Open Educational Practices and Resources: The OLCOS Roadmap 2012

Abstract

In the last few years, Open Educational Resources (OER) have gained much attention; for example, due to the extensive media coverage on the Open Courseware initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the work of ever more organisations that promote the use of Creative Commons licenses, and the success of Open Source software-based systems such as Moodle in the educational sector. However, in order to further benefit from Open Educational Resources it is necessary to gain a much clearer understanding of the role OER can play in changing educational practices. Therefore, the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) project, which is a Transversal Action under the European eLearning Programme, has produced a roadmap to provide educational decision makers with orientation and recommendations on how to foster the further development and use of OER. This article provides a brief overview of the context and focus of the OLCOS roadmap 2012, explains why it gives priority to open educational practices rather than resources, and presents some drivers/enablers and inhibitors of open educational practices and resources. Furthermore, it summarises some of the recommendations of the roadmap report. The article also mentions and provides links to forty selected projects and resources that illustrate the richness and diversity of the current initiatives in open educational and related resources and practices.