The Dutch Case with OER: an Emerging National Strategy
To wrap up the Open Education Conference, Fred Mulder, Rector, Open Universiteit Nederland, presented his keynote address on the open educational resource (OER) initiatives that are happening in the Netherlands. In addition to his position at Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNL), Mulder is also the Chair of the OER Taskforces of the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) and the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE). What was particularly interesting about Mulder’s talk was how quickly the Netherlands has been able to adopt, at first, OERs at the institutional level, and then at the national level.
With over 20,000 students, the Open Universiteit Nederland is one of 14 highly-reputed universities in the country, steadily ranking 2nd in national student surveys. The University has a specific focus on Lifelong, Open, and Flexible (LOF) learning, and offers Bachelor, Master, and PhD programs fully accredited from seven schools. In 2006, OUNL became the first educational institution to implement OER initiatives in the Netherlands. The objectives of the OER initiatives were to lower the threshold for access to formal higher education and widen and increase participation in higher education. What happened was that 25 open courses were launched. With the benefit of very intensive media attention, close to 1,000,000 unique visitors visited the website, with 10% of the visitors reporting that the OER initiative had influenced their decision to commit to some form of higher education.
The success of Open Universiteit Nederland inspired the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) to launch its own OER initiative in 2007. TU Delft began to offer parts of its Masters in Science courses online as OERs. 10 courses were published in 2007, and that number has increased to 31 courses in June 2009. Future plans include increasing the OpenCourseWare visibility for TU Delft students, and to expand the course selection to include 1st year courses.
Following what OUNL and TU Delft accomplished, November 2008 saw the launch of the national Spinoza Series. It was seen as an initiative where eminent Dutch researchers would bring their body of thought and views to the broader public by developing and offering OER courses. A collaboration between the OUNL and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the Spinoza Series has so far offered two courses: Medieval Literature and Logic in Action. Another national initiative which recently launched was the development of Networked Open Polytechnic (NOP). NOP was established as a second track through higher education for lifelong, open, and flexible learning in a professional context (not to establish a new entity).
The final OER initiative which Mulder presented was Wikiwijs. Launched in December 2008 by the Minister of Education as a national OER initiative, Wikiwijs was borne out of the observed success of the previous OER initiatives. With students paying on average 800 euros per year for textbooks, the Dutch parliament implemented a recent policy that changed the system so that the government is now paying the bill for textbooks. The government is looking to make more use of OERs to achieve the new schoolbooks for free policy, if possible. Such an effort will decrease the financial burden that students face, and may encourage more people to continue on with education.
Wikiwijs aims to stimulate the development and use of OERs, improve access to both open and closed digital learning materials, support teachers in arranging their own learning materials, increase teacher involvement in development and use of OERs, extend options for customized education, and increase the quality of education through more flexible and up-to-date learning materials. The initial focus was on secondary schools, primary schools, and community colleges, but the initiative will include all educational sectors in one form or another.
Wikiwijs will be an open internet-based platform for teachers, and act as a repository of OERs and a referatory to digital educational resources, where teachers can find open content materials. Wikiwijs refers to the philosophy of Wikipedia (using the wisdom of the crowds), but is not referring to the functionality or user interface of Wikipedia. The goal is to launch a beta version in December 2009 with three focus subjects to the secondary, primary, and community college sectors. By September 2010, Wikiwijs hopes to start rolling out OER materials in other subjects and other educational sectors. There will be no payment for creating, editing, or acquiring OER learning materials, and all materials on Wikiwijs will be published under a CC-by Creative Commons license. Wikiwijs will also use existing components of OUNL and other publicly funded educational organizations for activities that can be logically connected to the Wikiwijs project.
The Wikiwijs initiative is mind boggling, given that most educational institutions have trouble encouraging just a few of their teachers to develop and use OERs. As has been shown at the conference, many open education advocates are still struggling to get teachers to by in to the idea of making their learning materials open to everyone. With the support of the Ministry of Education, the Netherlands looks to be on its way to showing the country, as well as the world, the true power and meaning of open education.