Open educational resources – the next step for Swedish higher education institutions

Wilhelm Widmark
Photo: Cecilia Burman

In the transition to an open scientific system, SUHF plays a crucial guiding role, not least through the Association's Roadmap for Open Science, consisting of recommendations aimed at Swedish higher education institutions to promote an open science system. The expansion of the guidelines to include OER:s is seen as a positive development by Wilhelm Widmark, Library director and Senior Advisor to the President for open science at Stockholm University.

"Going from focusing primarily on open access to scientific publications and more recently on open research data, we need to take a broader approach to the open science issue and also expand to open educational resources."

"It's great that SUHF has been so quick to incorporate the new recommendations into its roadmap, and here at Stockholm University we need to review our policy on open science and incorporate the recommendation there as well," says Wilhelm Widmark.

OER:s can help to develop teaching materials

An open educational resource can be anything from a recorded lecture to a textbook published with an open license, to a Powerpoint presentation or a module in a learning platform. One who has worked extensively with open educational resources, both in sharing his own educational resources openly and using others' openly accessible resources, is Christophe Premat, lecturer in French and associate professor at Stockholm University.

Christophe Premat.
Photo: Jonas Collin

"From a pedagogical point of view, OER:s can help others formulate research questions or develop teaching materials, and contribute informally to a dialogue between us researchers and teachers. But I also see that when you reuse a resource, even though you practically always need to adapt it to your own context, you don't need to reinvent the wheel, which helps freeing up time that can be spent on students' specific questions, for example," he says.

"I think it's great that the recommendation has been added; it endorses the research community and contributes to a scientific dialogue. Open science has become a clear line here in Sweden, promoting the knowledge society, and Stockholm University has become a pioneer in some issues. But it's probably necessary to give different higher education institutions time to think about how to work with it."

Christophe Premat primarily works in the repository Figshare – where Stockholm University has a certain portal for the university's researchers, teachers, and students – to publish his own educational resources that he wants to share openly.

Is there need for a specific infrastructure for OER:s, which can be categorised and shared with the whole of Sweden, or the whole world?

"It would be very convenient, but the risk is that an enormous amount of metadata about the educational resources is published. But it can definitely be worth trying, says Christophe Premat.

Stockholm University Library’s Learning support team works with teaching and OER:s within the library's own areas, such as information literacy, and are also welcoming the new guidelines.

Anna Stigell
Photo: Cecilia Burman

"It is great that open educational resources are finally 'put on the map.' The library has both experience in promoting access to open science and in providing support to teachers and programs, says Anna Stigell, business developer and coordinator of the Learning Support team."

"I see that the library can have an important role to play. For example, we can contribute with support for licensing of educational resources, such as CC licenses. The long-term goal is for teachers, students, and citizens to be able to find open educational resources easily and quickly," says Anna Stigell.

In addition to the recommendations in SUHF's roadmap, there is also guidance for the implementation of it, with concrete suggestions for measures and resources needed at the institutions in the transition to a completely open scientific system (see fact box below).

How will Stockholm University continue to work on the issue of open educational resources, and what will be the library's role?

"We will begin to look at what relevant support functions exist at the university, both in terms of services and infrastructure, and the library will of course be involved in that work. We already have the open access publisher Stockholm University Press, and some educational textbooks are published openly there, which is part of open educational resources. We will continue to work on that issue," says Wilhelm Widmark.

Text: Julia Milder