Open Educational Resources are the result of a different approach to education: the focus is on sharing, improving and reusing educational materials created by people (not only super-experts) who are willing to let knowledge spread and be used by anyone.
For participants from Ukraine: materials in Ukrainian language | Для учасників iз України
Цей курс частково локалізовано українською мовою Науковою бібліотекою Українського державного університету науки і технологій. Зокрема, ви знайдете українські субтитри до всіх відео. У вкладці "UKR - додаткові матеріали" ви також знайдете версію українською мовою всіх щотижневих тестів. У файлах ви знайдете більше інформації про те, як ними користуватися, щоб ви могли отримати сертифікат безпосередньо від Polimi Open Knowledge, навіть якщо офіційні тести англійською мовою.
Як зареєструватися в mooc на POK.
If you are a PoliMI student you have to log in using your Person Code. This is the only way to prove your participation in this course for official recognition.
Course description
What are Open Educational Resources and why they could be a great support for teachers at every level? According to UNESCO, they are “any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.”
In this MOOC you will find:
- the basics about Open Educational Resources;
- different perspectives about key issues;
- some tips to try OERs in your course, a set of tools we will provide you, some useful resources shared by other institutions and OERs workforce.

The videos of this MOOC were recorded in 2016. The affiliation of our experts might have changed over time. Some examples (i.e. software) are time sensitive, and we suggest checking for up-to-date options when participating in this MOOC.
In this MOOC you'll meet some of the greatest experts in the field, who choose every day to openly share their experience and their deep knowledge with everyone: Anant Agarwal (CEO at edX and Professor at MIT, USA), Jane-Frances Agbu (Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences & Former Head of OERs Unit at NOUN, Nigeria), Ariane Dumont (Professor at Western Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, CH), Cable Green (Open Education Director at Creative Commons, USA), Rory McGreal (Professor and UNESCO/Commonwealth of Learning Chairholder in Open Educational Resources at Athabasca University, Canada), António Moreira Teixeira (Director of the Department of Education and Distance Learning at Universidade Aberta, Lisboa, Portugal), Joseph Pickett (Publication Director at MIT OpenCourseWare, USA), Susanna Sancassani (Managing Director at Politecnico di Milano – METID, Italy), Robert Schuwer (Lector OER at Fontys University, Netherland), Katsusuke Shigeta (Associate Professor at Hokkaido University, Japan) and Andrea Zanni (former President at Wikimedia Italia). We also had the chance to add to the additional materials a valuable contribution from Martin Ebner (Graz University of Technology).
Total workload of the course: 13 hours
This MOOC is provided by Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with UNIT (Université Numérique Ingénierie et Technologie)

The content available in the Ukrainian language is the result of the collaboration with the Scientific Library of the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies, thanks to Creative Commons funding.

Information about fees and access to materials
The course is delivered in online mode and is available free of charge.
Course materials will remain available to all enrolled users after the end of the current edition, so they can return to content later. The current course edition will be followed by a new one just after its end.
Learning schedule
The course is structured in 5 weeks:
- Week 1 - Experience
- Week 2 - Reflection
- Week 3 - Theoretical Background
- Week 4 - Let's Try
- The pedagogical approach adopted in this MOOC
You’ll have the chance to choose among three different levels of involvement, even if there is no explicit distinction in the contents, considering the effort you may put in it: reading and viewing, communication and production paths are available.
Week 0 is an introduction to the MOOC, its structure and the main subject we are dealing with.
From week 1 to week 4 you’ll find the core part of the MOOC, about OERs: you’ll start from concrete experiences and, through a deep reflection on them and a guided analysis of the theoretical background, you’ll reach the “hands on” part, in which you’ll have the chance to start using this approach for your own course’s design.
Finally yet importantly, there is a final section, which focuses on the pedagogical approach applied in this MOOC as a whole. This section has been designed and developed by Université Numérique Ingénierie et Technologie. In this section you’ll have the chance, as a teacher, to reflect on the overall design phase of a course, as a meta-level.
Prerequisites
No prerequisite knowledge is required for this course, even if previous experience in didactics and teaching will be helpful. The course is mainly addressed to professors and teachers, at all levels, who are willing to think about some innovation in their pedagogical approach.
Activities
Over and above consulting the content, in the form of videos and other web-based resources (the reading path), you will have the opportunity to discuss course topics and to share ideas with your peers in the Forum of this MOOC (the communication path). The forum is freely accessible and participation is not guided. You can also perform design activities to build your own courses using templates and suggestions about new assessment strategies (the production path).
In addition to these different types of activities and levels of involvement, the course entails questions in the form of self-assessment quizzes or as hints for reflection, as well as discussion activities in the Forum and design activities in WEEK 4. You are not required to answer these questions or participate to activities to complete the course, but we strongly believe they offer you a concrete opportunity to improve your knowledge! Instead, the quiz you will find at the end of the core WEEKs (except WEEK 0 and the final section on the pedagogical approach) will be evaluated.
Assessment
The final grade for the course is based on results from your responses to the quizzes you will find at the end of each week (weekly quizzes). You will successfully complete the course if you reach 60% (or more) of the total score by the end of the edition. The course’s total score will be calculated by averaging the scores of the assessed quizzes for each individual week.
The course entails also questions, in the form of self-assessment quizzes or as hints for reflection, as well as discussion activities in the Forum and design activities in WEEK 4. You are not required to answer these questions or participate to activities to complete the course, but we strongly believe they offer you a concrete opportunity to improve your knowledge!
Certificate of Accomplishment
The Certificate of Accomplishment will be released to anyone who successfully completed the course by answering correctly to at least 60% of the questions. You will be able
to download the Certificate of Accomplishment directly on the website.
Once you have successfully passed the course, you can request the Certificate of Accomplishment without waiting for the end of the edition.
The Certificate of Accomplishment does not confer any academic credit, grade or degree.
European Qualifications Framework Level
EQF Level 6
Thematic area (ISCED-F classification)
011 Education
0111 Education Science
Discussion forum
The forum of this MOOC is freely accessible and participation is not guided; you can use it to compare yourself with other participants, or to discuss course contents with them.
Contact details
If you have any enquiries about the course or if you need technical assistance please contact pok@polimi.it. For further information, see FAQ page.
Course Faculty
This MOOC is the result of a proficient collaboration between many people, at international level. Politecnico di Milano - METID had the chance to enjoy working closely with UNIT partners and to benefit from the kind availability of many international teachers, who already experienced flipped classroom approach.
Paola Corti
Paola Corti is a Project Manager at Politecnico di Milano – METID; she is an instructional designer involved in MOOCs design and production for POK platform. She coordinated the design of the course, involved international testimonials, together with other curators, in order to collect the experiences available in this MOOC, and she kept together the design and the production groups… and many are things needed : )
Ariane Dumont
Ariane Dumont, Professor at the Western Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, Educational Developer and responsible for promoting innovation in pedagogy. She will nicely guide you through some interesting models, which can support you in exploring and experimenting OERs according to her experience, which she is eager to share with us.
Aude Pichon
Aude Pichon, Advisor in Pedagogy in the Center for Professional Development in Education at the Ecole des Mines in Nantes and Coordinator, she has been in charge of the pedagogical development within uTOP (UNIT) in France. She not only advises on teacher training projects, but also develops them and leads them either face-to-face or remotely.
This MOOC could not exist without the valuable contribution of Manuela Milani, instructional designer at Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License