Open Up — How can we use digitalization for open education? An interim report from Lower Saxony and beyond

From the idea to the concrete project

Around the turn of the year 22/23, the idea was born to orga­nize a final con­fer­ence at the end of twillo’s first fund­ing phase. Under the unwieldy name “Fund­ing Phase 1 — Final Event”, the twillo team devel­oped the idea for Open Up and finally pitched it to the Lower Sax­ony Min­istry of Sci­ence and Cul­ture (MWK). With approval from all sides, the orga­ni­za­tion of the con­fer­ence could begin. For­tu­nately, the twillo team quickly found a main orga­nizer in Gabi Fahrenkrog, who was always able to main­tain an overview thanks to her expe­ri­ence at #vBiB. Noreen Krause, Prod­uct Owner at twillo, also empha­sizes this: “The diverse ideas just bub­bled over. It was good that with Gabi on board, the plan­ning and design had a mag­i­cal struc­ture.”

The hot phase

The ideas never stopped flow­ing and until shortly before the con­fer­ence, some­thing new was added again and again, as Sil­via Czer­win­ski from the team reports: “And then Britta came up with the bril­liant idea: what sym­bol­izes our value of sus­tain­abil­ity bet­ter than a jar of honey from regional bees? We were thrilled and hope­fully the speak­ers were too with their sweet gift.” So every­one, but espe­cially Gabi, was busy answer­ing ques­tions and reg­is­tra­tions, prepar­ing the give­aways and review­ing pre­sen­ta­tions sub­mit­ted at the last minute.

After the Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Falko Mohrs, had agreed to give a per­sonal greet­ing on site, he unfor­tu­nately can­celed. As an alter­na­tive, the Min­istry reli­ably pro­vided a video mes­sage from the Min­is­ter and the open­ing of the con­fer­ence was able to take place almost as planned. Joachim Schacht­ner, State Sec­re­tary at the Lower Sax­ony Min­istry of Sci­ence and Cul­ture, was also on hand to pro­vide insights into the work and views of the MWK dur­ing the first panel dis­cus­sion of the con­fer­ence.

Before Open Up could actu­ally open its doors, how­ever, it still had to be set up. A whole con­voy of help­ing hands from Osnabrück, includ­ing tech­ni­cal equip­ment, arrived to com­plete the exist­ing equip­ment and exper­tise in Hanover. Cam­eras and lights were moved back and forth in the Leib­nizsaal, cables were taped and a small con­trol room was installed at the back of the hall. For the online par­tic­i­pants, the online mod­er­a­tion team set up its work­sta­tion directly in the hall so that vir­tual dis­cus­sions could also take place and every­thing was finally ready for the con­fer­ence.

In the witches’ cauldron

Day 1: The weather was oppres­sive and, as it turned out, there is no air con­di­tion­ing in the Leib­nizhaus. Nev­er­the­less, the par­tic­i­pants and the team on site are in good spir­its and Open Up gets under­way. Despite some minor tech­ni­cal hic­cups, all par­tic­i­pants are wide awake and eager to dis­cuss right from the start, both online and on site, which is not only due to the con­stantly flick­er­ing flash of Britta Beut­nagel’s cam­era. After the pan­demic years, some seem very happy to be able to take part in a live event again, while oth­ers con­tinue to appre­ci­ate the online par­tic­i­pa­tion that has now become a habit.

It’s not just hot on site, there are also heated dis­cus­sions on and off the stage. How­ever, the OER com­mu­nity agrees on one point: OER is more about a shared mind­set than spe­cific resources. There needs to be bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion between dif­fer­ent areas of the uni­ver­sity, such as the library and admin­is­tra­tion. Acces­si­bil­ity experts are also impor­tant in order to meet the needs of a het­ero­ge­neous stu­dent body. Over­all, open edu­ca­tion offers a great oppor­tu­nity for uni­ver­si­ties to meet chang­ing require­ments, as the FFF (Fri­days for Future) gen­er­a­tion has dif­fer­ent ideas about uni­ver­sity life and learn­ing meth­ods than those tra­di­tion­ally prac­ticed. By focus­ing on self-directed learn­ing, the devel­op­ment of OER mate­ri­als and the con­sid­er­a­tion of sus­tain­abil­ity aspects, stu­dents can be actively involved in the edu­ca­tional process and new fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties can be opened up. Poli­cies and exam­i­na­tion reg­u­la­tions play an impor­tant role in firmly anchor­ing open edu­ca­tional prac­tice in uni­ver­sity struc­tures. Col­lab­o­ra­tion and exchange within the OER com­mu­nity are cru­cial in order to make the best pos­si­ble use of the poten­tial of open edu­ca­tion. Teach­ers could raise the inter­est of uni­ver­sity man­age­ment by address­ing the change in stu­dents’ under­stand­ing of learn­ing and the rep­u­ta­tional ben­e­fits for the uni­ver­sity. Open edu­ca­tion should be more closely linked to cur­ric­ula, and we as the OER com­mu­nity, as well as pol­i­cy­mak­ers and uni­ver­si­ties, need to con­tinue work­ing together to enable the tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture and the cre­ation of inter­op­er­a­ble OER por­tals. In addi­tion, edu­ca­tional progress could be mapped in a wal­let or port­fo­lio in order to rec­og­nize achieve­ments.

There was also a lot going on away from the stage. Sil­via Czer­win­ski and Timos Zdoupas from the team were out and about to cap­ture more voices: “Timos and I were really happy: in addi­tion to all the input and exchange, three par­tic­i­pants agreed to give us a short state­ment for the cam­era on the first day. You could tell how pas­sion­ate every­one was about OER and open edu­ca­tion. Great!” At the end of the first day, the atten­dees dis­perse to enjoy the weather a lit­tle longer before many of the local par­tic­i­pants come together for good food, drinks and infor­mal dis­cus­sions at the con­fer­ence din­ner in the Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the evening. The atmos­phere is excel­lent, the Aperol Spritz sweet­ens the evening and old and new con­tacts are cul­ti­vated.

Concentrated power for day two

In an almost friendly atmos­phere, every­one came together again on the sec­ond day and got down to busi­ness with con­cen­trated com­mu­nity power: together, they dis­cussed what the com­mu­nity wants and needs in order to win over OER stake­hold­ers and which mea­sures could give the OER move­ment a boost. Right at the begin­ning, Mar­cus Deimann enthu­si­as­ti­cally takes up the cud­gels for open edu­ca­tional infra­struc­tures, as their impor­tance for dig­i­tal uni­ver­sity teach­ing is immense: “We all want a sin­gle sign-on with an incred­i­ble com­plex­ity of ser­vices to be con­nected in order to make uni­ver­sity teach­ing future-proof. Plat­forms such as OER Lan­desportale help teach­ers to think about OER from the out­set and to sup­port the OERSI

makes it pos­si­ble to search numer­ous OER sources for teach­ing. Although the sin­gle sign-on has not yet been imple­mented, the OER com­mu­nity is deter­mined to make edu­ca­tion as easy as pos­si­ble for every­one.

Every­one agrees that clear frame­work con­di­tions for OER at uni­ver­si­ties are a major step towards sim­pli­fy­ing open edu­ca­tion. Because many teach­ers ask them­selves “How does my uni­ver­sity actu­ally deal with OER? What am I actu­ally allowed to license freely and what not?” It there­fore makes sense for uni­ver­si­ties to com­mit to OER them­selves. But how do you cre­ate a clear frame­work for OER and how do you start to cre­ate an OER pol­icy? Here are the recipes for suc­cess from the panel dis­cus­sion with Andrea Schlot­feld, Katja Scholz-Büring and Chahira Nouira and Anne Sennhenn as a sub­sti­tute for Chris­t­ian Ammer, who unfor­tu­nately had to can­cel his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the event:

• Win over the Exec­u­tive Board and all mem­bers through per­sonal con­vic­tion for an OER pol­icy.
• Projects can stim­u­late the cre­ation of an OER pol­icy with their project logic.
• Stay in the process of OER pol­icy cre­ation in an open dia­log about the prac­tice of open edu­ca­tion.
• We have to allow that there will be dif­fer­ent speeds.
• Make strate­gic use of the fact that the atti­tude towards OER is a pro­fil­ing fac­tor for uni­ver­si­ties. In the future, uni­ver­si­ties will com­pete more strongly for stu­dents. The key­words here are demo­graphic change and the FFF gen­er­a­tion: young peo­ple have dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions of learn­ing and sus­tain­abil­ity than we cur­rently exem­plify.
• Empha­size the idea of shar­ing in the pol­icy as well.
• Recruit fel­low cam­paign­ers and make OER suc­cess sto­ries vis­i­ble: Sim­ply try it out so that peo­ple notice that you are suc­cess­ful and are invited to con­fer­ences.
• And last but not least: I don’t have to rein­vent the wheel on my own. There are many places that help me. And I can then give that back.

It’s always sunny in Hanover

The con­clu­sion after two days of con­fer­ence: Growth with car­rots and sticks. Not sta­bi­liz­ing OER projects is the end of the line. There are too many addi­tional tasks in day-to-day busi­ness. OER is an ongo­ing task, because OER is not inno­v­a­tive. We need to reach a social con­sen­sus that “we share knowl­edge” so that shar­ing becomes a mat­ter of course. But per­haps we also need a bit of a “whip” in the direc­tion of using OER, not cre­at­ing it. And above all, we should think OER by design.

Dur­ing the lunch break, the twillo team decides to skip the last point of the day because a stage is being set up in front of the Leib­nizhaus as part of the Fête de la Musique, which is tak­ing place in Hanover that day. As on the first day, it is very warm in the Leib­nizhaus and with­out open doors and win­dows it is impos­si­ble to con­cen­trate on the con­fer­ence. With the doors and win­dows open, how­ever, it is feared that it will be too loud and that con­cen­trated work will also not be pos­si­ble. Accord­ingly, the future work­shop is post­poned by a week to twillo Thurs­day and Mar­gret Plank, head of the TIB’s Non-Tex­tual Mate­ri­als Lab, ends the con­fer­ence early after the lunch break.

It’s music to our ears

With all these impres­sions, great ideas and sug­ges­tions and a strong com­mu­nity behind us, the twillo team will be enter­ing the sec­ond fund­ing phase of our project from August 2023. We would like to thank every­one who made Open Up a com­plete suc­cess and look for­ward to see­ing the many friendly faces again in var­i­ous places. Even if the Fête de la Musique spoiled the end of the con­fer­ence a lit­tle, it was a great cel­e­bra­tion for us and we can hardly wait for a “Fund­ing Phase 2 — Final Event” — or, to put it much more beau­ti­fully, a new edi­tion of Open Up.

All con­tri­bu­tions are pub­lished on the AV-Por­tal.