OER for all – Theses on the conclusion of the OERinfo project at DIPF Frankfurt/Main

As a member of the advisory board of the “Information Center for Open Educational Resources” (OERinfo), Prof. Dr. Thomas Köhler, Director of the Media Center of the TU Dresden, calls for increased support for the development and use of OER (see: OER_Final presentation_201102_final.pdf (open-educational-resources.de):

"With the ban on large parts of face-to-face teaching in schools, the demand for OER was particularly boosted. Not only students, but also teachers and teacher trainees have been looking for easily accessible learning objects of the best possible quality. As paradoxical as it may seem: The Covid 19 pandemic has led to a new intensity of cooperation between learners and teachers in the context of school, expanding the physical learning location of school into the virtual space. In some cases, even parents have been included in this new type of learning location cooperation - or have become involved with the aim of providing (digital) learning objects and corresponding teaching tools. In this respect, the need for OER as well as its usefulness is clearer than ever. However, existing questions about the production and provision of quality-assured OER are also taking on new relevance. This concerns the question of authorship, the question of findability and also that of institutional integration. Impulses and binding regulations are needed here more urgently than ever:

1. All teachers must be aware of OER and this also relates to the question of legally secure
   Authorship.
2. Students and teachers must have permanent access to these OER at all learning locations – ideally with the smartphone in their school bag.
3. Ideally, AI-based technologies will help find the right OER for exactly the learners for whom they are suitable.
4. OER thrive on the large number of committed authors, including teachers and students.
5. Contemporary OER also arouse parents' interest in the subjects their children are learning, thus opening up new perspectives for the effectiveness of schools beyond traditional teaching."

The Media Center of the TU Dresden has been supporting the development and use of open educational resources with a series of projects for several years. A list of current projects can be found here: Projects — Media Center (MZ) — TU Dresden (tu-dresden.de)