Abstract:

Adult Education is a subject of great interest to the European Union. Alarmingly, one in five adults have low literacy and numeracy skills, one in four have completed lower secondary education at most and one in three have very low or no ICT skills. While progress is being steadily made, considerably more work needs to be done.

The European Union Parliament recently commissioned a study to review the current use of Open Educational Resources in Adult Education both in universities and outside higher education, assess its potential and make recommendations for policy interventions, taking account of the European Commission’s policy frameworks . This study incorporates new research on over 12 Member States, leveraging on a synthesis of existing research from a range of projects including POERUP (Policies for OER Uptake) and a 2014-15 study on Shared OER for the Joint Research Centre (JRC) , augmented by two more recent studies for JRC and the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP).

This paper reviews the research from the European Parliament study on the availability of OER in adult education, both publicly and privately resourced, in the UK, France, Hungary, Sweden, Latvia, Germany and Romania, with briefer reviews of Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland and Portugal. The definition and scope of ‘adult education’ varies considerably between these EU countries but a common factor between almost all of them is the low and decreasing amount of public funding. Continuing variations in copyright law between Member States is one inhibiting factor in the expansion of OER, particularly in the area of cross-border sharing.

Although all of the countries studied have national quality procedures for many aspects of education, none of these mention OER and the general picture is that quality assurance is up to the individual provider. There are a few examples of voluntary quality charters: in France CHANED (National Union of Private Distance Education Providers) has set up a quality charter, which 23 private institutions have signed and the quality charter includes resources, some of which are OER.

The research shows that progress in the expansion of OER in adult education across Europe is patchy at best. However, in Germany, which was a relative latecomer to embracing the OER philosophy, significant progress has been made in the past four years, with public encouragement and funding: a model which other Member States could benefit from studying.

Keywords:

Open educational resources, adult education, lifelong learning, copyright, quality assurance.