Europe

eMundus

MOOCs and virtual mobility - A project supported by the Erasmus Mundus programme of the European Commission

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Introduction

May of the European Union

The situation of open educational practices in Europe is an interesting mixture of national and regional initiatives, along with collaborations and projects working across many countries of Europe or simply within the European Union. POERUP and eMundus are two projects; there are many more such initiatives. This paper represents a fresh look at European open educational initiatives, policies, partnerships, projects, and collaborative activities, as well as inclusion of initiatives and policy issues of individual European countries.

For ease of reference, in many cases information is included in the form of a list with an added hyperlink, to lead to much more information.

Country/region ID card

Europe:

• European Union Factbook published by Central Intelligence Agency Library.
• Wikipedia entry for Europe

State of the art of Open Education

Open education policy developments (identified by POERUP)

• The Paris OER Declaration
• The European Commission’s Communication on Rethinking Education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes
• The European Commission's Communication entitled“Opening up Education: Innovative teaching and learning for all through new Technologies and Open Educational Resources”
• The POERUP-based paper on Suggestions on ten meta-principles for interventions
• The ‘Policy shift’ analysis for OER-related archetypes done in the UNESCO IITE paper onAlternative Models of Education Delivery
• Recommendations from the OPAL project[1]
• As was done in the presentation to the OER workshop just prior to Online Educa, by adapting the policy recommendations for virtual schools to what we now call OER/MOOC-based providers
• Scottish Open Education Declaration
• Wales Open Education Declaration of Intent
• OER Policies by country: Hungary, Spain, Poland (Digital School)

OER Initiatives

According to the POERUP interim report on each country, plus recent additions including one regional OER initiative in England (on the following country reports, scroll down to the section: ‘OER Initiatives’)

• Belgium
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Greece
• Hungary
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal[2]
• Romania
• Spain
• Sweden
• United Kingdom: OER Northwest Regional Network (England)
• Additional Spanish OER initiatives:
  • Acceso Abierto: portal analysing the situation of OER in Spain, has 3 search engines on OER [3]
  • BuscaRepositorios: Open Access repositories of academic, cultural and Research institutions in Spain [4]

MOOCs (originating in Europe)

• OpenUpEd Platform
• FutureLearn Platform (UK Open University and the British Broadcasting Corporation)
• Open Education Europa Portal
• Iversity Platform (Germany)
• "MOOCs in Spain" , report by the Telefónica Chair of UPF explaining the role of MOOCs in Spanish Higher Education [5]
• MiriadaX [6] Spanish-language distance learning resource, a reference in Spain and in Europe. Created by Universia and Telefonica Learning Services.
• UNIMOOV-aemprende: course platform oriented to entrepreneurship. [7]
• MOOC platforms from Spanish universities: National University of Distance Education  Polytechnic University of Valencia University of Granada  San Antonio Murcia University  University of the Basque Country 

Virtual mobility developments

• Erasmus+ - European Union programme for education, training, youth, and sport
• VMPass project – implementing recognition of virtual mobility and OER learning through a learning passport

Legal frameworks and regulations

• European Commission Education and Training
• European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL)
• UK: Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education – safeguards standards within higher education in the United Kingdom
• Spain: National Agency for the Evaluation of Quality and Recognition (ANECA): State Foundation for the improvement of the quality in Higher Education, through the evaluation, certification and recognition of learning Programs, teachers and learning institutions.

Barriers and success factors for the adoption of open practices of academic cooperation

UK: Quality assurance is regulated by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education as higher education depends on public funding. A barrier is that the QAA may hesitate to approve credits earned in universities outside the UK, for accreditation at UK universities because UK public funds pay for UK accreditation and cannot vouch for credits from non-UK institutions. A success factor is that UK universities have been participating in Erasmus programme for a long time, so probably the case can be made to acknowledge credit from other universities into UK universities under other cases in addition to Erasmus.

Main open education actors and networks in the region

• MENON Network – European research and innovation network
• OER Universitas (includes European and outside-Europe universities)
• Open Education Consortium (includes European and outside-Europe universities)
• WikiEducator

UK:

• Jisc
• Jorum – UK’s original OER repository
• Open University of UK
• Association for Learning Technology
• OER Conference series and its volunteer committee (started from SCORE – Support Centre for Open Resources in Education)

Spain

• National Distance Education University [8]

Role of international networks and initiatives in the country/region

• European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) – scholarship and research on open educational practices, regular conferences.

Examples of open education-enhanced Higher Education collaboration

Policy issues (RPL, credit transfer, recognition and quality assurance)

UK: Credit transfer: Each programme in each university has discretion to accept credits earned elsewhere, as credited to its own course. Mozilla OpenBadges is an example of an attempt to create a general and recognizable online accreditation which can be awarded for learning done online through a variety of providers.

Language and cultural issues (incl. discipline issues)

• Avicenna Virtual Campus – Science and Technology e-learning knowledge network – example of disciplines getting together across institutions even without common language OER repositories by disciplines with associated communities, such as HumBox– humanities repository, and iSpot – identify wildlife online
• XarxaMOOC [9] Introduction course for language specialization in Catalan-speaking universities. The Xarxa Vives d’Universitats is made of 21 universities of Spain, France, Italia and Andorra where the Catalan language has most infuence.

Virtual mobility dimension

VMPass project – working to create a learning passport to enable virtual mobility UK: Grade Point Average pilot and national discussion: This Higher Education Academy initiative includes 20 UK universities which are piloting grade point averages rather than the current degree classification scheme, for the purpose of increasing international comparability of degree results.

Technology issues (access, cost ...)

MOOC platforms (section 2.c above) represent attempts to offer a smooth learning environment to many people online. Their technological achievements and enhancements include machine-marked assessments. OpenLearn, the Open University UK’s original open-learning platform, which is both open access and open source.

Pedagogy issue (educational models behind, ways of sharing content, assessment methods ...)

• Conole’s 12-dimension MOOC classification scheme
• Donald Clark Taxonomy of 8 Types of MOOCs

Organisational issues (staff development, reward mechanisms ...)

• UK – Higher Education Academy

Sustainability issues (business models)

• Downes, S. 2007. Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects. 3. 29-44.