Mission Statement

The overarching goal of OpenMed is to raise awareness and facilitate the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) in the Arab Mediterranean countries, with a particular focus on higher education in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Palestine.

OpenMed fosters the role of universities as knowledge providers not only to their on-campus students but also beyond the walls of institutions, especially towards disadvantaged groups (e.g. low income peoples, disabled students, people living in rural areas, learners at risk of low achievement, refugees).

OpenMed is an international cooperation project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education programme of the European Union during the period 15 October 2015 – 14 October 2018.

Why OpenMed

Openness in Higher Education seems to be common sense for the equal and democratic access to knowledge. Stimulating supply and demand for high-quality OERs is essential for modernising education. If universities really want to find more resources to invest in better teaching and research, it is essential that the open sharing of resources is encouraged. Knowledge must be shared and spread, teachers encouraged to network and collaborate on course development and institutions discouraged from fragmentation and all producing their own slight variations on the same course.
Using freely available resources teachers and students can together collaborate on compiling course material and resources, opening up the classrooms to new forms of learning. The learning experience will be greatly enhanced due to greater involvement.
Before this can be realised, we need a change in attitudes towards what we mean by education, teaching and learning. We need new attitudes towards collaboration and new literacy.

Wider Objective

Widening participation and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) as a bottom-up approach to support the modernisation of HEIs in Morocco, Palestine and Egypt and Jordan, improving the quality of education and teaching.
The initiative also opens the possibility to provide free educational resources for self-learners, in terms of informal and lifelong learning.

Specific objectives

• Raise awareness and widen HEI participation in open educational practices and resources;
• Define the OER Agenda for the re-use of OER at HE institutional level;
• Define mid-term strategic roadmaps for the implementation of the OER Agenda at local-institutional level according to the local, cultural and institutional needs and strategies;
• Teach university teachers how to use and reuse OER in a pedagogically-rich context and improve their digital competences;
• Pilot start-up open educational practices and offer to students flexible and up to date open contents and learning paths, with a linkage to the international community and the needs of the job market

Expected results

1. Compendium of EU-MED Open Education practices
2. Agenda of Open Education for university course development
3. Institutional roadmap(s) of open educational practices, as an adaptation of the Agenda to the local, cultural and institutional framework
4. Network of Innovation Centres for Open Education activated in PC HEIs
5. 70 Faculty staff members trained to the concepts of OE
6. Recommendations for policy makers, managers of universities, teachers and educators willing to adopt the OpenMed methodology and implement open practices in their institutions