Group Admins
Description
Session Description
The OpenMed project (www.openmedproject.eu), funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, aimed at building capacities in Open Education [OE] in the South-Mediterranean, with a particular focus on higher education [HE] in Morocco, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt, which included the development of a series of skills, from Open-Licensing to policy making, curriculum design and adoption of Open Educational Practices [OEP].
A year after the course ended, and 6 months after project finished, an assessment was carried out to map impact at individual, institutional and HE regional level. The impact assessment used a methodology developed to assess the impact of online courses in open government and open data to build capacities for public servants, funded by the Inter American Development Bank and led by the Latin American Initiative for Open Data. This instrument was adopted and adapted by OpenMed to measure the project impact personal and professional level, Institutional level and at policy level.
The OpenMed project enabled Open Education by fostering good practices in use, creation, and adoption of OER, using a series of activities and strategies to support the project partners to define their priorities and to design their agendas according to their own needs, supported by strategic guidelines developed for and by the project stakeholders, such as the OER Regional Agenda for the South-Mediterranean Universities and the set of recommendations to institutional leaders and policy makers.
A key catalyser were the Five OER National Strategy Forums conducted in Egypt, Morocco , Jordan , Palestine , and Morocco, as these acted as arenas to foster strategic discussions to enable the pathway towards policy making. The outcomes of the project, such as the compendium of good practices, the capacity building course and its learning circles, alongside with the innovation Centres for Open Education are pioneer initiatives in the region, as these provide innovative methodologies for academic development and training and for content and curricular development.
The course participants were assessed in the level of confidence in five different domains of Open Education before and after the course and then, one year after the course completion. Also, the participants were asked about the impact at personal and professional level, to understand the changes in their academic practices and teaching and learning styles and career progression in the same criteria, to analyse whether if by putting learning into praxis, has made them open education practitioners and advocates.
The impact assessment also evaluated partners at Institutional level to see how institutions have adopted OEP, and monitor the adoption of the OpenMed Recommendations to University leaders and policymakers for opening up Higher Education in the South-Mediterranean to understand the project impact at policy level.
References
OpenMed Project. 2019. Results. Available at https://openmedproject.eu/results/
OpenMed Project. 2018. Recommendations from OpenMed to University leaders and policy makers for opening up Higher Education in the South-Mediterranean by 2030. Available at https://openmedproject.eu/recommendations/
Wimpenny, K., Merry, S.K., Tombs, G. & Villar-Onrubia, D. (eds) (2016). Opening Up Education in South Mediterranean Countries: A Compendium of Case Studies and Interviews with Experts about Open Educational Practices and Resources. Roma: UNIMED. ISBN 978-1-84600-0.
Atenas, J. 2018. OpenMed Pilot Course External Evaluation Report (Version Final). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1284281
