# 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.

Report Strategies for sustainable OER

#### 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.