Open educational resources in Europe: A triptych of actions to support participation in higher education. - German Education Server

Kirschner, Paul; Varvick, Peter; Dorp, Kees-Jan van; Lane, Andrew

Open educational resources in Europe: A triptych of actions to support participation in higher education.

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"In contrast to the face-to-face learning of campus based universities and the focus on traditional students, distance teaching universities focus on a mix of distance learning, e-learning, open learning, virtual mobility, learning communities, and the integration of earning and learning. In doing so, they are taking a leading role in helping to increase and widen participation in lifelong open and flexible learning in higher education by non-traditional groups. This paper discusses three leading-edge European Open Educational Resource initiatives [1) EADTU - Multilingual Open Resources for Independent Learning (MORIL); 2) The United Kingdom Open University: OpenLearn; 3) OpenER: The Open University of the Netherlands]. The initiatives are special in nature and differ from the offers of traditional universities in the sense that they: consist of pedagogically-rich learning materials, specifically designed and developed for distance learning and intended for independent self-study; are compiled in the national languages, with the EADTU initiative being multilingual, reflecting the European dimension; and, support and are supported by the policies of the national governments and the European Commission." (Abstract by the authors of the paper).