The open educational resources of the OLA project

The European project OLA – Open Learning for All, coordinated internationally by the research group “Social Studies on Science, Education, Communication” of IRPPS, was selected by the Erasmus+ National Agency INDIRE as a good practice and considered a Best Practice for the use of participatory action research methodology and for the systematization of scenario-based teaching.

Available to anyone who wishes to use them, the OLA project provides a set of interdisciplinary educational scenarios and a freely accessible online MOOC course, developed in collaboration among several European countries.

The OLA-Include repository offers hundreds of scenarios produced by teachers from the European countries involved in the project, tested in classrooms, and evaluated. These scenarios provide educational staff with free and open teaching pathways that can be implemented in their own classrooms. The content follows the interdisciplinary STEAM approach (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Humanities, Mathematics) and is designed to pursue, among other objectives, the countering of stereotypes in teaching.

The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), the result of coordinated work by research and training institutions from Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, and Romania, offers a free and modular pathway on the topic of educational resources. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of this type of course, especially in the university context, but they are often not based on theoretical reflection on the subject.

The course comprises 5 macro-contents, divided into several modules. The topics allow for in-depth exploration of what OER (Open Educational Resources) are, how they are created, evaluated and reused, the principles of open pedagogy and blended education, and the world of Creative Commons licenses.

The various modules are not only theoretical but also have practical objectives. They consist of various Learning Units, with slides, subtitled videos, bibliography, and tests. The material is available in open and reusable formats according to context. The content and the very methods by which the course is constructed and delivered follow the principles of the OLA project: particular attention is paid to the inclusiveness of teaching resources, with technical choices ranging from file size to the presence of subtitles, to respect different needs and different learning styles.

Attention is also focused on the critical analysis of texts and images, the promotion of digital skills aimed not only at technical ability but at developing the capacity to evaluate the reliability of different tools and platforms.

OLA is making a significant contribution to the dissemination of the “open” approach in education promoted by UNESCO, in line with the philosophy of open science in the scientific field, with the development of open educational resources to improve teaching in a more inclusive way and to promote an evolution of the concept of digital skills that considers, beyond purely technological abilities, the critical and responsible use of platforms and online information sources, as a prerequisite for the exercise of informed citizenship.