Open Education (RO0063)

Open Education
2018-2020 Lead implementing agency/actor Ministry of National Education (MEN) — Directorate for Information and Communication Technology, Directorate-General for Strategic Management and Public Policies Other actors involved State actors CSOs, private sector, multilaterals, working groups Romanian Open Educational Resources Coalition (RED Coalition) What is the public problem that the commitment will address? In the context of the promotion by the MEN of the creation of open educational resources by teachers and other education specialists, the need to inform and train creators of open educational resources appears through the CRED project. Through the provisions of Law no.1/2011 on national education, Romania has created the legal framework for the use of OERs - the Virtual School Library, but so far these provisions have not been implemented. Commitment description What is the commitment? The commitment aims at introducing a training component for teachers on open educational resources and copyright, in order to facilitate their transformation into creators of human resources for education. Creating the Virtual School Library and uploading Open Educational Resources. How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem? The commitment brings a transparency dimension to already initiated internal processes, but at the same time makes a decisive contribution to the internal coherence of public policy adoption and implementation in the field of education. Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values? Increasing transparency of the public education system Increasing access to quality education and 37 stimulating innovation Milestone activity with a verifiable deliverable Responsible agency / partner Start Date: End Date: Training sessions for teachers on open educational resources and copyright MEN RED Coalition 2018 2020 Launch for approval of the procedure for validation of open educational resources to be used MEN August 2018 September 2018 Development of an open licence for the Virtual School Library MEN 2019 2019 Creation of technical support for the Virtual School Library MEN 2019 2019 Collection, from public and private sources, and publication of the initial repository of the Library MEN 2020 2020

16. Open Education

Commitment Text: "The commitment aims at introducing a training component for teachers on open educational resources and copyright, in order to facilitate their transformation into creators of human resources for education, creating the Virtual School Library and uploading Open Educational Resources."

Milestones:

16. • Training sessions for teachers on open educational resources and copyright
    • Launch for approval of the procedure for validation of open educational resources to be used
    • Development of an open licence for the Virtual School Library
    • Creation of technical support for the Virtual School Library
    • Collection, from public and private sources, and publication of the initial repository of the Library

Start Date: 2018 ...............................................

End Date: 2020

Editorial Note: The commitment text is abridged. The full text can be found in the OGP 2018-2020 national action plan.

Context and Objectives

This commitment has been continued from Romania’s third action plan (2016-2018). In 2017, Romania had an 18.1 percent dropout rate among students in primary and secondary education (far higher than the EU average of 10.6 percent) and spent three percent of its GDP on education (significantly lower than the EU average of 4.7 percent). [146] Romania wanted to address the financial pressure on students from low-income backgrounds (who were most at risk of dropping out) and increase the quality of affordable educational resources. Through the provisions of Law 1/2011 on national education, Romania created the legal framework for the use of open educational resources (RED) [147] to better enable access and reuse of educational materials and tools. Nevertheless, according to an interviewed Ministry of National Education (MEN) representative, the Virtual School Library (BSV) has not yet been developed or populated with REDs, not enough REDs exist, and not enough teachers know how to create or use them. [148] This is particularly problematic, because as of September 2018, there is a clear need for educational materials to supplement the school manuals. According to the MEN representative, NM 808/2017 addresses the abundance of low-quality, paid resources that pupils had to acquire by mandating that no educational resources for primary and secondary education that must be paid for can be required. Instead, REDs could supplement the school manuals, as they were more easily peer reviewed, and feedback was public and delivered in a timely way. [149]

This commitment aims to increase the transparency of already initiated internal processes to modernize the education system (i.e., REDs and BSV) and to promote the coherence of local public policies regarding the validation of REDs. By increasing the number of REDs and their usage for teaching, assessment, or research, this commitment supports the OGP value of access to information. Finally, this commitment clearly aims to use technology and innovation to increase access to educational resources.

The specific milestones of this commitment have the potential to improve the creation of auxiliary educational materials that supplement schoolbooks and to help reduce school dropout rates. 72,000 REDs are estimated to be produced. [150] While it is unclear how many will be validated and reach students through the BSV portal, these REDs will address the need for auxiliary educational materials created by NM 808/2017. 55,000 schoolteachers will be trained to produce and utilize REDs, and while this is just a fraction of the total number of schoolteachers in Romania, the e-learning sessions and REDs will allow traditional periodic methodical gatherings (where schoolteachers learn and share their skills and knowledge) to take place at a faster pace and to reach larger and more isolated communities. According to a civil society representative, local validating procedures exist and have already been enforced, such that a national vetting procedure will only marginally improve the quality of REDs. [151] More importantly, however, it helps disseminate REDs that fulfill the same minimum standard through the BSV portal.

Next steps

According to the MEN representative, this commitment is a priority for MEN, due to the lack of auxiliary educational resources, because MEN wants to ratify the UNESCO Recommendation on REDs. [152] The following recommendations could help the implementation of the commitment in the current action plan:

• MEN could commit to training all schoolteachers in Romania, and consequently enable the reutilization of the "Relevant Curriculum relevant, open education for all" (CRED) [153] resources, such that they can be further disseminated by the trained schoolteachers to their untrained peers.
• MEN could commit to populating the BSV portal with as many high-quality REDs as possible. Consequently, MEN should not only standardize vetting procedures for the uploading of REDs into the BSV portal, but also incorporate into the procedure a retraction mechanism for those that receive too much negative feedback, that are not used, or that become obsolete.
• MEN could encourage the continuous creation and submission of REDs by rewarding those schoolteachers that contribute with their own REDs, especially if their content is positively received by the BSV community.

[147] REDs are freely accessible, openly licensed supplementary teaching, learning, assessment, and research materials.

[148] Interview with Claudia Teodorescu, Ministry of National Education (MEN), 2 September 2019.

[149] Interview with Claudia Teodorescu, MEN, 2 September 2019.

[150] Ibid.

[151] Interview with Ovidiu Voicu, Center for Public Innovation (CPI), 16 April 2019.

[152] "UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources", UNESCO, 18 April 2018, available at http://bit.ly/2kSlMdz.

[153] The CRED project started in 2017, has a budget of 42 million euros, and is part of the Strategy to Reduce the School Dropout, approved by HG 417/2015. More details on the CRED project are available at http://bit.ly/2kUqzep.

16. Open Education

Limited

According to the OGP repository, [84] 21,992 schoolteachers (working in primary, middle, and high-schools) were trained during the action plan’s implementation (less than half of the 55,000 targeted in the EU co-funded project that supported this milestone). ^[85] However, according to a press release from April 2021, over 30,000 teachers were trained in total (with over 20,000 trained in 2020). ^[86] These trainings will continue until December 2021, beyond the timeframe of this action plan. The Ministry of Education (ME) did not develop a national procedure for the approval and validation of open educational resources (REDs). ME also created a competition “Creators in Education” for best practices in teaching. [87] However, the competition alone does not match the milestone’s goals as proposed in the action plan. [88]

The Agency Administering the National Informational Framework for Education and Research (AARNIEC) was tasked to develop the Virtual School Library titled Educational Library (EDULIB) but did not finish the tender’s requirements. [89] The support for the Virtual School Library referred to building a Wi-Fi infrastructure for the schools to access REDs, but this was also not started. [90]

ME collected public and private resources to populate the Virtual School Library through its “Creators in Education” competition, and on its eduonline.roedu.net and digital.educred.ro platforms. [91]All resources uploaded to the digital.educred.ro platform are created within the training courses within the “Creators in Education” project, and are thus new, while the resources on the eduonline.roedu.net platform were created in the period 2009-2011.