Abstract:

Open Educational Resources (OER) are being used more and more intensively as an efficient tool for sharing knowledge in the educational community at all levels. As a consequence, OER play a fundamental role in the teaching-learning process. Therefore, it is of great importance to take care of the OER quality in order to ensure that they allow the intended educational objectives to be achieved as efficiently as possible.

Main definitions on OER and required properties are very well defined by UNESCO. Additionaly, UNESCO has also developed regulations, polices, recommendations and guidelines, as well as an OER Dynamic Coalition to promote and support networking and sharing of information to create synergies around the OER use and generation. In its Basic Guide it is demanded: “Who guarantees the quality of OER?”

In order to answer this question, the main aim of this research is to setup the basis for implementing an optimal OER quality assessment instrument. To do this, the authors will first review the existing literature on OER assessment methodologies (OER-AMs) and define the most relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Through the use of the proposed KPIs, different OER-AMs will be discussed, and their strengths and weaknesses will be pointed out. Based on this analysis, the authors will determine which are the main characteristics that an assessment methodology should take into account in order to be optimal in a general sense of application, overcoming the limitations of the existing OER-AMs. In other words, after these findings a comprehensive rubric can be derived, as was the goal, after addressing through appropriate questions the relevant features that each KPI is demanding.

Keywords:

Open Educational Resources, Key Performance Indicator, OER Assessment Methodology, Digital Library, Higher Education, Gate2Math, ERASMUS+ Project.