Last night I watched the OERcamp session at Open Ed 2021. Tonight we watched “Supporting Professional Communities on OER: The Dutch Approach” presented by Lieke Rensink and Michel Jansen from SURF. Their recorded presentation featured both of them and a screen with animations and slides. Jansen mentioned that in the Netherlands OER is not as popular and they have adapted the UNESCO recommendations on OER. Jansen also shared a quote from the Dutch Ministry of Education that is an ambitious call to action: “My ambition is that by 2025 all lecturers at Dutch higher education institutions make their teaching material openly available.” The community in the Netherlands called SURF is a cooperative association, and Jansen & Rensink are charged with promoting OER. There are professional communities, a national OER community, and the international OER community, mentioned Jansen, and they explained their interactions and connections to the Dutch higher education community.
Rensink spoke about how collaboration becomes easier with access to professional communities. Some of these communities create OER. In the Netherlands, Rensink explained that 19 professional societies came together to think about OER. One example Rensink shared was a national community for nursing resources that includes common vocabulary and workflow. In 2020, SURF developed a roadmap for OER. Carissa Champlin, a researcher from the Delft University of Technology and member of the 4TU community, spoke about the importance of the community for sharing OER. Members are early adopters and creators of content, and Champlin explained that their community enhanced collaboration and created resources for their platform. Rensink explained that SURF supports collaborative OER projects between institutions and several special interest groups on OER. The communities focus on “building of knowledge and dissemination.” With different groups, SURF has developed roadmaps. Rensink shared that edusources is a platform supported by SURF to promote collaboration and sharing of resources. Jansen concluded by encouraging others to reach out and connect to create international collaborations and new sources of OER. The two presenters had a lot of fun making this recording! I also now want to spend some time visiting pages and OER resources on surf.nl!
