Sustainability strategies for open educational resources

Sustainability strategies for open educational resources

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Intro

It is becoming more and more common for teaching staff to develop, share and reuse open educational resources, or ‘OER’. Often this begins with a project, which may or may not draw its funding from external sources, to develop and gain experience with OER. However, one issue that frequently recurs is how to make the project results sustainable: how to make sure that the results retain value after the project is completed.

Sustainability refers to a situation where project results have lasting value. The activities for the long term are collectively called sustainability strategies.

In 2022, an overview was prepared of the sustainability strategies of 16 projects relating to OER in tertiary education in the Netherlands including vocational education (mbo), universities of applied sciences (hbo) and research universities (wo). Some of those projects were funded by a subsidy under the Open and Online Education Incentive Scheme (Stimuleringsregeling Open en Online Onderwijs) that was intended specifically for OER.

The findings are summarised in the infographic Sustainability strategies for OER (In Dutch).

More recently, large numbers of projects have been launched and completed under the Open and Online Education Incentive Scheme, and a follow-up study (2025) researched what activities were undertaken before, during and after projects with a view to continuing them after the Incentive Scheme funding ended.

The report Strategies for sustainable OER contains an overview of those activities.

This tool summarises the activities from the 2022 overview and the 2025 study. It is intended to provide project leaders and policy advisers with inspiration for deciding what activities to use to make their OER project sustainable.

Use

The various sustainability strategies are structured according to the same framework as the one used for the infographic described above, which was developed by the Acceleration Plan’s On the Road to digital educational resources and OER zone.

This tool summarises the activities from the 2022 overview and the 2025 study. It is intended to provide project leaders and policy advisers with inspiration for deciding what activities to use to make their OER project sustainable.

The sustainability strategies are broken down into 2 dimensions: phase and aspect.

1. The vertical axis shows aspects: organisation, professionals involved and thematic aspects. These are broken down further into various sub-aspects.

2. The horizontal axis shows the phase: before, during or after the project

Organisation aspect Actor aspect Thematic elements of working with OER aspect

Strategy & Policy, Culture & Human Resource Development, Organisation, Technology & Infrastructure, Economic & Financial, Legal & Compliance and Primary Process (education)

 Teaching staff, Support staff (both educational and informational), Management, Student, Community Awareness of OER, How to search for OER, Substantive access to OER, Reusing OER, Creating OER or Sharing OER

 

This tool can be used for a number of purposes, e.g.:

  • As a sounding board for brainstorming: Set aside at least 2 hours with the members of the project team to see what activities are feasible and relevant for your original project idea. Then add those activities to the project application

  • As a  basic set-up for your project application: Make a scan of the document and highlight the relevant activities. Next, use the ‘Notes’ columns to describe how best to apply the activity in your specific context.

    For an example of a completed form, see the tab: Example.

    The context of the completed form is described below: goal, targeted users and intended results.

Arranging per aspect

Organisational aspect

Organisation Before During After
Strategy & Policy Defining the parameters of the project’s focus Involving policymakers and managers, for example by giving presentations to policymakers Collectively preparing a plan of action with a shared vision of OER
Aligning the project goals to actual needs Creating support. Staff of the educational institute should be aware of and become involved in the project. They should be ambassadors of the vision of open sharing, and act accordingly Open Science policy supplies plans of action for the faculty (including for OER)
Making the link to Open Science Defining advice for establishing timelines to cultivate maintenance of OER Developing market research into use of OER to assess barriers and opportunities
Making the link to strategic goals Drawing up guidelines for sharing OER
Culture & HR Development Building on the culture of openness and sharing educational resources Making arrangements about progress based on 2-year voluntary commitment Formalising ownership, either with individuals or with partnerships
Experimenting with existing applications (e.g. VR) Active exchanges of knowledge Professional association helps to encourage sharing and updating the resources
Improving the project’s visibility Adoption. Prioritising platform adoption during a specific period
Developing manuals and documentation for knowledge transfer
Onboarding new staff
Organising ‘Digital design’ training for teaching staff/relevant colleagues
Incorporating it into the University Teaching Qualification (BKO) programme
Organisation Seeking out partnerships with stakeholders such as the library Structurally involving users Integrating sustainable development of OER (e.g. open textbooks) as a library service
Broad partnership with multiple research universities and/or universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands and abroad Opening an experimentation lab for teaching staff and students Embedding the available support in structural facilities (including information skills training, BKO/CPD)
Proactively seeking out other research universities and universities of applied sciences Developing a workflow for sharing educational resources
Setting up a broad sounding-board group (including representatives of decision-makers) Organising regular writing sessions
Arranging meetings with study programme directors and deans Involving a broad group of stakeholders
Involving experts in technology and didactics Working in small groups
Setting up a multidisciplinary project team, including teaching staff Investing in expertise
Bringing in the library on as a project partner Training teaching staff and support staff to use innovative technology
Organising regular face-to-face sessions with the project group and the sounding-board group
Organising partnership through collective sessions
Making the work process a standard part of team meetings
Setting up a marketing taskforce
Setting up a legal entity (e.g. a foundation) to protect the resources.
Setting up an Academy advisory council
Reviewing and improving the process for educational resources  from concept to publication, e.g. by compiling an overview of the various processes and presenting the ‘best’ process
Technology & Infrastructure Using a standard author tool Choosing open-source platform (Wikiwijs/Edusources) Using Github for automatic updates to the OER, with a view to version management
Choosing a platform with a view to sustainability (e.g. available for >5 years) Developing a new website Making OER available via website and Github
Factoring scalability and future developments in programming languages into the design Considering hardware and software management Integrating with other systems
Preparing the platform for new functionalities Setting up quality controls & version management Sharing on open-source platform (Wikiwijs/Edusources)
Researching what infrastructure is needed Using a milestones dashboard to track the progress that each of the educational institutes is making with the project Making arrangements with ICT department about management and maintenance
Developing or acquiring a licence for an OER community platform Setting up a repository for the entire institute Version management. Keeping careful track of software changes, including documenting them
Simplifying maintenance by using the same tools as other groups at the educational institute
Archiving, e.g. storing OER on SURFdrive
Economic & Financial Sharing costs in a consortium Finding sufficient funding (from internal and/or external sources) Formalising sustainable funding for five years
Handling development in-house Fundraising
Sustainable use of resources Arranging internal project funding for further development
Arranging funding for further development by professional association
Earmarking budget for student assistants, e.g. to maintain platform across multiple years.
Cultivating open access through separate legal entity
Continuing existing external funding
Fundraising
Legal & Compliance Choosing Creative Commons licences Considering data management and privacy
Primary Process (education) Collecting relevant good practices Preparing a technical and didactic lesson plan Integrating the OER into the curriculum, either as a unit or in modular form
Embedding the open textbook into education at multiple research universities
Integrating OER into existing courses

Actor

Actors Before During After
Support Making clear arrangements with support services Offering technical support Making arrangements with ICT department about management and maintenance
Organising assistance with building a website Organising support from the library Providing advice from the library about adopting OER
Working together with the library to write the application Considering hardware and software management
Drawing up documents, training courses and manuals
Working together with the library to set up a repository for the entire institute
Working together with the library to cultivate adoption of future content
Teaching staff Establishing the apparent need for an up-to-date and accessible textbook Regularly taking part in writing sessions Reviewing experiences with teaching staff
Engaging teaching staff and informing them on LinkedIn and newsletters (internal and external) Bringing in teaching staff and other staff as developers
Involving research group for evaluation
Creating awareness and involving teaching staff
Management Involving management Scheduling a meeting with key stakeholders to discuss strategies to reduce the barriers to adoption
Scheduling quarterly meetings between the project leader and the steering committee
Students Running a small-scale pilot to improve student involvement Involving students in testing and reviewing the modules Reviewing experiences with students
Asking students for feedback on the user-friendliness and impact of the learning experience, e.g. the VR environment
Using students as developers
Actively involving students as project team members

Community/

community of practice

 Setting up a partnership with multiple educational institutes Giving presentations at annual conferences Maintaining or growing the community of practice (in the Netherlands and abroad)
Seeking to improve interactions with national partnership group Creating a community, consortium and/or professional association, or else or seeking to join an existing one Forming a community and expanding abroad
Managing expectations, e.g. by organising workshops with the community to explicitly define what is expected and required of the OER repository Setting up a network for mutual cooperation Bringing in the community of practice as a partner for sharing the open text book (in the Netherlands and abroad)
Involving stakeholders, e.g. by reaching out to a professional association Actually working together with the national partnership group Organising a community of practice for a specific study programme
Encouraging reuse Setting up a community of practice and cultivating its adoption among the professional association, e.g. including community education in community research in the same area.
Adding the project application to the agendas of relevant communities to generate awareness Working together to develop a quality mark

 

Thematic elements

Thematic aspects of OER Before During After
Awareness Improving awareness about OER and mutual cooperation between departments Creating and/or scaling up awareness
Creating more awareness and involving teaching staff Improving awareness though an active launch, e.g. livestreaming the launch of the open course
Creating greater awareness about royalty-free images
Improving engagement. Generating enthusiasm among teaching staff, introducing as many people as possible to the project
Conducting an OER awareness campaign
Searching OER Listing sites with images that are uncopyrighted or licensed under CC Sharing a link to the website and Github on an open-source platform (Wikiwijs/Edusources)
Designing workflows for assistance with searching for existing OER for specific courses
Substantive access to OER Developing a taxonomy
Developing a knowledge graph
Adopting OER as the default format for educational resources. Officially including all interactive open textbooks that are published as set reading in course syllabuses.
Sustainably organising close alignment between the resources that are developed/curated and the open textbook
Having domain specialists and library committees select OER for education
Reusing OER Starting from pre-existing resources Instructing developers tasked with updating the curriculum to investigate what resources that are suitable for reuse are available on the open-source platform (Wikiwijs/Edusources)
Understanding the pros and cons of specific choices and the parameters for cultivating adoption and the broad use of OER
Creating OER Having internal and external reviewers monitor the quality of the subject matter Giving the book a modular structure, divided into separate modules to make it more flexible and adaptable
Emphasising the development of concrete educational resources Establishing standards for uniform formats
Developing a quality model
Developing innovative approaches to content production
Producing publication documents: workflow, quality standards for OER publications (not including quality checks of the content), metadata master form, publication progress form
Sharing OER Ensuring that all teaching staff are familiar with and aware of the rules for sharing their educational resources (in terms of copyright/crediting sources)

Example

Goal

Two universities of applied sciences and one university medical centre are contemplating working together to develop and implement open and reusable virtual reality (VR) training modules for improving early diagnosis skills of healthcare professionals in training. The project seeks to foster a culture of open sharing and collective development of innovative educational resources at healthcare educational institutes.

Target users

The principal group of targeted users are students and teaching staff at various healthcare study programmes (e.g. medicine, nursing, paramedical studies) at universities of applied sciences (hbo) and research universities (wo). The project also targets professionals in the healthcare sector who need to upskill or refresh their skills.

Intend results

  • At least three new open VR training modules geared to various aspects of early identification of critical medical conditions.
  • An active community of practice of healthcare teaching staff who are involved in co-creating, evaluating and implementing the VR modules.
  • Public availability of new VR modules, accompanying educational resources (such as lesson plans and assessment categories), and evaluation results for reuse and adaptation by other educational institutes and healthcare organisations.
  • Improved didactic skills among teaching staff in the effective use of VR technology in education, including by offering training courses and workshops.
  • Understanding of the impact of VR training modules on the learning outcomes and the development of diagnostic skills of students, as determined by an evaluating survey. This will help to demonstrate the added didactic value, which will increase the likelihood of adoption.

  • The arrangement Sustainability strategies for open educational resources is made with Wikiwijs of Kennisnet. Wikiwijs is an educational platform where you can find, create and share learning materials.

    Author
    Verduurzaming
    Last modified
    2025-05-01 16:24:15
    License

    This learning material is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This means that, as long as you give attribution, you are free to:

    • Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
    • Adapt - remix, transform, and build upon the material
    • for any purpose, including commercial purposes.

    More information about the CC Naamsvermelding 4.0 Internationale licentie.

    Auteurs:

    Leontien van Rossum, SURF

    Robert Schuwer, OER Consultancy

    Sylvia Moes, Npuls

    Additional information about this learning material

    The following additional information is available about this learning material:

    Description
    This tool lists activities you can use before, during and after the project. You draw up sustainability strategies by translating several activities to your own context. It is intended to give project leaders and policy advisers inspiration for which activities they can initiate.
    End user
    leraar
    Difficulty
    makkelijk
    Learning time
    0 hour 15 minutes
    Keywords
    oer, open leermaterialen, projectmanagement, stimuleringsregeling open en online onderwijs, surf, sustainability, sustainability strategies

    Used Wikiwijs arrangements

    Verduurzaming. (2025).

    Verduurzamingsstrategieën voor open leermaterialen

    https://maken.wikiwijs.nl/214695/Verduurzamingsstrategie_n_voor_open_leermaterialen

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