Sustainability of Open Educational Resources - providing tools and services for adaptation: The Openscout Experience

Abstract

How can we achieve sustainability of Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are digital objects which can be freely accessed and used for educational purposes. Currently, there are millions of learning materials on the Web, some structured in repositories and databases, some just hidden on the Web as part of personal homepages. This seems very promising as it is possible to re-use existing materials and adapt them to specific needs. But the OER initiatives have not yet taken off. They neither achieved a critical mass of contributors nor have suitable business models been created in the large. Some barriers seem to remain; especially barriers that are related to lack of trust and awareness towards OER, but also regarding lack of support for individuals to adapt these materials for their own needs. In this paper we describe how the European project OpenScout addresses the latter issue: OpenScout provides access to OER for management and develops tools and services around OER to adapt and re-use the material to educators? and trainers? own context ? thus creating sustainable, collaborative usage settings.