability of the platforms. For example, in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, work is being done on the technical connection of the state portals ORCA.nrw and OPENEDU-RLP with the platforms of the universities. This enables teachers to integrate OER from the state portal into their courses in a low-threshold manner.

The development of the cross-Länder OER infrastructure requires not only human but also financial resources, which have so far been distributed very unevenly across the Länder. From the perspective of higher education teaching, a further alignment or harmonisation of conditions is a central educational policy goal. With an infrastructure fund for OER repositories and interfaces, the federal government could support in the sense of the subsidiarity principle. Following on from the BMBF-funded “OER-Info” programme, a nationwide service and information centre could coordinate and make visible the state of knowledge and development on OER in higher education.

Contact person:

PD Dr. Markus Deimann
Management

Office of the State Portal ORCA.nrw
Location: Ruhr University Bochum
O-Werk
Suttner-Nobel-Allee 4
44803 Bochum

E-mail: Markus.Deimann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Phone: + 49 (0) 234/32-26143

Dr. Konrad Faber
Management

Virtual Campus Rhineland-Palatinate
Erwin-Schrödinger-Str. Building 57
D-67663 Kaiserslautern

E-mail: faber@vcrp.de
Tel: +49 (0) 631/205-4948

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News

Greeting from Minister Hoch on the founding of KNOER

“I am pleased that with the establishment of a cross-border network, an important basis for the more intensive exchange of open educational materials across national borders could be laid. The increasing digitization of university teaching, which has picked up speed again in the course of the Corona pandemic, and the free licensing of digital teaching materials makes more educational offers possible for everyone! With the establishment of a cooperation network, an important stage was reached in the efforts of the federal states and their institutions for digital teaching to better network their OER platforms in the future and to exchange innovative teaching ideas more intensively. Open educational materials are an important driver of innovation for the dissemination of new learning and teaching ideas in university teaching. The cross-state networking of the OER platforms means that the pool of available OER materials in the individual federal states can be expanded more than if the states were to go it alone, and the variety of innovative ideas also increases. I am particularly pleased that the Virtuelle Campus Rheinland-Pfalz (VCRP) has taken over the chair of the cooperation network together with ORCA.nrw. The Virtuelle Campus Rheinland-Pfalz recognized the added value of OER early on and has been involved in this area for a long time. With the support of the state, the Virtuelle Campus Rheinland-Pfalz has set up an OER platform and is constantly developing it, advises universities on the provision of OER materials and recently launched an OER program to develop digital teaching materials created during the pandemic. I wish the cooperation network every success in its work, thank the institutions involved for their commitment and hope that the network will continue to grow in the future!”

Yours, Clemens Hoch

Minister for Science and Health in Rheinland-Pfalz

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