Contents

1....... Introduction. 5

1.1.... Future trends opening up education: personalisation, collaboration, blended learning. 6

1.2.... New technologies and OER can enable a paradigm shift 8

1.3.... The objectives of the Staff Working Document 10

2....... The State of Play in the EU: a major implementation Gap and Barriers for uptake. 12

2.1.... The opinion of stakeholders: results of the public consultation. 13

2.2.... Major implementation gap in education. 14

2.3.... The underlying problem drivers. 17

2.3.1. Open and innovative learning environments. 18

2.3.2. Open Educational Resources challenging education. 30

2.3.3. ICT infrastructures and equipment stay a recurrent issue to tackle. 40

3....... Consequences for the EU.. 46

3.1.... Lack of digital competences for employability. 46

3.2.... Digital divide and access to knowledge. 47

3.3.... Inefficient use of resources. 49

3.4.... Losing worldwide leadership. 51

4....... Ways forward for systemic innovation: examples of best practices. 52

4.1.... One-to-one learning initiatives in Europe 52

4.2.... eTwinning – A European wide community for schools. 56

4.3.... Large-scale policy experimentations. 59

4.4.... Open Courseware. 61

4.5.... MOOCs are changing higher education. 63

4.6.... Large-scale platforms for open education. 68

5....... Concluding remarks: conditions for sustainability, scalability and impact 70

List of acronyms. 73

List of Figures. 75

List of Boxes. 76

List of Examples. 76

Executive Summary

This Staff Working Document accompanies the new European initiative on 'Opening up Education'. It outlines the scope, size and complexity of the challenges that lie ahead, in order to modernize and open up education through new technologies and Open Educational Resources (OER). The document provides the necessary evidence and background analysis on the use of new technologies and OER in education and training across Europe. It is based on in-depth country analysis for all EU Member States, expert reports and an extensive literature review on the state of play for new technologies and open educational resources in education and training.

What is the state of play in Europe? New technologies and OER can have an extraordinary effect on improving the efficiency, accessibility and equity of education, training and learning. Learning and teaching can become more focused on the learner supporting the individual learning pathways, enhancing collaboration online and blending formal and informal education. Personalisation, collaboration and links between formal and informal learning enhanced by technologies will be at the core of future learning and push educational institutions towards opening education and institutional transformation.

However, literature and practices show that education is one of the last societal sectors in Europe, which has not yet embedded the potential of new technologies, failing to provide European citizens with the skills necessary for the future. Europe is not fully reaping the potential offered by new technologies and the upsurge across the globe of digital content, including OER, to improve the efficiency, accessibility and equity of its education, training and learning systems. 63% of nine year olds do not study at a highly digital equipped school and only 20 to 25% of students are taught by digital confident and supportive teachers.

In a digital world, this has serious consequences for citizens who do not possess the skills necessary for social and economic well-being. In the last years the lack of systemic uptake of new technologies in education has been a concern for many EU countries but with scattered efforts. Despite the investments, a full uptake of new technologies and OER requires more than dispersed action. Evidence indicates that the EU-wide experiences on innovative learning need to be scaled up into all classrooms, reach all learners and teachers/trainers at all levels of education and training.

What are the underlying problem drivers of this implementation gap?

· Teaching and learning environments: lack of teachers' skills for a real digital pedagogy; organisational barriers for developing innovative and personalised pedagogies and assessment practices; and lack of validation and recognition mechanisms for online-acquired skills.

· Digital contents: insufficient supply of quality digital contents across languages subjects and needs; uncertain legal framework conditions for producing, using, re-using and sharing educational contents; and difficult access to relevant, quality digital resources, in particular OER.

· ICT infrastructure and equipment: uneven availability of ICT infrastructures and tools, including connectivity, across Member States, and absence of open interoperability standards.

What are the consequences for the EU? Without adequate action in the EU, the current problems of uneven availability of infrastructures, difficult discoverability of quality digital resources, difficult validation of skills acquired online, etc. will continue to be reproduced. This has negative implications related to digital skills, digital divide and access to knowledge, inefficient use of resources and Europe's leadership.

Education and training systems do not provide the digital competences needed in the 21st century economy and society. Europe will not provide similar opportunities to all its citizens to acquire digital skills for employability as well as active citizenship. The European economy would keep on facing digital skills gaps.

There is a risk of increasing the digital divide between digital competent people and those who do not have such ICT skills. This is particularly relevant in terms of access to knowledge. The current gaps between countries may increase even more. Some countries would continue to make efforts for exploiting the potential of digital technologies for learning, while others would reduce or even stop them. This is likely to increase the negative impacts in terms of social cohesion, competitiveness and efficiency of resources.

The efficiency potential of new technologies, evident in all economic sectors, is not reaped off in education and training, which lead to an inefficient use of educational resources. Europe will not be able to catch up with the emerging digital phenomena in education and training across the world and be able to modernise its education systems in terms of equity, quality and efficiency.

Europe will be lagging behind in terms of supply of OER and emerging digital markets compared to the US and Asia. Third countries will lead the emerging digital phenomena in the education and training field (e.g. MOOC) and better exploit the potential of new technologies and of the investments already done. The EU would be just a follower, losing opportunities and increasing its dependency on educational technologies designed and produced abroad.

What are possible ways forward? Education and training systems must be lined up with the expectations and requirements of the digital society. New technologies and the increasing attention for open educational resources can enable a paradigm shift and transform education if it takes account simultaneously of pedagogical, organisational and technological innovation. Education will only reap the full benefits of embedding new technologies and open educational resources when it opens up simultaneously the learning environments, the content and knowledge and the underlying infrastructures. The focus has to be on the learner and improvement of learning, instead of focusing on technology only.

The new ways of looking to learning through OER (and MOOCS) require a rethinking of the educational landscape in terms of access, quality and efficiency. Past experiences have shown that any initiative to overcome the implementation gap of using new technologies in education requires a 360 degree approach or (eco) system-wide, and not a piecemeal approach. A full uptake of new technologies and OER requires more than boosting experimentations across Europe.

Over the past years several large scale pilots have been implemented across Europe, crossing national countries and some even of European dimension. Various practices in Europe are being looked into such as: One-to-one learning initiatives providing every child or teacher with a personal device; eTwinning, a European-wide community of schools; large scale experimentations providing real-life laboratories of scale to develop and test scenario's for mainstreaming innovative use of new technologies in education; Open Courseware; MOOCs changing the European higher education landscape and large-scale platforms for open education.

Based on the evidence base and best practices provided in this Staff Working Document the underlying conditions and some ways forward for successful uptake and use of new technologies and OER in education are analysed.

1. Introduction

Highlights New technologies and open educational resources (OER) can have an extraordinary effect on improving the efficiency, accessibility and equity of education, training and learning. Learning and teaching can become more focused on the learner supporting the individual learning pathways, enhancing collaboration online and blending formal and informal education. Personalisation, collaboration and links between formal and informal learning enhanced by technologies will be at the core of future learning and push educational institutions towards opening education and institutional transformation. However, literature and practices show that education is one of the last societal sectors in Europe, which has not yet embedded the potential of new technologies, failing to provide European citizens with the skills necessary for the future. In the last years the lack of systemic uptake of new technologies in education has been a concern for many EU countries but with scattered efforts. Despite the investments, a full uptake of new technologies and OER requires more than dispersed action. Evidence indicates that the EU-wide experiences on innovative learning need to be scaled up into all classrooms, reach all learners and teachers/trainers at all levels of education and training. Education and training systems must be lined up with the expectations and requirements of the digital society. New technologies and the increasing attention for OER can enable a paradigm shift and transform education if it takes account simultaneously of pedagogical, organisational and technological innovation. Education will only reap the full benefits of embedding new technologies and OER when it opens up simultaneously the learning environments, the content and knowledge and the underlying infrastructures. The focus has to be on the learner and improvement of learning, instead of focusing on technology only.

We are living a paradox: digital technologies are fully embedded in our economies and societies – they have, for example, changed the way people may access financial services or read the news – but they have not yet changed the way learning and teaching occurs in European schools, training institutions or universities.

The European education and training systems have not yet fully tapped into the potential offered by digital technologies and content, including open educational resources (OER)[1], losing the opportunity to innovate the teaching and learning practices, to increase the efficiency and equity of the education and training provision and to raise the digital skills of learners necessary for a more competitive and knowledge-based economy.

Integration of digital technologies and digital content in education and training systems does not simply mean more electronic devices or more broadband connections. Supporting learning with technologies allows for the combination of innovative pedagogies with an effective use of digital tools and content which in turn can boost the quality of teaching and learning processes.

1.1. Future trends opening up education: personalisation, collaboration, blended learning

Digital competences are considered core skills for employability and societal inclusion due to both fast advances in technology and structural changes of European labour markets related to demographic change, globalisation and immigration. These transversal skills gain importance[2] as they empower lifelong learners who respond to changes flexibly, develop competences pro-actively and thrive in collaborative learning and working environments.

Box 1: A few ideas about the future

Constants amongst the change[3] 1. The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative. 2. People expect to work, learn, socialise, and play whenever and wherever they want to. 3. The Internet is becoming a global mobile network — and already is at its edges. 4. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media. 5. Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information — is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world. 6. Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society. 7. Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success. 8. The Internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy. 9. There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. 10. Business models across the education ecosystem are changing. Ten future technological trends[4] 1. e-Books: dynamic formats, and innovative uses 2. Publisher-led short courses: offering self-directed, CPD learning opportunities; 3. Assessment for Learning: changing the focus of assessment from assessment of learning outcomes towards assessment for feedback to enhance the learning; 4. Badges: awarding ‘non-formal learning’ through a widely-recognised honour or badge system; 5. MOOCs: massive open online courses bring open-access education to the masses; 6. Changing nature of academic publishing: the continued development of open-access scholarly publishing initiatives; 7. Seamless Learning: learning across multiple locations, platforms, formats in a continued way; 8. Learning Analytics: emphasis on obtaining data to learn more about the learner and their contexts in an effort to improve learning opportunities; 9. Personal Inquiry Learning: focus on the learner as an active, exploratory learning agent involved in discovery and inquiry learning processes; 10. Rhizomatic Learning: learning occurring through multi-facets/avenues of inquiry, taking contexts and previous knowledge and experiences into consideration, using social and personal sources of learning to foster a personal learning network.

Recent forward-looking surveys on ICT and education (Horizon Report 2013[5]; IPTS 2011[6]; Sharples 2012[7]; Matel Project 2013[8]) all identify an increasing opening up in education of practices, resources and infrastructures. They underline the core trends:

· Personalisation both in terms of equity among all learners[9] as well as in terms of individual learning plans and tailor-made learning activities. A mix of different technologies can support personalisation, by allowing for a diversity of learning activities, tools and materials; providing tools which support continuous monitoring and assessment strategies; making educational resources openly available; allowing for the implementation of collaborative projects; offering learning opportunities that are motivating, engaging and even playful; and supporting multilingual environments.

· Collaboration: Collaboration with the community at large, and with people from other social, cultural or age groups, will become increasingly important. Virtual study exchange programmes, internet based intercultural exchange projects, online massive multiplayer games, simulations creating and sharing open educational resources with peers and other internet-based services can serve educational institutions in allowing learners to experience, understand and reflect upon societal developments in a safe and protected environment.

· Blending formal and informal learning: abundant learning opportunities that assist people in converting professional experiences and personal skills into competences that are relevant for (new) job profiles. However, not all of these training opportunities will lead to formally recognised qualifications. Similarly, professional experiences acquired in previous jobs will give rise to a number of diverse competences that are seldom officially acknowledged or recognised. Thus, in view of increasing labour market dynamics, informally acquired skills need to become better recognised and/or integrated with formal qualifications and mechanisms will have to be put in place that allow people to obtain formal recognition for their experiences and skills.

Figure 1: Conceptual map of the future of learning[10]

Personalisation, collaboration and links between formal and informal learning will be at the core of future learning and push educational institutions towards opening education and institutional transformation[11]. They will be the central guiding principles for organising education in the future. Together with scalable and flexible infrastructure (e.g. cloud-based) and proliferation of (personal) mobile devices access to learning becomes practically unlimited.

1.2. New technologies and OER can enable a paradigm shift

All forecast surveys note a also fundamental paradigm shift on the role of new technologies supporting educational change: while some years ago the term "e-learning" dominated the educational discourse, the "e" has nowadays disappeared. It is all about the core business of education: learning. The focus is no longer on ICT tools and infrastructures but on open and flexible learning and teaching with the learner (and the educator) at the centre, enhanced through new technologies. This indicates that the step from an early adoption of ICT use in education towards mainstreaming has been started.

Transforming education requires pedagogical, organisational and technological innovation[12]. Learning takes place in a learning environment which is increasingly open and flexible to embed a diversity of learning and teaching practices and respond to the personalised needs of each learner. Such a learning environment can be a local classroom or college setting or based anywhere remotely between peer learners and educators. In order to acquire knowledge and thus to learn, content is provided through digital educational resources (openly available or not) and offered through courses in a learning environment guided by a teacher or tutor. One of the basic conditions enabling learning practices are the available ICT infrastructures, tools and networks.

Figure 2: An integrated vision and approach

a. Learning and teaching in Open Learning Environments: New technologies are encouraging teaching and learning based on personalisation and collaboration, changing and redefining the roles of teachers and learners. The increasing use of social media makes learning environments more dynamic, flexible and open, taking into account that learning also takes place outside formal learning environments, i.e. at home, in the community, at work, for leisure, in informal ways. Learning and teaching in the 21st century are increasingly taking place through learning networks and communities of practices, connected and collaborating, even if geographically dispersed, through open technologies. Learning networks promote collaboration across borders, language barriers and institutional walls. For teachers and educators, specifically communities of practice are an ideal platform for collaborative peer learning, exchanging good practices and even developing joint teaching activities between educational institutions (e.g. via eTwinning[13]).

b. Acquiring knowledge through Open Educational Resources: Digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners are not only driving change in the access to content for everyone but also widening its diversity and changing the educational practices. Re-use and sharing of open educational resources (OER) increase the quality, reduce the costs and the time lag between production and use of resources. Learning becomes more personalised, interactive and collaborative. Access to educational content and services anytime, anywhere and how the learner wishes opens opportunities for a diversity of learners, from those more exigent and ready to choose their education paths to those more difficult-to-reach such as those outside the traditional educational landscape and early school leavers.

c. Educational services enabled by ICT Infrastructures and connectivity: An open learning infrastructure will enable more effective and efficient ways to make use of that abundance. An open learning infrastructure relies on open standards that enable the interconnection between different infrastructures or the development of an integrated infrastructure from heterogeneous independently developed building blocks. Different services offering for example integration, visualisation and analytics can be built on these infrastructures allowing teachers and learners to leverage the abundance of learning content in much more flexible ways when these resources are integrated in more subtle ways in their existing workflows.[14]

This paradigm shift also indicates the importance of integrating all of these elements simultaneously and in a holistic way. Only then will education reach full uptake and reap the full benefits of embedding new technologies and OER in its practices.

1.3. The objectives of the Staff Working Document

In the last years the lack of systemic uptake of ICT in education has been a concern for many EU countries. Member States are looking into the scalability and sustainability of their pilots in order to increase the uptake of ICT and OER in education. The focus is on the learner and improvement of learning, instead of focusing on technology only.

This Commission Staff Working Document aims at analysing and mapping the use of new technologies and Open Educational Resources in EU education and training. The Staff Working Document is based on i) in-depth country analyses of all EU Member States[15]; ii) extensive literature review on the state-of-the-art of ICT and OER in education and training; and iii) expert reports provided by DG JRC-IPTS[16].

The in-depth country analyses describe how the EU Member States have provided digital resources and integrated the use of ICT in education and their strategies, policies and initiatives. The evidence and the literature review highlight the importance of collection of data for evidence-based policy making both at EU and national level, particularly given the rapid changes in the supply, demand and distribution of educational content through digital technologies.

The country analyses draw on the experiences of the individual Member States and its publication[17] is one of the core outcomes from the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) Thematic Working Group on 'ICT and education' under the Education and Training 2020 Work Programme. It reflects on developments achieved by the Lifelong Learning (LLP) and FP7 programmes from 2006 until today – a period when the EU Member States invested heavily in the use of ICT for education and training.

The Commission also undertook a comprehensive consultation of external stakeholders, including a public consultation carried out between August and November 2012[18]. It was targeted to both individuals and public authorities and organisations involved in education and training (e.g. schools, universities, trade unions, industry and consumers associations). The aim was to assess i) to what extend stakeholders agreed with a possible initiative, its rationale and scope; ii) possible actions and; iii) the need for a policy intervention at EU level.

Further to the public consultation, four other initiatives were undertaken to collect the views of external stakeholders:

· The views of Member States have been discussed and analysed through the Thematic Working Group on 'ICT and Education'. This group is composed mainly by representatives of ministries of Education and the European Trade Union Committee for Education.

· The views of external experts and other stakeholders have been discussed and analysed through a High Level Experts Group. Participants were experts from international organisations; researchers involved in education, training and innovation; members of EU networks, representatives of industry and open universities, as well as developers of open educational resources.

· The Commission also met relevant stakeholders concerned by the initiative, both at ad hoc roundtables (i.e. European publishers; Digital Europe) and bilaterally, included ICT and publishing industry, representatives of education and training organisations, NGOs and public authorities.

· A Ministerial Conference entitled 'Opening up education through technologies' was organised on 9-11 December 2012 under the Cypriot Presidency (in collaboration with Norwegian authorities)[19]. Ministers discussed the scope and actions of the Opening up Education initiative and forwarded the outcome of their debate through Presidency Conclusions that highlighted the innovative potential of ICT in fundamentally transforming education and training. The Cypriot Presidency focused on the importance of up-scaling pilot programmes, the necessity to explore further how to enhance the use and sharing of OER, the need for accreditation and quality assurance mechanisms, the vital role of teachers and communities of practice, and the potential for transnational cooperation and peer learning in these areas.

2. The State of Play in the EU: a major implementation Gap and Barriers for uptake

Highlights The European Commission undertook a comprehensive consultation of external stakeholders, including a public consultation carried out between August and November 2012[20]. Responses were very positive towards a possible initiative by the EU creating synergies and complementing existing or future actions by Member States. 84% of respondents found that ensuring a wider availability and use of ICT and OER in education should be a top priority for the EU and its Member States. The most important actions to be implemented were ensuring open access for educational resources developed with public funding; support for teacher education and professional development on ICT didactics and use of open educational resources; increased access to communities of practice; and adaptation of the funding and quality frameworks to incentivise engagement in open education. Literature and practices show that Europe is not fully reaping the potential offered by new technologies and the upsurge across the globe of digital content, including OER, to improve the efficiency, accessibility and equity of its education, training and learning systems. 63% of nine year olds do not study at a highly digital equipped school and only 20 to 25% of students are taught by digital confident and supportive teachers. In a digital world, this has serious consequences for citizens who do not possess the skills necessary for social and economic well-being. In the last years the lack of systemic uptake of new technologies in education has been a concern for many EU countries but with scattered efforts. The following underlying problem drivers have been identified causing this implementation gap: · Teaching and learning environments: lack of teachers' skills for a real digital pedagogy; organisational barriers for developing innovative and personalised pedagogies and assessment practices; and lack of validation and recognition mechanisms for online-acquired skills. · Digital contents: insufficient supply of quality digital contents across languages subjects and needs; uncertain legal framework conditions for producing, using, re-using and sharing educational contents; and difficult access to relevant, quality digital resources, in particular OER. · ICT infrastructure and equipment: uneven availability of ICT infrastructures and tools, including connectivity, across Member States, and absence of open interoperability standards. Despite the investments, a full uptake of new technologies and OER requires more than dispersed action. Evidence indicates that the EU-wide experiences on innovative learning need to be scaled up into all classrooms, reach all learners and teachers/trainers at all levels of education and training. Past experiences have shown that any initiative to overcome the implementation gap of using ICT in education requires a 360 degree approach or (eco) system-wide, and not a piecemeal approach. A full uptake of ICT and OER requires more than boosting experimentations across Europe.

This chapter will describe the current gap in Europe between the embedded use of digital technologies in almost all aspects of our lives and their poor integration in education and training.

As a starting point one can describe the core problem as follows:

Europe is not fully reaping the potential offered by new technologies and the upsurge across the globe of digital content, including open educational resources, to improve the efficiency, accessibility and equity of its education, training and learning systems.

Based on the description of the implementation gap in Europe, Chapter 2 will analyse the underlying reasons for this implementation gap and the obstacles to overcome it. These obstacles are manifold and will be discussed each in detail.

2.1. The opinion of stakeholders: results of the public consultation

A total number of 222 responses were received, 80 of which representing organisations[21]. Responses were very positive towards all three above mentioned aspects. The main findings were:

· 84% of respondents found that ensuring a wider availability and use of ICT and OER in education should be a top priority for the EU and its Member States.

· Both organisations and individuals foresaw strong positive effects for almost all education and training sectors.

· A very strong agreement of stakeholders with the problems to be addressed: a deeper exploitation of OER would increase access to education (93%); the use of ICT and OER in education in Europe is still too fragmented (92%); pedagogical approaches for using ICT and OER are not sufficiently available to teachers, particularly during initial teacher training (87%).

· A strong support for EU intervention: 86% of respondents defended that an EU initiative would create synergies and complement existing or future actions by Member States; 81% disagreed that it would be appropriate to leave the initiative exclusively to Member States; 86% stated that jointly agreed actions are needed to maximise the effects.

· Among other problems to be addressed, the need for quality certification systems and standards was the most emphasised (24% of organisations and 18% of individuals have indicated so in an open question), followed by support to teachers and need to change mentalities (22% of individuals and 12% of organisations, also in an open question).

· The most important actions to be implemented were ensuring open access for educational resources developed with public funding; support for teacher education and professional development on ICT didactics and use of OER; increased access to communities of practice; and adaptation of the funding and quality frameworks to incentivise engagement in open education.

· Support for a future EU initiative.

Interesting to highlight are the underlying reasons for this implementation gap or obstacles identified in the public consultation (in order of importance):

· The use of OER and ICT in education in Europe is still too fragmented (92%);

· Deeper exploitation of OER would increase access to education (93%);

· A clear legal framework applicable in the EU, addressing IPR, copyrights, licensing and publishing rights is lacking (76%);

· The variety of resources makes is complicated to find and select right resources for specific needs (76%);

· Development of quality standards and quality assurance tools for OER would have a positive effect (84%);

· It is yet not clear how different actors can adapt their strategies and business models (73%);

· Stronger uptake of OER would generate higher levels of innovation in education and training institutions (90%);

· Wider use of ICT in education would contribute to reduce early school leaving (70%);

· The availability of free digitised school books could lead to a significant reduction in costs of education (72%);

· Availability of high quality European OER would increase attractiveness of European education and training systems (80%);

· ICT didactics are not sufficiently available to teachers, particularly during initial teacher training (87%);

· A stronger cooperation between traditional and open universities could contribute to better use and uptake of OER (86%);

· There is an insufficient availability of hardware and ICT infrastructures in many learning environments, creating imbalances in learner's access to education (75%).

In addition to the questionnaires, the European Commission (EC) received 25 position papers, mainly from publishers and their associations, but also from university consortia and public authorities (at regional level). The position papers recommended support for appropriate ICT infrastructure, including open technical interoperability standards and European cloud infrastructure; support for European businesses in digital learning aiming at global leadership; new methodologies for assessing learning outcomes; development of European quality standards specifically for OER; creation of a multi-stakeholders platform to facilitate partnerships between ICT industry, publishers and the public sector; and alignment of the VAT rates of digital and printed resources and materials.

2.2. Major implementation gap in education

As indicated in the previous chapter, technological advancements make it possible for individuals to learn anywhere, at any time, following very flexible and individualised pathways and often for free. However, educational institutions are not yet fully exploiting the potential benefits of new technologies as an enabler to innovate and modernise learning and teaching practices[22]. When technology is not used in education, learners are also not developing digital competences to become confident, critical users of new technologies[23].

Education is one of the last sectors which have not yet embedded the potential of ICT. Numerous international surveys describe the seriousness of this implementation gap, its negative implication on learning outcomes and the need for education to take immediate action[24].

It is noted that national policies for ICT education exist in all European countries[25]. These aim to provide the necessary basic ICT skills to learners and ICT training for teachers. In most countries, ICT education is subject-specific; some also foresee cross-curricula strategies[26]. These countries also plead for using ICT as an innovative tool for learning and teaching. Policy and strategy development rests mainly with the central administrative level while implementation involves more local administrations and schools.

Figure 3: Delivery of ICT learning objectives as recommended by central steering documents of MS in primary and general secondary education (ISCED 1, 2 and 3), 2009/10[27]

Example 1 - Spain

In 2012, Spain replaced its former national programme Escuela 2.0 through a new ICT programme named TIC 2012. The general objective of this new programme is to develop an electronic learning platform that improves the management of content and promotes the use of virtual learning environments that facilitate classroom instruction and individualised learning according to the needs of students. For this purpose, the budget allocated for the new programme is 41.5 million euros, a figure considerably lower than the 91 million euros for Escuela 2.0 in 2011. In this scenario co-funding models (public-private) and the participation and educational priorities of the regional communities will have an even more prominent role in continuing the incorporation of ICT and digital educational materials in the education system.

However, large implementation gaps remain. 92% of respondents of the public consultation confirm that the use of ICT and OER in education and training is still too fragmented. Past and recent surveys[28] show that teachers have not yet adopted ICT for learning across all subjects. In science, it is used for looking up information but rarely for conducting experiments or simulations of natural phenomena. In mathematics, it is also rather limited and sometimes used for skills practice. ICT use in language of instruction and foreign languages is more the exception than the rule[29].

It is crucial that educational institutions and all educational stakeholders involved have an integrated vision on how ICT can add-value to learning and teaching. Developing integrated strategies and implementation plans with full engagement of all educational stakeholders is essential for any larger uptake and full implementation of ICT and OER use in education.

Integrated ICT-policies in teaching and learning combined with concrete support measures at school level affect the frequency of students’ ICT based activities for learning in the classroom. Students, as well as teachers, have the highest frequency of ICT use and ICT-based learning activities during lessons, in schools which have general policies on ICT-integration in teaching and learning as well as in subject learning, incentives to reward teachers using ICT, concrete support measures including teacher professional development and the provision of ICT-coordinators. Schools belonging to these two groups, i.e. having policies and/or concrete support measures, are defined as digitally supportive schools[30].

Example 2 - Greece

The Operational Programme 'Education and Lifelong Learning 2007-2013' is a large scale, nationwide funding programme, co-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Greek State. It is the main funding scheme for upgrading the quality of learning at all levels of the educational system, involving the use of Internet technologies. As part of the programme, the "Digital School Initiative" created an official repository that gives free online access to digital textbooks on all levels of education.

Having formalised school policies on teaching and learning is key towards an e-mature or digitally-supportive school[31]. On average, at EU level and across all grades, around 50% of students are in schools where such policies exist – in writing.[32] However, only 20% of students are in schools where they have actually been adopted. Around 35% of students are in schools where there are plans and measures to support collaboration between teachers and there is time scheduled for them to share, evaluate or develop approaches and instructional material.

Differences between countries are large: at least 50% of students are in digitally supportive schools having policies and support measures in Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Slovenia (at several grades, see figure 4), as well as in Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland and Spain (at grade 4), while less than 10% of students are in such schools in Croatia (at grade 8), France (at grade 4) and Greece (at grade 8 and 11, see figure 5).

Figure 4: Percentages digitally supportive schools in Slovenia

Figure 5: Percentages digitally supportive schools in Greece

2.3. The underlying problem drivers

Learning sectors are differentiated not only by their needs but also by their development stages. What is at stake obviously varies between different learning sectors. Each problem affects with different intensity each form of education and training (formal, non-formal and informal) and education sector (i.e. compulsory education, higher education, vocational education and training (VET), non-formal and informal youth and adult learning).

This section of the Staff Working Document will discuss the various barriers in Europe to move the use of ICT and OER from its early adopters' stage towards full uptake stage. These problems are being mapped and discussed following the three axes identified in the first chapter: (1) Open learning environments; (2) Open educational resources and (3) ICT infrastructures and tools. The relevance by sectors of education and training is mentioned for each barrier. The best practice examples identified are based on a detailed analysis of the use of ICT and OER in each country[33].

2.3.1. Open and innovative learning environments

The problems related to the first axe are:

1. Low use of ICT for innovative learning and lack of incentives to develop innovative teaching practices

2. Today's learners may be digital natives but not necessarily digitally competent

3. Insufficient teacher's digital competences

4. Teacher professional development lacks attention to innovative teaching through ICT

5. Evaluation mechanisms rewarding innovative practices for teachers

6. Assessment, recognition, validation and certification of online acquired learning is an open issue

7. Assessment supported by ICT in school education

8. National policy initiatives are fragmented with a large implementation gap

2.3.1.1. Low use of ICT for innovative learning and lack of incentives to develop innovative teaching practices

While infrastructure barriers to the use of ICT in education have been reduced over the last 5 years[34], the percentage of school and initial VET teachers using ICT in more than 25% of lessons has remained fairly stable[35]. Most teachers have been familiar with ICT for teaching and learning for some years but still use it first and foremost to prepare their teaching[36]. Only a few (15%) use it – and still to a limited extent – to work with students during lessons, and even less frequently to communicate with parents or to adjust the balance of students’ work between school and home in new ways. The overall frequency of use of different types of ICT-based activities in class reported by teachers is around several times a month on average at EU level. But students report lower frequencies. Digital resources such as exercise software, online tests and quizzes, data-logging tools, computer simulations, etc. are still very rarely used by students during lessons.

The following figure demonstrates also the huge diversity between the EU Member States:

Figure 6: % of Grade 8 pupils attending classes where teachers' use of ICT in more than 25% of lessons[37]

Figure 7: Teachers use of ICT in Cyprus

Figure 8: Teacher's use of ICT in Bulgaria

But despite the low use of ICT for learning during lessons, a very large majority of school heads and teachers agree about the relevance of ICT use in different learning activities, as well as concerning the positive impact of ICT use on students’ motivation and achievement, and on transversal skills. They are also close to unanimity about the fact that ICT use is essential to prepare students to live and work in the 21st century. An overwhelming majority of students is also positive about the impact of ICT on the classroom atmosphere and on different learning processes.

2.3.1.2. Today's learners may be digital natives but not necessarily digitally competent

School education and initial VET

Longitudinal profiling of the evolving digital lives of teenagers and adults demonstrates the pace of change[38]. In Europe, data shows that going online is a part of children’s activities from a very young age (7 to 9); 15-16 year olds spend an average of 118 minutes per day on the Internet, compared to 58 minutes per day for 9-10 year olds; 33% go online using a mobile device; 87% use the Internet at home compared to 63% at school; 75% use social networking sites and 56% display a sophisticated level of use, including playing games with others online, downloading films and music and sharing content peer-to-peer (e.g., via a webcam or message boards).[39]

Contrary to the popular image of ‘digital natives’ navigating effortlessly in web-based settings, many students cannot in reality operate so effectively. PISA results show that even when guidance on navigation is explicit, significant numbers of students still cannot locate crucial information. Today's 'digital natives' are not 'born digitally competent' as has sometimes been claimed[40]. Digital literacy is still an issue. OECD countries still have significant numbers of students who perform poorly in digital reading[41]. These results show also that one must make a clear difference between having access and using ICT effectively.

Also, PISA 2009 data show that the OECD average for 15-year-olds reporting using computers at home is 93%, compared with only 71% using them in school, with a stronger correlation between educational performance and computer use at home than with its use in school[42]. This discrepancy has also repeatedly been reported by European Schoolnet in the first European-wide surveys on ICT use in education (2006) and again in 2013. Students’ ICT use during lessons still lags far behind their use of ICT out of school: Students’ ICT-based activities related to learning at home are more frequent compared to ICT activities at school. Reasons for this are manifold, but one of them can generally be identified as lack of general strategy on integrating ICT for learning purposes at schools

Across the EU Member States, students have more confidence in their digital competences when they have high access to/use of ICT at home and at school compared to students (see figure below). Such higher confidence applies to students’ operational ICT skills, social media skills, their ability to use the internet responsibly, and, to a slightly less extent, their ability to use the internet safely. These students are not just confident in their digital competences, but also positive about the impact of using ICT in teaching and learning. Students, having high access to and use of ICT at home and at school, are defined as digitally confident and supportive students[43].

Figure 9: Average pupil confidence (scale 1-4) in using ICT skills, by type of skills and pupils' use/access to ICT. Grade 8[44]

These findings underline how important it is to effectively develop ICT use during lessons at school for students to become more digitally competent, regardless of the many opportunities some have for using ICT out of school, and even more fundamentally for those still lacking access to it at home. Across the EU countries, on average between 30-35% of students are digitally confident and supportive students, i.e. have high access to ICT at home and at school; the highest percentage of digitally confident and supportive students is systematically found in Denmark at all grades and Norway at grade 11. Across all EU countries, the highest percentage of digitally confident and supportive students is observed at grade 11 in general education, suggesting a particular focus of policies at that education level. Nevertheless, around 50% of students at grade 8 and 11 in vocational education still have high access/use at home, but low access/use at school; it decreases to 35% at grade 11 in general education. Even more alarming is that between 18-28% of students, depending on the grade, have low access to/use of ICT at home as well as at school.

These results show clearly that as the digital divide defined by technology access, at home or in schools, has tended to fade, a second one – based on digital competence – more stubbornly remains: between those who have the necessary competences and skills to benefit from computer use, and those who do not.

The report revealed a positive link between confidence in ICT skills and the use of ICT at home and at school. Students with high access/use both at home and schools are more confident in their ICT skills than those that only report high access/use at home and not at school. The confidence in ICT skills is lowest amongst pupils with low access/use both at home and at school.

A recent analysis by the Eurydice network[45] captures what might be referred to as the culmination of the first the large scale phase of digital development, ‘computers in schools’ and ‘computers at home’, reporting widespread but quite diverse activity throughout the European member states. On the positive side, key competences for lifelong learning are widely referenced in curricula and the integral role of ICT is promoted. A wide range of innovative pedagogical approaches are reported at both primary and secondary school levels, and these frequently integrate the use of ICT. However, there continues to be a strong emphasis on the separate teaching of ICT and on linking outcomes to very specific skills programmes such as the European Computer Driving License (ECDL)[46]. Wider integration of digital media in the curriculum, where it occurs, it often more in support of the teacher than in support of the individual student and the adoption by and large remains within the traditional schooling frameworks and teaching and learning paradigms. The report confirms that, at home, students are more likely to use an Internet-connected computer for entertainment than for learning. The OECD PISA ‘Reading Online’ survey[47] presents a generally positive perspective on the reading abilities of 15-year olds in a digital environment. However, relative to the scope of digital activities of teenagers, reported in a general way in other studies, PISA examines, albeit in detail, a very specific and small subset of such activities. The New Millennium Learners report[48] arrived at the conclusion that there was little evidence that significant investment in ICT in compulsory education over many years had made any measurable difference at a macro level, (at least in respect of what was actually measured), while acknowledging that innovation was visible at the micro level. In this sense a systemic implementation gap remains.

Higher Education

Many higher education institutions have by now made significant investments in ICT for teaching and learning, for example in Learner Management Systems (LMS, e.g. Moodle or commercially available platforms such as Blackboard, offering extensive synchronous and asynchronous functionality to support course design, teaching, learning, collaboration, assessment and analytics) and by providing 24/7 electronic access to library resources. Campus facilities have been upgraded to offer WIFI access and digital projection/electronic whiteboard facilities are widely available in auditoria and classrooms. There is no doubt that the wide adoption these technologies has been of benefit to traditional cohorts of students, who now have access to a far wider range of resources and the flexibility of working online 24/7 in a ‘blended learning’ mode. Students at distance teaching universities have also benefited from the adoption of the same technologies, and convergence is evident between the fully distance/online mode of delivery and on-campus delivery

However, particularly in respect of LMS, it is difficult to gauge the extent to which their deployment has been fully embedded within faculties or disciplines, or the extent to which their deployment has resulted in a transformation of existing practices.

The arrival of MOOCs and the growth of open and online education are increasingly shifting the focus to learners as the primary target group. This group consists not only of students enrolled at education institutions but also “self-learners”, everyone from pupils to professionals to retirees who, for their own reasons, want to learn without enrolling in a mainstream programme or needing/wanting a diploma or academic degree at the end. Personal development and employability are important motives for engaging in open education; for example, there are employees who use open education for continual professional development, or for retraining or refresher training.

This shift offers new opportunities for education, especially since the new target groups for higher education (HE), for example, are located around the world, massively extending the reach of open and online education. The demand for open education especially in higher education is enormous, as evidenced by the unprecedented popularity of MOOCs.

Adult learning

Despite developments in ICT infrastructures and new web services, only 53% of the available labour force report that they are confident that they have sufficient digital skills if they were to look for a job or change jobs within the next year. Countries such as Sweden, UK, and the Netherlands report at the higher end with more than 80% expressing confidence in their skills, whereas countries such as Cyprus, Romania, Greece, and Lithuania report at the lower end of the benchmarking exercise with confidence levels not exceeding 40%[49]. These data and declared level of confidence are framed further by findings from IPTS who have conducted research on informal learning communities[50]. Moreover, digital competences among the adult population are unevenly divided, with older people and those with lower qualification levels having lower digital competences than the population in general. It appears that even where digital competence seems to increase over time, a clear socio-economic divide remains in the labour force according to country of location, formal level of qualification and age[51].

There is little data on the extent of ICT equipment available in adult learning institutions or on the extent to which it is being used in learning and teaching of adults. However, it is likely that ICT enabled learning is not at wide spread in this field as it is in the more formal education fields. Even within companies, the use of ICT enabled learning has not reached its full potential as evidenced by a Finnish survey, which shows that only 41% of respondent companies had used ICT enabled learning in their staff training in 2012[52].

2.3.1.3. Insufficient teacher's and educators digital and didactic competences and confidence

While teachers are quite motivated to use ICT for innovation in their teaching practices, they often lack the necessary digital competences and even more the didactic competences and confidence to use ICT in their teaching.

At EU level[53], 75% of teachers have been using computers and the internet at school for four years or more, but more for preparing lessons than teaching [54]. However, experience of using ICT does not necessarily imply a high level of expertise. Especially in the areas of social media, teachers demonstrate consistently lower levels of expertise than in operating ICT equipment more generally. This is also reflected in the teachers’ frequency and areas of use. One in five grade 8 students in the EU are in schools where teachers never or almost never use a computer. More precisely, one in four students is in a school where the teacher uses ICT in less than one in 20 lessons.

The limitations of teacher expertise of using ICT for pedagogical reasons in the classroom become even clearer when looking at the areas for which teachers use ICT devices. The most frequent ICT based activities of teachers at EU level are related to the preparation of teaching activities (30-45% of students) are taught by teachers declaring they do some form of lesson preparation at least once a week.

In contrast, only 20% - 30% of students have teachers who create digital resources and use the school website or virtual learning environment at least once a week. Similarly, around 30% of students at all grades are taught by teachers claiming they have participated in online communities to exchange professionally with other teachers. And between 60% and 85% of students are taught by teachers declaring they never or almost never communicate online with parents, post homework online for their students, assess students using ICT, or evaluate digital resources[55]. These Europe-wide results suggest that while teachers are familiar with using ICT, the full potential of using ICT as a pedagogical tool in the classroom is not yet realised for a majority of students.

2.3.1.4. Teacher professional development lacks attention to innovative teaching through ICT

Teacher education and professional development have positive impact on the take-up of new technologies[56]. International surveys indicate that teacher professional development ranging from initial teacher education, in-service training and other types of professional development schemes is the most important condition to ensure efficient and effective uptake of using ICT in education.

In 18 EU countries or regions, curricula for initial teacher education include some provision of digital skills[57]. However, according to a joint EC–OECD study of 2010, 58% of teachers surveyed said they had not received any training on how to use ICT in the classroom. ICT didactics are not sufficiently available to teachers, particularly during initial teacher training. The mostly frequently indicated action teachers would like to receive was "to support teacher education and professional development on ICT didactics and use of OER, and increase access to communities of practice".

Example 3 - Slovenia

The Slovenian government is currently implementing an e-education initiative which consists of a range of projects on textbooks, competences and infrastructures. One part is designed to improve teachers' e-competences. It has defined an 'e- competence standard' which all teachers and principals should reach. Teachers are trained online and onsite to reach the standard. By November 2012 there were about 32,000 participants in these seminars. The most popular seminars were on Virtual Learning Environments (moodle) and interactive whiteboards.

Statistics presented with the individual country analyses show the different situations in EU Member States[58]. The EU-wide schools survey[59] provides more in-depth insight in what are the issues at stake. On average, only around 25% of students in Europe who are taught by teachers for whom ICT education and training is compulsory. In Lithuania around 70% and in Romania around 65% of students at all grades are taught by teachers for whom it is compulsory to participate in ICT training, while 13% or less of students are taught by such teachers in Luxembourg, Austria and Italy.

Figure 10: Time invested by teachers in professional development activities during the past two years, Slovakia compared to EU average, 2011-12, in % of students

Example 4 - Austria

'Onlinecampus Virtuelle PH' (http://www.virtuelle-ph.at)

'Onlinecampus Virtuelle PH' is a service centre maintained by the Ministry for Education targeted at all Austrian teachers and all Universities of Teacher Education (Pädagogische Hochschulen). It offers online seminars and e-Lectures for teachers' professional development. There are also a number of resources for self-study. Virtuelle PH also provides know how and expertise in the field of technology assist teaching and learning to teacher educators.[60]

To compensate the lack of focus on digital skills in initial teacher education, a large proportion of teachers develop their ICT skills privately. At EU level, around 70% of students at all grades are taught by teachers who have engaged in personal learning about ICT in their own time. Other ways of teachers engaging in ICT professional development include ICT training provided by school staff (50%).

Boosting teacher's confidence using ICT for teaching is a condition for an effective and efficient use. The EU schools' survey shows indeed that students have the highest frequency of ICT use during lessons when they are taught by teachers with high confidence in their own ICT operational, having positive opinions about ICT use for teaching, as well as having high access to ICT infrastructure at school. Such teachers are defined in the survey as digitally confident and supportive teachers.

On average across the EU countries, between 20-25% of students are taught by digitally confident and supportive teachers having high access to ICT. Here again differences between countries are very large. Between 30-50% of students at grade 4 and/or grade 8 are taught by such teachers in Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden; conversely, less than 10% of students at the same grades are taught by such teachers in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Finland, Greece and Luxembourg. In secondary general education, more than 45% of students are taught by such teachers in Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Portugal; conversely, less than 10% of students are in this situation in Greece, Romania and Turkey.

One of the most efficient approaches in continuous professional development of teachers is through communities of practices allowing teachers to participate in a professional community that supports the new ideas and practices at the same time as they challenge existing ones[61]. Teachers not only need to rethink what they teach, but also why. However, in order to thrive, communities of practice require time for collaborative learning to emerge. Findings suggest that if teacher collaboration is genuinely bottom-up driven and derived from practice-based experimentation, then communities will gradually grow and be reinforced[62].

2.3.1.5. Evaluation mechanisms rewarding innovative practices for teachers

As any other professionals in any sector, teachers (including professors and all other educators), are influenced by the way their performance is assessed and their career opportunities influenced. Being careers involving many individuals, public authorities are highly pressured to define very clear and objective performance evaluation schemes. For such, these are generally focused on a relatively small number of criteria, which are easily measurable and clearly comparable. Teachers are generally evaluated by criteria directly related with their input to the students to whom they have been allocated (like the time spent in class), their involvement in the institution administration, and/or their involvement in research (like the number of research papers published). Very seldom are any variables associated with innovation in education or the openness of education considered in performance evaluation schemes.

Many experiences and projects are achieving very positive results all over Europe. However, frequently teachers are developing them beyond their normal working hours or their contractual obligations. Most teachers are not incentivised to introduce new technologies or open practices in education. They are actually de-incentivised by the need to convince leaderships on the appropriateness of their projects.

To have full involvement of the high number of teachers with a potential commitment to improve education through open practices it would be essential to have these practices considered in the framework of teachers' performance evaluation schemes.

2.3.1.6. Certification, validation and recognition of online acquired learning is an open issue

The recent EC recommendation on the validation of non-formal and informal learning[63] already referred to the importance of recognition of skills and competences acquired through online learning and open educational resources when discussing the value of online learning.

When students learn within the context of their formal education, it is an obvious step for the educational institution to recognise the knowledge acquired, for example by noting it in their portfolio[64]. This is evident in higher education which has an accreditation system for guaranteeing quality and standards. It also applies to learners when the labour market demands formal evidence of competence, knowledge, or skills.

Up to now it has been virtually impossible to acquire formal recognition for learning achieved by OER. This has to do with the authenticity and validity of students' performance outside a controlled environment and fraud prevention. There is therefore an enormous need to develop a method for evaluating and certifying open learning in an effective, efficient, and confidence-inspiring manner.

Example 5 - France, Germany

VAE system – France (http://www.francevae.fr/francevae/) The VAE system (Validation des Acquis de l'Experience) is used to deliver whole or partial qualifications. Each Ministry awarding qualifications has developed its own rules for the context-specific implementation of the principles outlined in the legislation. Generally evaluations are made on the basis of a portfolio where the applicant describes his/her experience. Further written evidence of the experience is also frequently requested. This declaration must include details of skills and competences used in their activities. Further evaluation methods include observations of real or simulated working activities, interviews and presentations. Certificates awarded by the private sector can be recognised after an accreditation process. A similar system is in place in Luxembourg[65]. ProfilPASS – Germany (http://www.profilpass-online.de/) In Germany, different validation methods are in place. The ProfilPASS is a system of formative validation for both adults and young people, while the external students' examination leads to the award of a full qualification in a recognised apprenticeship trade. Access to a higher education course can be granted through the 'access for qualified workers' route. Knowledge and skills can be recognised up to a maximum of 50% if their content and level are equal to the equivalent formal qualifications[66].

An increasing number of universities providing online programmes (or parts of programmes) also offer methods of guaranteed and alternative certification (for example by means of “badges”). Examinations for MOOCs can be taken at Pearson test centres in a controlled environment[67]. For a few of its open courses, Saylor.org offers assessment for credits[68]. However, these are payable services. Accreditation organisations such as the Council for Higher Education Accreditation[69] and the American Council on Education[70] have now expressed the intention of accrediting MOOCs, thus making their quality apparent. If this development continues, they can become important alternative learning pathways – virtually free of charge – not only for lifelong learning but also for basic degrees and qualifications. Even though the business models behind them are still to be developed, their proliferation will force higher education institutions to think hard about their actual business models.

Another emerging trend for recognition is to award “badges”. A badge is a (digital) insignia awarded to a person who has achieved a particular level of performance[71]. Various different names are applied. The OpenStudy platform, for example, uses “medals” and “SmartScores”, leading to “certificates”. Codecademy works with “points” and “streaks” as well as badges. At Coursera, participants who have completed all the components of a course can acquire a “certificate of participation”. It is, however, difficult to organise formal recognition for this system. The primary function of the badges is to act as a signal for participants in determining who plays an important role or knows a lot. To increase the value of badges, it is important to get some level of European-wide agreement on which kind of badges and the criteria are recognised for validating learners' performance.

OpenStudy Certificates involve cooperation between OpenStudy and the worldwide OpenCourseWare Consortium (OpenStudy, n.d.). Participants taking an OpenCourseWare course supported by OpenStudy can sign up for a (worldwide) study group, which has a forum where they can ask and answer questions. Activities within the course are tracked, as is progress in the course and in the community. By answering questions put by fellow participants, the learner can demonstrate his/her understanding of the material, thus gaining medals. A participant can gain a certificate if he/she has been active within the system for at least four weeks, with questions posted and answered for at least 70% of the course topics. If the participant complies with the requirements and his/her SmartScore has increased by 20 points, he/she receives a certificate of participation for a “self-directed learner”: “You have demonstrated engagement, teamwork, problem solving as you participated in this open online course and created an online portfolio of your activity.” With Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure (Mozilla Open Badges, n.d.) learners can increase their competencies via a number of different channels, earning badges that are allocated to them by individuals or organisations. The learner can collect, manage, group, and share his/her badges on the website. He/ she can then decide which badges to make visible (via a personal website, a blog, a social network profile, or a jobs website). Usage of this system can also be good for the reputation and profile of those who allocate the badges.

In recognition process partnerships between institutions are important. The institution that recognises learning must have confidence in the quality of the education offered, and must be able to assess it for itself. The recognition of credits in Erasmus student exchanges provides a good example[72]: recognition is institutionalised on the basis of the relationship of trust between the participating institutions and can therefore be successfully incorporated into accreditation procedures. In the case of education acquired by the OER, that relationship of trust does not yet exist and should be forged.

The possibilities for formalising recognition are increasing now that the providers of MOOCs are actively making secure supervised examinations possible. Udacity and EdX have signed a contract with Pearson VUE, an independent commercial provider of examination services. Pearson has testing centres worldwide where the identity of learners can be verified and exams can be taken under controlled conditions[73]. The question is whether, given these trends, the business model of traditional higher education institutions is still tenable (see further). Also, the spirit of free OER based education is undermined when the examinations that accredit learning become payable.

2.3.1.7. Assessment supported by ICT in school education

One of the key challenges for education systems in many European Member States is the assessment of key competences[74]. ICT offers many opportunities for the provision of assessment formats which comprehensively capture all key competences even the more transversal and complex ones such as critical thinking or creativity. These transversal competences are often acquired across subjects and even outside school, informally and non-formally. It is therefore important to investigate how ICT supported assessment and recognition of competences is considered in school education.

There is a general awareness among school educators that ICT can help students to self-assess as part of their learning-to-learn. In a number of European countries, ICT tools are already being used to support self-assessment. Liechtenstein already uses them in secondary education; Bulgaria, Lithuania and Iceland have pilot projects, while France, Malta and Slovenia are planning to use self-assessment[75].

Overall, the potential of ICT in the comprehensive assessment of competences in school education, including less tangible and generic skills, remains largely untapped and take-up in school education is still low.[76] To seize the opportunities offered by ICT, targeted measures are needed to encourage the development. ICT-based assessment provides a gateway for more formative assessment, measuring actual learning, appreciated by teachers and students, and a potential shift away from summative high-stakes assessments at the end of the school year or term, criticised for measuring the ability to recall information at a given time.

Currently, two conceptually different approaches to assessing competences can be distinguished. On the one hand, there is Computer-Based Testing using multiple choice, quizzes, simple games and audio-visual representations for testing knowledge, skills and attitudes, as well as ePortfolios. Many Member States are using CBT for more effective and efficient testing. Computer-Based Assessment (CBA) approaches on the other hand, offer a promising avenue for embedded assessment of the more complex and behavioural dimensions of competences, based on different technologies analysing student performance like Learning Analytics. Many of the currently available technology-enhanced learning environments, tools and systems recreate authentic learning situations which require complex thinking, problem-solving and collaboration strategies and thus allow for the development of both transversal skills in addition of core subject knowledge. Some of these environments allow learners and teachers to assess performance, understand mistakes and learn from them. Even though many of these programmes and environments are still experimental in scope and have not been mainstreamed in education and training, commercial products start to emerge (eg. Knewton[77])[78].

ePortfolios are ideally suited to the assessment of collections of work produced by students and are thus particularly powerful tools for communication in the mother tongue, communication in foreign languages and cultural awareness and expression. ePortfolios are already widely used in European schools as a means of supporting the formative and summative assessment of students’ creative productions. E-Portfolios have been implemented in school education in Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Romania, UK and Turkey; while Bulgaria, Germany, France and Iceland are in the pilot phase and eight countries in the planning. In Portugal and the United Kingdom e-Portfolios are available to students throughout their entire educational career and are assessed by awarding bodies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In contrast, Poland and Liechtenstein are focusing more on providing teachers with ICT tools to monitor pupil progress[79]. However, more innovative formats of cultural and artistic expression, such as blogs, wikis, tweets, audio and video recordings, etc., are seldom included. Educators often do not realise that ePortfolios can be powerful tools for encouraging online collaboration, self- and peer assessment, which contribute to and at the same time assess students' learning to learn skills.

2.3.2. Open Educational Resources challenging education

While the rapid increase of OER's and in particular the recent proliferation of MOOCs indicate that the educational world is keen on embracing this phenomenon made possible by the internet and social media, OER are still challenged by many unsolved questions. These problems are:

1. Low use of OER for innovative learning

2. OER supply is currently fragmented

3. OER supply is not quality assessed

4. OER opens up education towards informal learning but educational practices are not in line with the increasing OER supply

5. Lack of appropriate business models for OER

6. OER and publishers: opportunity or threat?

2.3.2.1. Low use of OER for innovative learning

School education and initial VET

Centrally promoted digital resources (openly available or not) are widely available in the EU[80] to support teachers in their use of ICT for innovative teaching and learning in the classroom. The majority of European countries have online platforms, blogs, forums or other social networking sites that facilitate the sharing of experience and exchange of materials between teachers.

Example 6- Denmark

EMU portal – Denmark (www.emu.dk) The main portal for educational content is the EMU. It provides access to a federation of OER repositories which were previously operating separately but since 2012 have been consolidated under the roof of EMU. The concept is liberal in the sense that professionals can publish content or references to content without having to meet any set of pedagogical or technical specifications. Content may be free, partly free or fully commercial, and varies from descriptions and links to books for educational use or other paid services, through free samples, to fully free content. The EMU is closely connected to the school and high school educational levels; uploading content demands a login for the intranet services offered to these educational levels. EMU also contains the main national repository for school teachers and students 'Materialeplatformen', which provides access and summaries to all online learning resources. It was initiated by the Ministry of Education but is implemented together with publishers who can also publish content on the platform. A screening procedure exists for all materials produced by teachers and uploaded to the platform. This is provided by an organisation administrating ICT-related services to the Ministry of Education. It is used primarily in primary and lower secondary and in general upper secondary education.

However, availability does not mean that these resources are actually used by teachers and learners. With the exception of the EU School survey[81], not many large scale studies explore if and how teachers use OERs. However, there is a general agreement among scholars surveying the OER landscape that usage falls far behind its potential across the sectors.[82] Especially primary and secondary schools have yet to realise the potential.

Between 50% and 80% students (depending on the grade and the specific tool concerned) never or hardly ever use digital resources, openly available or not, such as digital textbooks, exercise software, broadcast/podcast, data logging tools, simulations or learning games/video games[83]. Overall, digital resources and tools are more frequently used at grade 8 than at grade 11 in general education. This low frequency of digital resources is quite alarming, especially as these resources seem to be widely available for use[84].

Figure 11: Use of resources and tools during lessons at grade 11 general education (in % of students, EU level, 2011-12)

Moreover, when OER are used by teachers, a majority are passive consumers simply browsing for resources rather than participating in the creation and sharing of them. Data from the Wikiwijs project show that only 3% of users actively contribute to the pool of resources[85]. These statistics suggest that very few teachers in fact engage in open educational practices, a term used to describe the focus on learning as a process of construction and sharing which is essential for the successful use.[86] The potential of OER as a tool of innovation and collaboration is thereby not achieved.

Higher Education

In higher education, compared to school education and initial VET, OERs are neither used to their full potential even the supply of OER is more available.

59 Higher Education Institutions from nine Member States are member of Open Courseware Consortium, representing 24% of the total members[87]. 860 EU organisations run about 1,031 open access repositories[88]. The number of courses, modules or collection available for free counts several thousand: 14,000 courses through the OpenCourseWare Consortium; 20,000 modules through Connexions; 38,000 through OER Commons, etc. Universities like Stanford, Princeton, EPF Lausanne or Edinburgh, amongst many others, have established partnerships with Coursera, while Harvard and the MIT launched in 2011 their joint venture EdX to offer university-level courses from a wide range of disciplines online to a worldwide audience. Coursera currently have 9, 5 million enrolments.

In order to realise the full potential of OER, barriers for using and sharing OER need to be removed. The primary barrier identified in a large scale study of higher and adult education was the “lack of interest in creating or using OER” amongst teachers, suggesting a lack of incentives to adopt open educational practices[89]. For example, the creation and sharing of OER are not generally taken into account by promotion systems, leaving individuals dedicating time to OER comparatively less well off to their peers who use the time for more recognised pursuits.

2.3.2.2. OER supply is currently fragmented

It is not obvious to accurately estimate the number of OERs available in Europe due to the lack of reliable monitoring studies[90]. However, rough estimates of numbers of OERs to be made available in the EU funded Open Discovery Space project which incorporates a large number of European repositories and focuses on school education lie at 1.5 million[91]. This shows that there is no real lack of supply of OERs but these are very diverse, difficult to find, through multiple access points, and no comparable approaches.

As shown by the country analyses, some EU Member States have national strategies to foster the use of OER in education and training. Countries have established platforms and repositories where teachers, trainers and learners can find and share digital educational resources. Some of them target specific groups (e.g. teachers).

Example 7 - Cyprus, Finland

Schoolnet DIA.S portal – Cyprus (https://www.dias.ac.cy/en/Pages/intro.aspx) The Schoolnet DIA.S portal offers access to online courses and content for primary, secondary and vocational education. It also provides teachers with a tool to organise and create digital interactive activities like experiments, measurements, simulations etc. and the possibility to make them available online. Le Mill – Finland (http://lemill.net/) Le Mill is an online community for finding, authoring and sharing OERs. Le Mill has nearly 15,000 teachers contributing from 63 countries and almost 24,000 learning resources in 83 languages. It was designed by the University of Art and Design of Helsinki as part of the Learning Resource Exchange service developed by European Schoolnet.

A recent analysis of OER initiatives in EU Member States by the European Commission (May 2013) identified 24 OER initiatives mainly covering simultaneously school education and VET whilst five of them (in BEfr, FI, HU, IT and NL) have a wider scope also encompassing higher education and adult learning[92]. The majority of the initiatives are publicly funded and primarily target school teachers. In five cases, they explicitly target both teachers and students (in EE[93], FI[94] and SE) or students only (in ES and IT). Only four initiatives (in BEfr, IE, LU and PT) have a wider remit, targeting the whole education community (i.e. teachers, school management and administrative staff, students, parents, inspectors, etc.).

Overall, these initiatives mostly offer education-related information, pedagogical tools/materials (e.g. lesson plans, textbooks (or links to), quizzes, videos, pictures, etc.) to support teachers’ work. The language is mostly limited to the country language(s); only the OER initiatives addressing higher education offer English courses. Some of the initiatives may also offer additional functionalities aimed to foster collaborative work (through webinars, forums and exchange of good practice, etc.) among teachers and/or other users (as found in CY, NL and PT) or to allow them to re-mix and re-use content to create their own lessons (as reported in CY, EE and FI[95]). In several cases (BEnl, CY, EE, FI, NL, PL and PT), pedagogical resources are mostly (or even exclusively) generated by teachers.

The analysis on the actual use and uptake of OER among these 24 European OER initiatives shows that this information is overall scarce and, where available, often patchy. Most relevant findings – not comparable though - are found in three countries (BEnl, CY and NL).

Example 8 - Belgium and the Netherlands

Wikiwijs – the Netherlands (http://www.wikiwijs.nl/task) Wikiwijs is a programme intended to promote the use of open educational resources (OER) in the Dutch education sector. It includes an Internet portal where instructors can search for OER adapt them combine them with other educational resources and share them with other instructors. The resources intended for higher education come from the collections of higher education institutions in both the Netherlands and other countries. Since it's launching in 2008 the Wikiwijs initiative has steadily gained in visibility and attractiveness with a number of uploads and downloads respectively tripled and multiplied by five between 2010 and 2012. A survey focusing on the use of the tool is carried out annually. Notwithstanding these promising figures the latest findings (2012 survey) show that there are still areas for improvement as slightly over 50% of surveyed teachers do not know about the initiative. KlasCement – Belgium (http://www.klascement.be/) In the case of the Belgian (BEnl) KlasCement initiative which was launched in 1998 by a teacher and a group of volunteers its value has been progressively acknowledged at both community level (the initiative has been under the remit of the Flemish Minister for Education and Training since January 2013) and outside the country. KlasCement has been indeed replicated in the Netherlands into two versions namely ‘klascement.nl’ (addressed to Dutch teachers) and ‘klascement.eu’ (for teachers all around the EU).

In spite of these positive examples, the limited use of OER by teachers is linked to the fragmented distribution of resources and their visibility. These portals represent an environment of multiple access points, making it difficult for a teacher with little time to operate[96]. It is of utmost importance that teachers and educators have access to OER through environments which are already close to their teaching environments and preferred teacher platforms and portals, but also provide access to all possible OER available across Europe and even across the globe. Finding OER in the language of their teaching is very important. A federated platform of OER using teachers' preferred platforms and portals to give access to all OER available by linking up to all existing local, regional and European existing platforms, could be seen as the way forward[97].

Interoperability between these repositories is a challenge for technical, semantic and organisational reasons. A number of EU funded projects (e.g. through LLP, eContentPlus, FP5 and FP7) has focused on these issues. Most repositories adopt one of the main three approaches to collect and organise; namely being a content repository; being a link or metadata repository; or a hybrid repository that hosts content and links to external OERs.[98] This creates a variety of issues for the teachers who require multiple user accounts to share their resources, be aware of varying standards for resources and their metadata and have to adapt their resources accordingly. Furthermore, as repositories have to acquire a critical mass of OER in order to attract users, the distributed nature of accessing OER suffers from serious inefficiencies.

The availability of quality digital resources is not sufficient, especially when addressing a specific combination on language/education sector/subject. 92% of respondents of the public consultation confirm that the use of ICT and OER in education and training is still too fragmented. The fragmented nature of OER in Europe is due to linguistic and cultural boundaries and is a serious obstacle for the "learning industries" to be further involved in emerging markets. When digital educational resources are dominated by the English language, Europe is unable to exploit opportunities coming from its multilingualism.

Open Educational Resources' availability in different languages is highly concentrated, mainly in English. For example when considering those provided through the Learning Resource Exchange[99], a service of European Schoolnet that focuses on the reuse of OER at the European level, we observe that of the approximately 235,000 resources available, more than 57% are in English. The second more frequently available language in that platform is Dutch with 12% of resources, followed by Italian with 9% and Catalan 5%. What is most preoccupying is that out of the 32 languages identified in that portal 9 comprise less than 1% of available resources. This clearly illustrates the lack of availability of reusable resources at the European level in many languages.

Figure 12: Availability of content in different languages, in %

2.3.2.3. OER supply is currently not quality assessed

Whilst online materials for educational purposes are rising in prominence, it is crucial that the material they use is of quality and is both effectively and regularly quality checked. Quality of OER is another obstacle to extend their use: "lack of time to find suitable OER materials" (56.8%), "lack of OER that are culturally relevant to the user" (50%) or "lack of quality of the OER" (47.8%)[100].

76% of respondents In the public consultation in the context of the 'Opening up Education' initiative, mentioned that finding the right resources for their specific needs is a serious barrier for a wider use of OER. This issue linked with easy access to quality contents in all sectors of education but affects more acutely the quality of learning that takes place in non-formal and informal settings.

The panoply of sources for learning materials oblige to have quality assurance models, as well as technical search solutions so that individuals are supported in the task of assessing the quality and appropriateness of the materials available[101]. Time can be a strong incentive or disincentive to use ICT and online resources for learning and teaching[102].

Nowadays, the proliferation of websites, platforms, blogs makes it difficult for any user to easily find and recognise quality and appropriate contents. This implies an increasing cost for the user in terms of time. Not being able to find it, the user (educator or learner) lacks information. The complete and free information assumption of free markets is not verified, thus generating inefficiency. This is a strong obstacle for a further usage of OER, and Internet-based resources in general.

Mapping of OER quality approaches in the Member States

Quality assurance models used by providers of OERs range from automated checking of the completeness of metadata, using ISO or EFQM standards to certify quality, to working groups of selected teachers assessing and adapting resources[103]. According to recent literature[104] on OER, ‘new ways of assuring and assessing quality are increasingly being developed, in co-existence with traditional quality assurance methods and mechanisms. Peer review of OER learning materials based on the country analyses can be combined with user comments and ratings on the web. The quality of OER is primarily ensured via peer review in the case of eleven initiatives delivered in ten MS (BEfr, CY, CZ, EE, IE, IT, NL, PL, PT and UK). Peers are in most cases peer teachers or sometimes subject experts.

In the UK, participating teachers are financially rewarded for their review. In Ireland and in the Netherlands the process jointly associates teachers and experts whilst in Portugal[105], all content submitted by school teachers is reviewed by academic peers who evaluate the quality following the same approach than for the publication of articles in scientific journals.

Apart from peer review, the methods used for ensuring the quality of OER resources may involve individuals who are specifically assigned to act as editors (as in CZ, EE, FI, LT, LU, NL and SE) or moderators (as in EE). In Sweden, 8 editors work for instance 3 hours per week to keep the Länkskafferiet portal up-to-date. Their role notably consists of reviewing and assessing the proposals for new websites to be added to the portal and consider issues such as the structure of the site, its ease of navigation, appropriate use of language whether in Swedish or English and appropriate vocabulary. Reference to more traditional quality assurance methods such as inspection was found in the case of the two French initiatives[106]. Proposed content is firstly identified by each ‘académie’[107] which circulate the information to inspectors who are in turn responsible for assessing this content.

Among other ways to ensure the quality of online content, use of quality standards and design and promotion of quality labels are being used in some countries. Quality standards (EE[108], FI[109] or LT) may build on existing standards such as in Lithuania where specially trained staff indexes online content in conformity with the LOM AP standard[110] or in Finland where all content must be in line with the national e-educational resources guidelines ‘E-learning materials for teaching and learning’. This may alternatively involve ad hoc guidelines as in the case of the Estonian initiative where ‘guidelines for creating a quality e-course’ have been specifically designed for the purpose of the initiative. The latter have used the “Quality Manual for E-learning in Higher Education” of the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities as a basis. Designing and promoting quality labels were found in the description of the Estonian initiative that has launched an ‘e-course of the year’ contest since 2004.

For higher education 27 in-depth countries have been analysed by the LLP project 'Policies for OER Uptake' (POERUP)[111]. A full analysis, comparison and policy recommendations will only be available by mid-2014.

To summarise: quality of OERs is perceived as another key problem for educational professionals and policy makers. While many OER repositories adopt some form of quality assurance model, these remain incomplete. While the latter examples are fairly thorough forms of quality assurance and can be useful for building trust in the standards of a collection of resources, centralised approaches are often seen as less appropriate to more user focussed approaches as the quality of a resource is highly subjective and depends on the context used. Furthermore, centralized approaches are very costly, time consuming and difficult to organise. As most OER providers are not commercial and cost and sustainability are key issues, more common and realistic models rely on communities of teachers who adapt, tag, review, and rate resources[112].

2.3.2.4. Lack of appropriate implementation models for OER

These new ways of looking to learning through OER (and MOOCs) implies that educational institutions rethink their actual implementation and business models independently if they are school, VET, HE and/or adult learning institutions[113]. Currently only higher education is reflecting on how OERs will affect the educational landscape and data is rather scare. The following will therefore focus on higher education but it is expected that the other educational sectors will follow soon.

By providing free online education to large groups of learners, MOOCs (and OER in general) are challenging the traditional business models of universities. Organisations offering MOOCs such as Coursera have seen their user base increase rapidly. Less than a year since its launch, Coursera already has close to 2 million users and the number of universities offering free online courses is also rising with unprecedented speed. OER like MOOCs have the potential to substantially increase access to high quality education and create competitive pressures for all universities to improve their teaching and course provision.

Schuwer and Janssen distinguish three perspectives or approaches that a higher education institution can select regarding OER, with three different associated types of sustainability:

1. an OER project so as to gain experience, with a funding model

2. a relatively independent OER activity, intended to generate its own income (revenue model)

3. OER as part of the institution’s strategy to provide education for the future

Implementation model 1: The number of institutions that say they will be exploring the value and function of OER is increasing (approach 1); this is an international trend. See, for example, the large number of newcomers at the 2012 OpenEd Conference in Vancouver and the growing number of members of the Open Courseware Consortium[114].

Implementation model 2: The second approach is to apply a “freemium” business model, in which money is earned by customers paying for OER in printed form. Due to the rise of Coursera and Udacity this business model has been slightly adapted[115]. Educational resources are no longer available “for free”; but are now exploited commercially. The resources continue to be “open” to the extent that users can alter and add to them. The intention is to continue to use the “wisdom of crowds”, but income is necessary in order to guarantee quality and more complete OER-based courses are also becoming available[116], generally in the form of projects with external or internal funding. It still appears to be very difficult to apply a sustainable OER-based business model after the pilot phase

The xMOOCs provided by Coursera, Udacity, and others indicate the advent of a new business model. The dominant model in commercial distance education is one of education – including testing and certification – on a large scale and at a low price. Revenues are achieved by having a large number of participants. By contrast, the new competitors’ model involves providing a complete educational experience, free of charge, created by leading universities such as Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. Parties such as Coursera and Udacity expect to generate their revenues from activities such as testing and certification. A second source of revenues is for third parties to be permitted – on a payment and profit-sharing basis – to make use of copyright-protected materials, with anyone who wishes to take the course having free access. A third source involves the analysis and sale of data that can generate mass participation. A potential fourth flow of revenue is from job placement services, i.e. providing companies with the details of appropriate job candidates from among course participants (in return for payment). See, for example, the details of the contract between the University of Michigan and Coursera[117].

It will need to become clear in the next few years whether this business model is effective, and whether mass participation continues. If that is in fact the case, xMOOCs can become major competitors for open and distance education.

Implementation model 3: The best prospects for higher education institutions when OER could be embedded within their strategy and core activities (approach 3). OER can make a major contribution to the performance and quality of higher education, thus helping tackle a number of challenges.

However, today many higher education institutions have neither an overall strategy nor a policy as regards OER. Making the business model chosen by the educational institutions is a must. The public consultation as input to this Staff Working Document showed that 73% of respondents believed that a lack of new business mode