“Synergies between Open Education and Open Science: OER Development, Projects and Trends in Austria” is the title of the Open Ed 2021 presentation by Martin Ebner, Claudia Hackl, and Sandra Schon. They described the 8 ambitions of the European Union and their open science initiative. Schon spoke about embedding open science skills early on and equipping researchers with open science practices like open data and open education. In Austria, Schon mentioned, they are implementing open access, open data initiatives with the establishment of technical infrastructure and training. Hackl talked about the development of resources and OER MOOCs in the EU. It was interesting to learn how OER gradually became a part of policy and initiatives. Schon talked about digitization programs funded by the Austrian ministry. Two Australian universities developed policies and described how OER should be used at the institution as well as the philosophy. Ebner described these policies and their impact. Open Education Austria is a project of Austrian universities from several Austrian universities with six cooperation partners. Their OER Hub offers users a searchable connected database to “facilitate the use and development of OER.” They implement the requirement of the FAIR data principles: findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable. Open Education Austria also has an OER certification program for people and higher education institutions. I would love to get OER certification! Their website is: openeducation.at I learned about open education in Austria during this session.
