The winning project in the Award for Learning Contexts was Open Science Resources, a Europe-wide initiative submitted by Ellinogermaniki Agogi – Research and Development Department, Greece. This Award is given to learning professionals who produce OER, who actively share their work, and who motivate and inspire their colleagues. Submissions were required to provide learner statements as testament to the successful incorporation of student feedback, and communication to students of the value of openness.

The award was presented to Eleftheria Tsourlidaki by Dr. Luciano Sathler, Vice-President of ABED, representing jury member Professor Fred Litho at the ceremony at Online Educa Berlin.

About Open Science Resources

In an era where science education inadequacy in formal and informal contexts is becoming an increasingly challenging issue, harvesting the potential of digital science education repositories appears as a very attractive alternative. However, an impressive abundance of high quality digital content that is available in European repositories remains largely unexploited due to a number of barriers such as: the lack of interoperability between repositories, the inefficiency of current content organization and metadata structures as well as multi-lingual issues. The Open Science Resources project suggests a coordinated solution at European level in order to overcome the aforementioned barriers.  To implement the OSR vision, the project partners have brought together a balanced mix of high quality science museums and science centres, pedagogues, educational technologists, metadata experts, user groups and standardization bodies.

Open Science Resources website

Jury statement

The jury praised the project for demonstrating evidence of a truly significant contribution to teaching and learning in science as well as a solid hold of the principles surrounding OER. “The originality and clarity of the project are impressive and it has potential to be applied internationally. It makes available a range of resources from European Museums and Science Centres and encourages educators and others to contribute new resources, making use of an impressive tool to create learning pathways.”

The jury for the learning contexts award was composed of Jenny Glennie, Executive Director at the South African Institute for Distance Education, Dr. Carl Holmberg, Former Secretary General of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (Chair), and Professor Fred Litto, President of the Brazilian Association for Distance Education (ABED).

Video film describing open educational practices

See details of all initiatives recognized in the OPAL Awards