Exemplar 5: Supportive Environments

Triggering large-scale sustainable and scalable changes requires shared efforts and focused actions, engaging all stakeholders, national, international and regional along with learners, teachers, educational policy makers and research communities.

Embedded value

The key for success depends on governments, but each stakeholder in the educational arena has a crucial role to play in co-creating these mechanisms. The government’s role is to enable and facilitate.

New technologies, policy experimentation and services for OER are results of a diverse portfolio of stakeholders in the educational sector and can often solve big problems. However, without the institutional capacity to support, maintain, and manage these actions, big problems can grow in both size and complexity.

A functional supportive environment is a placeholder to promote best practices and support exchanges across countries. It can deliver benefits from all economies and interoperability, thus avoiding fragmentation.

The supporting environment is needed if government wants to develop, test and run pilot projects before mainstreaming them into the educational system. It can support the deployment and availability of mechanisms through financial support, public-private partnerships and recommendations.

Key Achievements

• Created an appealing environment where stakeholders feel comfortable exchanging ideas
• Establishment of UNESCO Chair in OER
• Launch of open education
• Launch of wider initiatives like OpeningupSlovenia
• Fast lane to government and other stakeholders
• Creation of stable and supportive mechanisms for OER agenda

Challenges

• To set-up an inter-government and cross-government projects, coalitions and alliances
• To create an operations agenda based on the Ljubljana Action Plan
• To launch a Dynamic Coalition in OER with the purpose of mainstreaming OER in participating countries and disseminate benefits to all stakeholders

Focus

• Alignment – Dynamic coalition OER coordinated by Slovenia which aims to have a set of stakeholders to rapidly understand OER mainstreaming.
• Compliance – Support teachers’ professional development through open online courses and OER, innovative teaching and learning environments.
• Productivity – Platforms of partnerships and alliances of all stakeholders at local, regional, national, EU, international level.
• Confidence – International events to provide upgrades of strategies and visions.
• Viability – Supportive environment for schools and other training institutions, e-services; leadership and pedagogical support.
• Quality – It is critical that when an OER service becomes available, it lasts forever and is of high quality.

Featured Exemplars:

• Overview and introduction
• Policy Actions
• Capacity Building
• Services and Content
• Research and Development
• Supportive Environments

Interested in collaboration? Contact: borut.campelj@gov.si