Abstract:

In Italy, a growing interest has been devoted to OERs and MOOCs development from researchers and policy makers in recent years. However, even though the potentials of OERs are widely recognized as they represent a unique opportunity to access knowledge and to experience innovative learning environments for all, several factors threaten their widespread use (European Commission, 2014).

These factors are:
1) language, as OERs are mostly developed in the English,
2) a limited range of disciplines addressed,
3) a restricted focus on specific target groups, generally higher education students (e.g. the TRIO project, the Federica web-learning and the 41 MOOCs of Federica.eu). In addition to this, the expansion of available content on the web for teaching and learning purposes raises concerns on the quality of the resources available on line.

The OERs devoted to students and teachers of primary and secondary education are fragmented in different repositories and often lack of reliable sources in terms of content and resource creation. Thus, looking for high-quality OERs becomes a challenging issue for Italian students and teachers, who are willing to access innovative and yet valuable resources on the web for their learning and teaching purposes.

The present contribution is focused on the analysis of the quality of 20 OERs selected in Italian language, developed for students and teachers of primary and secondary education. This analysis was carried out by LUMSA University research group within the theoretical framework developed in the Erasmus+ EU-StORe - European Standards for Open Education and Open Learning Resources - project (ref. 2014-1-RO01-KA202-002985). EU-StORe aims at analyzing open learning resources in order to implement a European inventory of OERs and to set common European standards and guidelines for open learning.
The resources selected for this contribution are divided in two groups: the first is characterized by the translation and the adaptation of international OERs in Italian language and context (i.e. the ones developed by NGOs such as Oxfam); the second group includes resources developed in Italy and collected by INDIRE (National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research) in two repositories, for students and teachers.

After an overview on the quality elements of the selected resources (such as the rationale, the contents, the pedagogical approaches and the envisaged aims/learning outcomes), this paper will also highlight the strengths and the weaknesses of OERs development in Italy.

Keywords:

OERs, quality, standards, inventory, OERs for students and teachers.