The course on Open Educational Resources and Open Educational Practices was held in Czestochowa, Poland in April. It was offered in a blended format: two face-to-face workshops were intertwined with the online course held on the OpenLearning platform: Otwarte Zasoby i Praktyki LangOER

The course was announced through various channels using this invitation and teachers who got interested in participating in our course registered through a website dedicated to our training course. The same website was used in the process of product submission.

The online component (Module 1) was made available one week before the first f2f meeting. The teachers who had already registered for the f2f workshop were invited to join the online course and familiarize themselves with the idea of Open Educational Resources.

The face-to-face workshops were organised for two groups of teachers of different subjects and from different educational levels, ranging from kindergarten teachers to academic teachers; from history teachers to physical education teachers. The first face-to-face workshop took place on April 10 (the Friday group) and April 11 (the Saturday group) and was followed by the online component consisting of three modules.

The first face-to-face workshop took place on April 10 (the Friday group) and April 11 (the Saturday group) and was followed by the online component consisting of three modules. The second face-to-face meetings were held on April 24 and April 25.

The first f2f workshop was devoted to the following issues:

• the idea of openness
• what are open educational resources
• examples of OER
• open licences
• finding OER
• working with images and videos
• correct attribution

Discussion about the idea of openness in education

The participants were highly engaged in discussions and were very eager to share their views and experiences.

The second f2f workshop was dedicated mainly to the process of creating the open educational resources and consisted of the following topics:

• Open licenses – revision
• Polish open educational resources repositories – a review
• Hands-on task – creating open educational resources

Participants working hard on creating their own OER

The teachers were assisted by Gosia Kurek and Ania Skowron (the instructors in the course)  and managed to start working on their own open educational materials. The completed their work at home and submitted the ready products via this website.

The online component was structured as follows:

• Module 1: “Let’s meet” – the idea of openness in education, open educational resources and open licenses were introduced to the participants; they were taught how to find an openly licensed image. This Module was made available to the teachers a week before the first 2f2 workshop and served as a sort of introduction to the whole course.
• Module 2: “Open Educational Resources” which brought the idea of OER closer to the participating teachers who were invited to introduce themselves
• Module 3: “Our products” in which participants were given a selection of different tools with step-by-step instructions they could use when creating their own OER.

The teachers participating in the training course were very engaged both during the face-to-face meetings and in the online course. Apparently, the topic of Open Educational Resources is of great interest to the teachers who would like to be more aware of the whole idea.

Swedish language teachers are eager to find ways of implementing digital activities for their students. Therefore, the Internet is increasingly used for finding resources and practice material. However, there are recurrent questions of how this material can be used and what different licenses mean. For this reason, the Going Open Sweden online course was held with some active and dedicated language teachers contributing to discussions of openness in education and production of OER. The participating teachers all have an active interest in the use of IT in language learning.

The announcement of the course took place on Facebook groups for Swedish language teachers. When the invitation was posted it attracted immediate responses from more 40 teachers. The Going Open Sweden course had it’s final meeting in Stockholm on 15 June, with the participants and the course leaders Sylvi Vigmo from University of Gothenburg and Linda Bradley from Chalmers University of Technology. The teachers who had engaged in the project from all of southern Sweden were invited to this meeting.

Participants in the final seminar in Stockholm

Swedish language teachers are eager to find ways of implementing digital activities for their students. Therefore, the Internet is increasingly used for finding resources and practice material. However, there are recurrent questions of how this material can be used and what different licenses mean.

The announcement of the course took place on Facebook groups for Swedish language teachers. When the invitation was posted it attracted immediate responses from more than 40 teachers. The Going Open Sweden course had it’s final meeting in Stockholm on 15 June, with the participants and the course leaders Sylvi Vigmo and Linda Bradley from University of Gothenburg. The teachers who had engaged in the project from all of southern Sweden were invited to this meeting.

The fact that we focused specifically on language teachers in Swedish schools has meant engaging in a group that has shared ideas and resources with each other. It has also been very valuable being able to discuss methods of teaching and sharing pedagogical ideas related to online learning.

The course was set up with four course modules dealing with openness in education, licences and critical testing of software for language learning. The participants have been enthusiastic working thoroughly with the course assignments. The course ran from 26 March to 6 May 2015, during a very hectic period for Swedish teachers in the end of term. Even though most teachers had a heavy work period, they have been active with assignments. In the final evaluation, they mentioned that the layout of the course with a content allowing for possibility to work whenever there has been a possibility, has meant that they have been able to carry through the course.

The course leaders have communicated with the participants regularly, encouraging them to attend OER webinars and promoting OER content in the modules. Also, supporting them in their online work has been essential. Apart from the introduction seminar with Swedish OER expert Ebba Ossiannilsson we also had a mid-seminar through the video conferenceing programme Adobe Connect where Ebba was invited again. In addition, Ebba has answered questions from the participants throughout the course, which has been highly appreciated.

Ebba Ossiannilsson, OERSverige.se

In the final seminar in Stockholm, we discussed plans for disseminating the course content to even more Swedish language teachers. The participants were encouraged to invite colleagues, displaying their produced OER and inviting the colleagues to get involved in the open learning debate in Sweden. This process is in fact already an ongoing process. The participants appreciate the “extended classroom“ that online possibilities offer through social media. To conclude, we’d like to thank all participating teachers who have now started the process of being ambassadors of OER in Sweden. Engaging in this course has had an impact on spreading OER to langauge teachers in Sweden.