Open education and open educational resources: Recommendations

1) UNESCO's Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (2019) is an international guideline on open educational resources.

2) Declaration on Open Science and Research 2020–2025

• The Declaration for Open Science and Research presents a common vision for the Finnish research community. This vision states that open science and research should be integrated in researchers’ everyday work and support not only the effectiveness of research outputs but also the quality of research. Furthermore, the vision sees the Finnish research community as an international forerunner in open science and research.

3) National Policies on Open Science

4) Open education and educational resources:

• Open education and educational resources. National policy and executive plan by the higher education and research community for 2021-2025. Policy components 1 (Open access to educational resources) and 2 (Open educational practices)

5)  Policy for open scholarship

• The policy for open scholarship brings together the previous policies and recommendations made within the framework of the Open Science and Research Coordination. The policy focuses on the culture of open scholarship of an organisation. In addition, previous policies will be supplemented with perspectives related to services, incentives, and interaction.
  • The policy also consider openness in learning. "The organization recommends that creators of open eductional resources provide comprehensive metadata for the Open Educational Resources library." p. 13

Tampere University

Open Science Policy 2024: Tampere University is a responsible and open societal influencer and partner (in Finnish and in English)

Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) has adopted its open science policy "Policy and principles for open RDI activities", which is quite similar to the University's policy.  tamk-avointkio.pdf (tuni.fi)

• Open educational resources are collected nationally in the Library of Open Educational Resources.
• The learning environments and digital tools used in the Tampere University community are described in the model, which also includes the Library of Open Educational Resources.

• Content creators are recommended to store resources and metadata in the Library of Open Educational Resources. It is possible to store only metadata and links to the original resources.
• Creative Commons licenses are commonly used for open publishing. Open educational resources are often recommended to use CC-BY and CC-BY-SA licenses. The license should be indicated on the resource and metadata.
• The Creative Commons licenses in Tampere University Library's guide
• National Recommendation on Copyright Issues to be Considered in Open Publishing of Educational Resources
• According to David Wiley's 5R model for educational resources to be open, they should be able to be retained, reused, revised, remixed, and redistributed.
• It is important to add the Tampere University community affiliation information (i.e., organizational information where the material was created) to the description metadata of educational resources.
• Include information on the accessibility of materials in the description metadata.

• The National Open Educational Resources Quality Criteria is a checklist-style quality framework intended to assist creators, users, and their organizations in evaluating open educational resources.
• Teachers can act as peer reviewers: Library of Open Educational Resources (aoe.fi) You can log in and review other educational resources.

• Accessibility is about considering the diversity of people in the design and implementation of web services. An accessible service is one that everyone can use equally. Accessibility improves inclusivity in digital environments.
• The National Guide on the Accessibility of Open Educational Resources

Promoting openness in learning requires time and expertise from teachers. When assessing merits, attention should be paid not only to the quantity of published open educational resources but also to their quality, impact, degree of openness, collaboration, as well as the workload and expertise required for the merit. The national Open Educational Resources Quality Criteria can be used as a tool for reviewing high-quality open educational resources. Teachers can develop and promote their own expertise by examining levels of teacher competence.

The merits of openness in learning and educational materials can be divided into:

•         open educational resources,
•         research outputs on open learning,
•         fully open courses and lectures, and
•         open learning activities.

The Merits in terms of openness of learning and educational materials can be recorded in, for example, the following.

•         CV (e.g. TENK CV template),
•         a teaching portfolio,
•         the organisation's research information system (TUNICRIS),
•         researcher profiles (e.g. ORCID researcher identifier).

The National Recommendation: How to gain merit from OE and OER?