Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning resources “released under an open licence” (UNESCO, 2012, p.1). Initially, the development tends to focus primarily on teaching materials. Teaching staff often share their course content online to support new teaching methods and assessments, such as e-portfolios or blogs. They may also incorporate external resources into their courses or share materials with colleagues beyond their institution, utilising open licences. Leveraging these synergies enhances course development. However, challenges such as limited skills, time, and resources, as well as lack of recognition for OER development efforts, can be a hindrance for teaching staff, leading to a stagnation of OER development at an institution. Even with a OER Policy and a dedicated community, there might not be enough leverage for developing OER on a wider scale.
Working with the ZHAW OER Community and OER projects has provided the ZHAW OER Team with valuable insights into how moving from a teacher-centric towards a student-inclusive perspective, can facilitate OER development. Recognising students as essential partners in this journey and their meaningful participation as co-creators and collaborators, allows all participants to share in the development of OER, moving it beyond mere resources to encompass a broader framework of open pedagogy.

By empowering students to co-create OER content, a shift towards a more inclusive and sustainable educational environment can occur. Involving students as vital stakeholders in working on coursework that can be published openly, can be highly motivating, as students demonstrate their knowledge and understanding in public. The produced resources that have an open licence can then be reused and further developed by others and over time, may be benefitting future cohorts in the process. The focus is not solely on the teacher’s role in developing OER for teaching but moves towards a collaborative and co-creation process that allows all to actively share their understanding and knowledge gained in the learning process. It is an approach that moves the focus beyond OER towards a holistic learning process. This may not benefit all teaching scenarios, but in specific contexts it allows students to take an active stake in developing their coursework and publishing it, thus, becoming authors in their own rights early on in their academic journey. This can enhance their academic achievement and creates transparency and reusability of knowledge and understanding of a subject beyond the classroom.

In this session, we look at experiences and insights gained in working with the ZHAW OER Community and with OER projects of what is needed to take OER to the next level. Students’ involvement not only fosters a sense of ownership and participation but also accelerates further integration and adoption of OER into an Open Education framework. It will also include students' and staff perspectives gained from a OER student competition.

Source: UNESCO. “Paris OER Declaration: World Open Educational Resources (OER)”, 2012. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000246687.