The Open Teach project aims at advancing the research, evaluation, and implementation of quality open education resources and practices, and supporting educators to develop their digital competences profiles. The project offers a platform for teachers with focus on middle and secondary school STEAM subjects. The Open Teach platform offers online Courses with six modules on open education resources (OER) and open education practices (OEP) and enables the collection and assessment of at least 500 Resources (OER) by the Community of Practice (i.e. teachers taking the Courses). The Courses learning activities include the critical selection, evaluation, adaptation, repurposing, and creation of OER. Teachers taking the Courses become part of the Community of Practice (CoP) sharing and critically assessing the Resources on the platform. An innovative self-sustainable social- and system- supported assessment toolkit for the quality assurance of OER and OEP is integrated into the platform, and co-designed with teachers and educational experts. After conducting a needs analysis including 75 teachers, educators, school heads, and teacher training institutions in Germany, Greece, and Portugal, the Open Teach project will propose policy support actions for the effective implementation of open education in schools. Based on the results of this analysis and state-of-the-art studies, the OER Assessment Toolkit is designed to orchestrate the learning and assessment activities needed for a self-sustainable quality assurance mechanism of OER and OEP. The toolkit is implemented in the platform and integrated into the Courses’ activities and learning logic, as well as the Resources’ assessment criteria and features. The OER assessment toolkit is then tested and validated by teachers during the two planned pilots, and recommendations for improvement are concluded and implemented. The Open Teach consortium aims at reaching out to at least 500 teachers through their network and dissemination activities, of which at least 300 enroll in the Courses and 150 complete them. The project aims to create and sustain a transnational Community of Practice, where teachers become active promoters and disseminators of open education in their local schools and communities, and share reviews and best practices of OER and OEP on the Open Teach Platform. Furthermore, the consortium plans to work with 30 educational institutes, TTIs, universities, schools, and networks to promote the project activities and Courses, of which 5 are planned to integrate the Courses and/or modules in their training programmes. Teachers, schools, universities, teacher training institutes, and educational organizations can make great use of the Open Teach project results. The benefits include: developing teachers’ digital competencies in relation to OER and OEP training and promoting the localisation and adaptation of OER to be more inclusive and equitable enabling peer-to-peer support and promotion of open education in online and local communities forming a transnational Community of Practice around open education offering open access to Courses and Resources with an integrated self-sustained quality assurance mechanism advancing the research on quality assurance of open education resources and practices
Open Teach supported schools and teachers to move towards critically using and evaluating Open Educational Practices and Resources. The project tested a bottom-up approach to ensure the quality and self-sustainability of OER. The approach is based on training teachers to enable them to make informed decisions on creating, evaluating, and implementing OEP and OER, and providing them with a system support mechanism to facilitate the process. The project also aimed to create and sustain a transnational Community of Practice, where teachers become active promoters and disseminators of open education in their local schools and communities and share reviews and best practices of OER and OEP on the Open Teach platform.
To facilitate the digital transformation in schools, empowering teachers to develop their digital competence profile and make best use of technology to accommodate to their needs and those of the learners is key. Open Education offers a unique opportunity for equity in education, expanding access to learning, and tailoring Open Educational Resources (OER) to the learners’ needs. Furthermore, Open Educational Practices (OEP) can support teachers in their learning journey and help them uncover the potential of OER and technology. Several questions come to mind: How can we support teachers and schools in their journey towards adopting Open Education and using technology to further improve their teaching and learning practices? How can we help teachers navigate the thousands of available online resources in an efficient and effective manner? To answer these questions, the Open Teach project aimed at advancing the research, evaluation, and implementation of quality open education resources and practices, and supporting educators to develop their digital competences profiles through training and the formation of a Community of Practice (CoP).