Open Educational Quality Initiative (OPAL)

Project websites

Public website: http://www.oer-quality.org

What research questions the project addresses, aims & themes

The overall aim of OPAL is to support Open Educational Practice. This will lead to improvement of the effectiveness of teaching and learning by enhancing the quantity and quality of Open Educational Resources that can be incorporated into higher education and further education provision.

Definition of open educational practices: Open educational practices (OEP) is defined as use of OER to raise the quality of education and training and innovate educational practices on institutional, professional and individual level.

Research questions:

What evidence is there of an emerging practice around Open Educational Resources?
Can we define and identify a model of Open Educational Practice?
What are the dimensions that help to define Open Educational Practice?
What actions are available to sustain open approaches to education through shared practice?

How the research questions are addressed by the project (methodology and activity/environment)

The project carried out a phased series of studies and validation processes to develop a shared view on quality and practice in the use of Open Educational Resources.

These included:

Identifying key projects and contributors across the world;
Carrying out a series of consultations to build a set of guidelines and guidance to develop Open Educational Practice
Establishing a consultative group on Quality and Innovation through Open Educational Practice
Building a maturity model for Open Educational Resources
Developing a set of guidelines shared through a public facing website
Holding a series of well-attended events to build community and refine results
Develop a European Award for Innovation and Quality through OER.

Findings and outputs

The findings were developed through an iterative process with much of the work supported directly by The Open University team using the cloudworks environment. These were shared openly as the project progressed and resulted in:

A set of case studies were developed in collaboration with OLnet researchers and shared as a basis for identifying practice: OPAL OER Case Studies: http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2085
Initial dimensional view of the components of Open Educational Practice http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2086
A set of video interviews that captured expert input in develop guidelines for OEP:http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2177 combined with a recorded virtual meetinghttp://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2208 and a research meeting held at UNESCO http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2209 to refine and capture the ideas.

A public-facing website was developed towards the end of 2011 to help share findings and offer a sustainable path to those working on Open Educational Practice.

This sites supports:

Guides for Open Educational Practice, guidelines and roadmaps that are focussed for the learner, professional, organisational leaders and policy makers. http://www.oer-quality.org/publications/guide/
A best practice clearinghouse that extends the original case studies to enable the sharing of best practice drawing from the studies and from community contributions. http://www.oer-quality.org/clearinghouse/browse/
A set of awards presented in 2011 to highlight those who influence policy, design learning contexts and adopt good practice as institutions. The awards were present at 2011 OnlineEduca http://www.icde.org/en/icde_news/Open+educational+practices+recognized+through+OPAL+Awards.b7C_wJnG21.ips

Project impact

The project significantly raised the profile of "Open Educational Practices" as a concept that augmented the more established view of Open Educational Resources as online content that can be used and reused. The partnership combined strong research base with those who are able to draw attention to results and feed them into policy. In this role EFQUEL, UNESCO and ICDE were able to use the work of OPAL to underpin their aims of influencing policy and aiding innovation.

The project achieved impact through:

Close working with the EU commission that was well received
Establishing a high visibility and profile through events and awards
Developing an area of work that is now recognised by others working on Open Education
Significant stakeholder engagement in the process of developing guidance
Integration with other OER proejcts and activities within the OU and ouside the OU
Presentations and papers to show both the research behind the ideas and the outcomes of the project
A sustainable website to provide guides at a critical time in the development of approaches to the use of Open Educational Resources.