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Extensive research has taken place over the years to examine the barriers of OER adoption, but little empirical studies has been undertaken to map the amount of OER reuse. The discussion around the actual use of OER, outside the context in which they were developed, remains ongoing. Previous studies have already shown that searching and evaluating resources are barriers for actual reuse. Hence, in this quantitative survey study we explored teachers’ practices with resources in Higher Education Institutes in the Netherlands. The survey had three runs, each in a different context, with a total of 439 respondents. The results show that resources that are hard or time-consuming to develop are most often reused from third parties without adaptations. Resources that need to be more context specific are often created by teachers themselves. To improve our understanding of reuse, follow-up studies must explore reuse with a more qualitative research design in order to explore how these hidden practices of dark reuse look like and how teachers and students benefit of it.

To find out what is needed to speed up the adoption of open sharing and reuse of learning materials and open online courses in publicly funded Dutch institutions of Higher Education, a qualitative research study was conducted in fall 2016. This study examined issues of willingness of educators and management, barriers and enablers of adoption, and the role of institutional and national policy in the adoption of open sharing and reuse of learning materials and online courses. Fifty-five stakeholders (educators, board members, and support staff) in 10 Dutch Higher Education Institutions were interviewed. The main findings of this study are: motivation for sharing and reuse of learning materials for educators and managers is directly related to the ambition to achieve better education for students; sharing and reuse of learning materials is common practice, very diverse and not open accessible for the whole world, and important barriers include lack of awareness of opportunities for open sharing and reuse and lack of time. Based on the findings from the interviews, the last section of this paper presents conclusions and recommendations regarding how Dutch institutions for Higher Education can formulate effective policies to raise awareness, organize adequate support and provide time to experiment.

This special issue contains some of the almost 180 accepted contributions of this years’ Open Education Global conference (OEGlobal), organized in Delft from 24-26 April 2018. These annual global conferences are organized by the Open Education Consortium (until 2014 named Open Courseware Consortium), together with a local institution. The first edition in this series of conferences was organized in 2005 by the Utah State University in Logan.

There's much discussion about being open, with topics such as open source software, open innovation, open research, and open education. Will the whole world be open, and, if so, what was all closed in the past? The authors analyze the similarities and differences between the open movements they've been part of and come up with expectations for software's future.

Over the period 2006–2008, the Dutch Open Universiteit Nederland conducted an experiment in which Open Educational Resources (OER) were offered in an effort to bridge the gap between informal and formal learning and to establish a new style of entry portal to higher education with no barriers at all. OpenER received considerable attention both in terms of visitors and in the media. About 10% of the visitors reported that OER influenced their decision to start some formal learning track at academic level. Lessons learned were both from users and from inside the Open Universiteit. The experiment changed the attitude towards OER within the university itself and led to a growing awareness in the Netherlands of the value of OER in general, in other educational levels as well as among policy‐makers and politicians.

The higher education sector is changing alongside developments in information technology. This chapter describes the increased inclusivity that the Internet in particular has facilitated and the functions of the university in determining quality of educators, learners and educational resources. It explains a tension between increased inclusivity and the function of determining quality. Examples are presented of how this tension has been resolved in other sectors of society. Two higher education developments are discussed from this perspective of inclusivity and quality, Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offerings. An example on the development of quality within an OER repository is described. Wikiwijs is described as an online space for OERs that was developed in the Netherlands and has been experimenting for five years with ways to provide quality alongside increased inclusivity so that teachers from primary to university level can find, use and adapt learning materials. Potential higher education futures with even greater inclusivity are discussed. Areas for further innovation in distributing determination of quality in higher education are described.

The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) movement is the latest “big thing” in Open and Distance Learning (ODL). MOOCs offer both opportunities and threats that are extensively discussed in the literature, including the potential of opening up education for all at a global scale. On the other hand, MOOCs challenge traditional pedagogy and raise important questions about the future of campus-based education. However, in discussing these opportunities and threats the majority of the literature tends to focus on the origin of the MOOC movement in the United States (US). The specific context of Europe with its diversity of languages, cultural environments, educational policies, and regulatory frameworks differs substantially from the US context. Accordingly, this article offers a European perspective on MOOCs in order to better understand major differences in threats and opportunities across countries and continents, including the use and reuse of MOOCs for regional or global use, via European or non-European platforms. In the context of the EU funded HOME project (Higher education Online: MOOCs the European way), a research initiative was undertaken to identify opportunities and threats of the MOOC movement for European higher education institutions. Three sources of data were gathered and analysed. Opportunities and threats were categorized into two levels. The macro level comprises issues related to the higher education system, European context, historical period, and institutional concerns. The micro level covers aspects related to faculty, teachers, and courses, thus to the operational level. The main opportunities discovered were: the ECTS as a robust system for formal recognition of accomplishments in MOOCs; the trend for institutional collaboration, stimulated by EU-funded programs; and the many innovative and alternative pedagogical models used in MOOCs published in Europe. The main threats mentioned were: implementation problems of the ECTS, difficulties in bridging non/informal and formal education; and too much regulation, hindering experimentation and innovation.

One of the claims the OER movement makes is that availability of (open) digital learning materials improves the quality of education. The promise is the ability to offer educational programs that take into account specific demands of the learner. The question is how to reach a situation where a customized demand can be met using OER with acceptable quality against acceptable costs. This situation resembles mass customization as is common in industry for several decades now. Techniques from an industry where an end product is assembled with the demands of the customer as a starting point can be translated to the field of education where courses and learning paths through a curriculum are assembled using a mixture of open and closed learning materials and learning services offered by an institution. Advanced IT support for both the modeling of the learning materials and services and a configurator to be used by a learner are necessary conditions for this approach.

A knowledge base system is characterized by a separation between application-dependent knowledge and application-independent deduction rules. When used in a business environment, it is not clear what added value this separation has, over conventional systems. It also is not clear what characteristics make a problem tractable for a solution using a knowledge base system. This paper tries to formulate answers to these questions. In order to obtain a sound basis for discussion, a formal model of a knowledge base system is presented.

Making a configuration of a complex product in the course of a sales process is a difficult matter. A sales-support information system (SSIS) can be a useful help for sales men. An SSIS should give support in two problem areas. The first area concerns the problem of getting a valid product specification, i.e. a specification of a product which falls within the product assortment. The second area concerns the problem of getting the product that is the best solution for the problem of the customer. Such an SSIS must be able to communicate in three different languages. These languages are called user-language, functional language and technical language. In this paper the problem of specifying a product in technical language is treated. With the building of a prototype of such an SSIS it is demonstrated that it is possible to give a salesman sufficient support for the problem of getting a valid product specification. The proposed solution for the second problem area has not been processed into the prototype.

Group support systems enable harvesting knowledge from groups. The minutes of a typical GSS meeting are mostly textual reports of 10 to 50 pages summarizing the issues discussed, the set priorities and proposed actions. Capitalizing on knowledge generated during GSS meetings appears to be very difficult without additional automated support. We describe our experiences with several prototypes for computer-aided support for consolidating the results of GSS meetings over time. The development of the prototypes resulted in an online service called GroupIntelligence/sup TM/. This service transforms accumulated group knowledge from various sources into a dynamic consolidated Web site.

The free and open publication of course materials (OpenCourseWare or OCW) was initially undertaken by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other universities primarily to share educational resources among educators (Abelson, 2007). OCW, however, and more in general open educational resources (OER), have also provided well-documented opportunities for all learners, including the so-called “informal learners” and “independent learners” (Carson, 2005; Mulder, 2006, p. 35). Universities have also increasingly documented clear benefits for specific target groups such as secondary education students and lifelong learners seeking to enter formal postsecondary education programs. In addition to benefitting learners, OCW publication has benefitted the publishing institutions themselves by providing recruiting advantages. Finally enrollment figures from some institutions indicate that even in the case of the free and open publication of materials from online programs, OCW does not negatively affect enrollment. This paper reviews evaluation conducted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), and Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNL) concerning OCW effects on higher education participation and student recruitment.