Information centre OER – Information, transfer and networking for Open Educational Resources

Project Description

The OER information centre offers a thematically specific online platform that provides the public at large and specialised target groups with comprehensive information regarding Open Educational Resources. Moreover, OERinfo delivers the current state of art to practitioners, hosts information on best-practice examples, and reflects the diversity of existing initiatives. The topic is being made broadly visible by interlinking contents, functionalities and information from relevant sources and media services offered by the German Education Server, the previous transfer centre OER and the Higher Education Library Centre in North-Rhine Westphalia (OER World Map/OER-Atlas), as an integrated, information-methodologically aligned and user-oriented internet platform. In view of also addressing potentially new target groups and presenting a comprehensive approach encompassing all areas in the field of lifelong learning, collaboration has been sought with stakeholders, interest groups and OER initiatives to develop information modules for target groups and domains that had so far been neglected.

A comprehensive knowledge base has thus been constructed, offering edited thematic dossiers and systematically structured collections of information, with an enhanced scope, owing to integrated multimedia formats (e.g. podcasts, videos, didactically processed online modules) and communication platforms that are enriched by Social Media applications. Moreover, the project targeted the support of collaboration and networking among different OER actors and initiatives by offering suitable communication instruments, accompanying workshops and public relations work of the OER information centre. In this context, one task of the project concerned documenting and comprising discussion processes and results in the BMBF funding line for “Raising Awareness and Qualifying OER Multipliers“, subject to a dialogue with funded projects.

In the second phase of the project, the focus of the further development and differentiation of the web platform was mainly on practical or application-oriented issues in the context of didactic-teaching use of freely licensed (digital) educational media. The active implementation of the OER paradigm in education and training has been further supported by workshops, training courses and digital tools.

Funding

The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Cooperations

• Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB)
• German Institute for Adult Education (DIE)
• North-Rhine Westphalia, University Library Centre (HBZ) NRW
• Institute for Media in Education – FWU – Institut für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht
• Agentur J&K, Transferstelle Open Educational Resources
• University of Duisburg-Essen

Project Management

Project Team

• Michaela Achenbach
• Dr. Sigrid Fahrer
• Susanne Grimm
• Doris Hirschmann
• Mathieu Papdo
• Dr. Christian Richter
• Hermann Schwarz

Project Details