Dr. Robert Farrow from The Open University (UK) spoke at Open Ed 2021 about “Building the 21st Century OER Ecosystem.” ENCOURE+ (European Network for Catalysing Open Resources in Education, www.encoreproject.eu) is a “Knowledge Alliance project funded by the European Commission under Erasmus+” and focuses on impact and sharing innovative practices in different communities. Several partners were listed on a slide including groups in Norway, Germany, the UK, Ireland, and Italy. some of the consortium members manage H5P, and I am curious to learn more about that. Farrow mentioned they work on OER and support the five Rs of OER: retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. The project has an OER Innovation Briefing on their website that describes OER benefits and research. The benefits of OER were listed, and Farrow talked about how OER in Europe: the map of OER in Europe showed lots of spots of activity. However, Farrow explained that OERs are often not connected and there are linguistic, regional, and administrative challenges. ENCOURE+ is interested in “structuring the value proposition of OER for different stakeholders.” What is an OER ecosystem? Farrow shared a graphic of the ENCORE+ Ecosystem with circles and communities noted. The idea was to address five key challenges including the fragmentation of OER system in Europe, strengthening collaboration and interoperability among European OER repositories, supporting the development of policies and strategies to support OER development, ensuring the quality of OER, and ensuring innovation through sustainable business models. The ecosystem has communities of practice focusing on different aspects. ENCORE+ stakeholder work presented by Farrow highlighted the gaps in open learning cultures. the stakeholder mapping methodology used surveys of 380 participants followed by expert interviews. More than 80% of leaders (n=59), explained Farrow, knew about OER. Farrow shared that there were strong cultural and ethical reasons for using OER. Farrow reported that there is more awareness of OER and its use in business. Farrow showed the “Diffusion of Innovations” from Rogers, 2003 to distinguish early adopted and laggards. Farrow also spoke about the SAMR Model for Technology Integration with substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition. This framework was applied to Open Textbooks. The last part of the session was about business model strategies: defender-like and prospector-like strategies were used. Open Innovation was described as sharing as much as possible .” The ENCOURE+ Innovation Pivot seeks to create an OER innovation evaluation framework that is based on theory and model of innovation. Farrow also explained using case studies of OER to enhance the value proposition and publishing innovation briefings every six months that include examples and research. The ENCORE+ circles are Innovation and business models, policies and practice, quality circle, and OER technology circle. They are all free events for “anyone who wants to have input.” I love how each circle is developing a position paper that is open! I didn’t know about ENCORE+ and learned about their ecosystem!
