Open Educational Resources in Italy: Connecting the Macro, Meso and Micro Levels, Towards a National OER Ecosystem

Abstract

The chapter presents a snapshot of the state of the art of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Italy. It starts from the macro public policy level, noting that OER are part of the national school policy, to the advocacy meso level, describing the work that the Italian Conference of Rectors has been doing in the last years to both understand and advocate for open content within university teaching, to the institutional micro level. In the university sector, attention to the issue of OER started in 2011, and since then, despite the absence of an organic policy, a number of institutions have started to offer content openly. A lively MOOCs ecosystem exists, with a national MOOC platform and some leading universities releasing their MOOCs as OER. The chapter also reflects on the main challenges that Italy is facing to build a working OER ecosystem, including the national copyright law, the capacity and attitudes of teachers and the absence of a holistic vision at the policy level.