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OPAL focusses on provision of innovative open educational practices and promote quality, innovation and transparency in higher and adult education. Beginning in January 2010, the two-year OPAL Initiative is a partnership between seven organizations including
OPAL is coordinated by the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. The OPAL Initiative will move beyond the issue of access to open educational resources (OER), and focus on innovation and quality through open educational practices (OEP). Existing approaches for fostering the use of OER have made achievements by focusing on building access to resources (MERLOT, MIT OpenCourseWare, Stanford iTunes, OpenLearn, Rice University, the UNESCO Open Training Platform, the UNESCO Creative Commons). However, concerns over quality, the absence of trust on the part of learners and educators, and a lacking sense of ownership of the materials hinder wider acceptance of OER. OPAL will seek to build trust by establishing an environment for quality and Innovation through OEP.
European Consultative Group on Open Educational Practices: OPAL will work to build a multi-stakeholder environment in order to root quality and innovation in a broad consensus, combine activities and provide an interface for international initiatives which will promote OEP on a sustainable level. The project will address both higher education and adult education, bring stakeholders from each sectors" governance community together, and promote OEP in both sectors so that learners may benefit from continuity when moving between university and adult education.
Beyond Europe: The nature of the funding of the project means that the focus will be on the European context, though the involvement of ICDE and UNESCO underlines the project’s strategy of connecting European organizations to international debate, and making the EU a lighthouse region for OEP in the world.
Are you interested to join the initiative: