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Understanding of quality

OER create access to open, high-quality education - and our seven quality criteria help to implement this claim in a transparent and comprehensible way.

However, there is no one-size-fits-all definition of quality for educational materials: what is considered high-quality varies depending on the educational institution, target group and didactic objective.

Nevertheless, in order to offer a reliable orientation, we rely on the international survey by Zawacki-Richter and Mayrberger (2017) and the instrument derived from it by Müskens as part of the EduArc sub-project “Quality of OER and international perspectives”. From this, seven criteria were developed that generally apply to all OER.

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01

Scientific foundation

All content should correspond to the current state of scientific knowledge, be presented correctly, and generally comply with the standards of good scientific practice. In addition, a critical review by other lecturers should have taken place.

02

Reusability

Other teachers should be able to easily reuse educational material for their own purposes. Reusability should be supported in terms of content and technology and legal violations should be excluded.

03

Application and transfer

The educational material should be competence-oriented, i.e. support learners in developing skills and abilities.
It should encourage learners to apply the learning outcomes in practice. To this end, it should contain learning tasks that students can use to transfer the learning content to new types of problem situations in their studies and work.

04

Assistance and support

The educational material should include opportunities to check learning objectives. For example, offer the learner the opportunity to check what they have learned by means of control questions or to carry out a learning check independently. To make it easier to reuse the material, the material should contain additional information on the concept and previous use. These can best be stored in didactic metadata.

05

Motivation and didactics

The didactic concept of the educational material should have a stimulating effect on learners and teachers. It should motivate learners to engage with the topic and to study the content in depth. Teachers should develop an interest in incorporating the material into their own lessons.

06

Structure, navigation and orientation

The structure of the educational material should be clear and as simple as possible so that learners can easily find their way around the material.

07

Design, readability and accessibility

The design supports the learners' engagement with the educational material. An appealing design can arouse interest and maintain attention. To ensure correct understanding of the material, all components such as texts and graphics should be easily recognizable and legible. The material should be designed to be as accessible as possible.

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