This report (a PDF file) is the first deliverable (out of three) of the study called A scoping study on the potential of shared, cross-border OER and syllabi in Europe - in short, SharedOER - that was carried out by Sero Ltd during 2014. The study was commissioned by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, based in Seville, Spain, a part of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/institutes/ipts).

The purpose of this Deliverable is to understand the extent of the development of syllabi that cross national, regional, linguistic or cultural borders and offer the prospect of more unified curricula whose currency can be more internationally applied, making it easier to assess the relative abilities of a student from one country with a student from another.

This report (Deliverable 1 of SharedOER) reviews initiatives relevant to Shared OER, concentrating primarily on the member countries of the Lifelong Learning Programme, with some detail also across other continents. The USA is not covered comprehensively, because the Common Core Standards are reviewed in Deliverable 2, File:SharedOER D2-1.pdf.

The study work for this Deliverable was mainly conducted during late summer and autumn 2014 and does not claim to be comprehensive: it was limited by time and budgetary constraints.

Four initiatives are covered in particular detail: the Learning Resource Exchange, the International Primary Curriculum, ENRIC-NARIC and Commonwealth of Learning. Between them these provide an entry point to each of the main educational sectors, including Vocational Education and Training, and are exemplars which give pointers to potential future developments which are discussed in Deliverable 3, the final report for SharedOER.

The initiatives described in the text are tabulated in an Inventory (the Appendix) to this report.

Note that this Deliverable is not designed to be a comprehensive list of OER and MOOC resources. Entries for OER and MOOCs are made only if in the opinion of the authors there is a 'shared' aspect to such entries. For much more comprehensive lists of OER and MOOCs the reader is referred to the reports and tables in the POERUP project (http://poerup.referata.com) and to specialised databases such as the MOOC List (https://www.mooc-list.com).

Keywords

Africa · Asia · Eastern Europe · MOOC initiatives ·  · North America · OER initiatives · shared curriculum · SharedOER · South America · Western Europe