National Strategy Partner Forum

We have just been on a National Strategy Partner Forum https://openmedproject.eu/results/national-oer-strategy-forums/ to Palestine as part of the OpenMed project https://openmedproject.eu

The meeting was attended by academics from Birzeit University, An-Najah University, Hebron University and The Open University of Palestine as well as a representative from the Ministry of Education for Palestine.

An-Najah University Media Centre

The focus of the partner meeting was to share the work of the project to date. As leads of work package one, Sarah and I presented the process of bringing together the Compendium of Case Studies and Interviews with Experts about Open Education practices which will be used to inform the subsequent phases and work packages of the project and to provide inspiration and transferability. The Regional Agenda was also discussed including how each of the partner universities could respond to the Agenda and commit to a focus.

Whilst there we had chance to visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and had the opportunity to learn about the history and culture of Palestine and some of the issues facing higher education in the region.

Three other shared blog posts by OPenMed partners are here

- 10 years and 10 seconds, by Daniel Burgos, UNIR: http://research.unir.net/blog/10-years-10-seconds/

- Open Education in Palestine: a tool for liberation by Javiera Atenas: https://oerqualityproject.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/open-education-in-palestine-a-tool-for-liberation/

- Open Education at An-Najah University by Saida Affouneh: https://www.najah.edu/en/community/community-news/2017/04/19/an-najah-hosts-the-open-learning-strategies-in-palestine-meeting/

We echo our Project Lead, Christina Steffanelli, of UNIMED, in thanking Rania, Rula, Osama, Marwan, Saida, Ayham and all the colleagues at Birzeit University and An Najah National University for sharing your time and experiences with us. Your unique mix of high professionalism and friendship is simply inspiring!

The next steps of the project include the design and structure of the OpenMed training of trainers course, a blended training course aimed at building capacity among universities in the South Mediterranean region on Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Education approaches and practices. The training course will target university teachers and secondarily university managers and ICT support staff, offering training opportunities to Higher Education staff with a focus on know-how and skills to use, reuse and remix OER and assist them with the start-up of open educational practices.

The training courses will consist of one week of intensive face-to-face training at Politecnico di Torino on September 25-30, 2017 and an online training phase from October 2017 to March 2018.

Our next trip is to Madrid and the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja to engage in a pre-training OER Facilitators’ Workshop.

Inshallah OpenMed!

Katherine Wimpenny and Sarah Merry