Training visit - Practice and Principles of OER in EU, Ljubljana, September 1-3, 2014
BAEKTEL training visit for Western Balkan partner countries regarding practice and principles in development of OER in EU was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 1-3 of September 2014, gathering representatives from all WB partners: University of Ljubljana, University of Belgrade, University Mediterranean, University of Banja Luka, University of Niš, University of Kragujevac and University of Tuzla as well as representatives from NIS Gazprom Njeft and ArcelorMittal Prijedor.
At the beginning of the first day, University of Ljubljana presented their video OER materials as an example of good practice for OER development. Partners discussed the role of the videos in the existing curricula, their use among students, as well as the problems of using commercial software. The issue of marketing contents within OER materials from the industry after allowing its open use was also addressed. Besides among students, the OER material that will be produced in BAEKTEL initiative will also be used for educational purposes in the sense of lifelong learning and within the industry and universities.
All present partners agreed that the final output is more important than a standardized method of preparing OER materials. However, defining the methodology of preparing OER materials is also of great importance. Hence, a training session regarding the preparation and proper licensing of OER materials was suggested.
The participants in the DEV 1.3 report, University of Kragujevac, University Mediterranean and University of Tuzla presented the legal and technological conditions for publishing OER in their countries. They all agreed that there should be no legal obstacles for the preparation and publication of OER documents, however, the required technological conditions have not been met yet and additional problem lies in the lack of awareness of the existence and benefits of OER.
University of Banja Luka presented their activities related to WP2, which consists of setting procedures and guidelines for publishing OER in the WB region, preparing workshops on regulations of publishing OER, choosing the conceptual design of the ICT solution for the BAEKTEL OER framework and improving the BAEKTEL ICT infrastructure.
As a training activity regarding Dev 2.3, University of Belgrade presented a paper form that included a subset of metadata which will be used for documenting OER materials that will be created within the project. All present partners discussed the possibilities of improving the metadata structure and also the best ways of listing references. UB presented the progress on http://meta.baektel.eu website, central location for advanced multilingual search of all published materials. There were some constructive suggestions from partners on improving the website.
University of Belgrade explained the problems regarding the purchase of the needed equipment and presented modified timeline for steps for public procurement which refers to DEV 2.4.
University of Belgrade also gave a presentation on the activities within WP3. They showed the architecture possibilities for the implementation of BAEKTEL WB nodes where edX platform will be installed on every partner institution. With this approach, there will be created the network of MOOC platforms, whilst there would only be one central repository for metadata. Also, they addressed the problem of user authentication and possibilities for single sign on (SSO) implementation.
A discussion on combining the different aspects and expertise from both faculty employees and industry employees in creation of single educational content followed. The idea is to try and produce at least a few documents with the collaboration of people within the same field of expertise, covering both the theoretical and the practical aspects at the same time.
Photo gallery is available on official facebook page [link].
