Abstract:

During the one year's pilot action (April 2019-March 2020) within the ROSIE project focusing on monitoring implementation of the RRI concept (Responsible Research and Innovation) for SMEs, CCSS (Czech centre for science and society) provided assistence to 6 SMEs working in the field of education. All lecturers-language tutors involved in the pilot action do private tutoring of so called SL (small languages or language of minorities). Our presentation shows the results of this pilot action; all problems connected with existence and availability of OER for the SL lecturers are listed there. Our experience described here may be also useful to tutors of other SLs. Part of our assistence output can serve as a source of inspiration in general for online low-barrier tutoring (health, economic and other barriers), but also as motivation for other language education businesses, lecturers and agencies.

In January 2019 CCSS gave out an open call for business-people/lecturers in language services with an offer of assistance in the RRI area emphasizing OA (Open Access) and OE (Open Education). CCSS decided for this direction in particular on the ground of their previous experience with lack of quality OER for language tutors. Their basic presupposition was also lack of information in the bulk of SL tutors in the area of IT tools usable for teaching planning, teaching itself and self-presentation and transfer of the RRI topics.

The pilot action was eventually focused only on SL lecturers/businesswomen. The deciding factor for their selection was (unlike other interested people) repeated mentioning non-existent or insufficient support from the state and lack of OER usable for their field. In-depth interviews followed; in cooperation with selected pilots a plan of one-year assistence was created consisting of following topic blocks:
1. introduction in RRI accenting OA,
2. existent OER for SL lecturers,
3. creation of own OER,
4. making an 'OER catalogue',
5. 'Open teacher' (a group of topics like How to find legal images, Massive Open Online Courses, Earning Money by Sharing etc.),
6. Czech National Corpus & OER,
7. Funding and Grant Opportunities, 8. Roadmapping using Cover Story tool. Theoretical lessons were combined with practical output of particular pilots. Communication was led online (Zoom, Skype), as well as at personal meetings.

Evaluation of the Pilot Action by the pilots was mostly positive; all participants admitted that nearly all tools and topics introduced to them were new to them and therefore useful. Together we adjusted the further progress of the action to their current needs (regarding educational methods, approaches, techniques but also business strategies etc.).

CCSS tested such approaches towards SMEs as LL (Living Lab), STIR methodology or tools such as Design Thinking, RWCT (Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking) of graphic tools such as Genial.ly among others.

As one of the main results of this pilot action, CCSS as a society focusing also on education monitors the lack of such support. Meanwhile, CCSS is applying for accreditation at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in the field of remote- or online teaching.

Keywords:

Open Educational Resources, Open Access Education, Small Languages, Teaching, Pilot Action, Responsible Research and Innovation, Small and Medium Enterprises.