Pilaar 3: OER

Our vision is to promote the creation, sharing, and reuse of open educational resources by educators and students. We aim to provide educators with the tools and opportunities to update traditional teaching methodologies, and to make use of novel teaching methodologies that turn students into co-creators of knowledge. In doing so, we can increase the quality of education, make it more flexible and accessible, and provide additional options for academic staff and students to show their excellence.

Deliverables:

• The creation of (central) policy and incentive structures to stimulate the creation and use of Open Educational Resources
• Aiding teacher professionalization through the creation of (thematic) workshops, self-paced learning opportunities, and Open Education integration tools
• Providing infrastructure support for novel forms of Open Educational Resources such as e-learning
• Connecting educators and students to societal actors to increase learning impact in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Other activities:

• Organization of an international meeting on open and innovative education: on 18 March 2026, the International Strategy and Relations department and the Teaching Academy Groningen organized an afternoon session on the Global University Academy and educational innovation. Together, we explored how to make academic education more accessible to groups with limited access to higher education, such as people in refugee camps, and how this can be facilitated through open education.

• Keynote on Open Education: during the opening of the Education Festival 2026, the vision for opening up our education was presented, structured around four focus areas: learners, pedagogy, society, and learning resources.