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The OER certification by fnma (Forum Neue Medien in der Lehre Austria) is designed for Austrian higher education institutions. Here, we provide the key information in English. We appreciate your understanding that the entire website is not translated into English. Please check further readings (below).

The certificate "Certified OER Higher Education Institution" is the world's first certificate on OER for educational institutions. It marks Austrian universities with a strategic commitment to Open Educational Resources (OER) and support their activities.

The three criteria are:

• Criteria A. The higher education institution (HEI) has a corresponding OER further education offer and publicly/strategically commits to OER (OER policy)
• Criteria B. A certain number of staff with OER certification ("OER Practitioner"; 5 to 40, depending on the number of students)
• Criteria C. Own OER repository of joint solution

The fulfilment of the three criteria can also be assessed gradually. All certificate holders can be found online.

Accredited further training concepts guarantee participants and universities the transfer of OER know-how. Austrian universities can apply for accreditation.

OER training concepts need for accreditiation:

• The OER training should adress the competence framework of the Austrian OER certifcate for individuals, which is:

Qualification description: The certificate holder can find, create, revise, compile and publish openly licensed educational resources (OER) independently and on her/his own responsibility, taking into account her/his professional disciplinary and didactic expertise.

Learning objects:
1. I can name and user different open licenses and their requirement and differences.
2. I can find openly licensed educational resources (OER).
3. I can create, revise and remix OER.
4. I can publish OER and make them available to other teachers.

• The effort for the OER training is at least one credit within the European Credit Transfer System. (This correspondens to an effort of about 25 hours)
• The OER training ensures that three OER are published by each participant.

All accreditated OER training concepts can be found online.

Since 2022, employees of Austrian universities have received this certificate to prove their OER skills if they successfully participated at an accredited further OER training provided by an Austrian higher education institution (see above).

All certificate holders can be found online. For international participants an English version of the aplication form is available. Applicants using the English application will get an English version of the certificate.

Already in 2016 the idea of an OER certification was formulated by the fnma working group on OER. :

• OER-Certification in Higher Education [Link zum Download]

We described the development and implementation of the Austrian OER certfication we as well in the following papers:

• Schön, S., Ebner, M., Berger, E., Brandhofer, G., Gröblinger, O., Jadin, T., Kopp, M., Steinbacher, H-P., & Zwiauer, C. (2021). OER Certification of Individuals and Organisations in Higher Education: Implementations Worldwide. Open Praxis, 13(3), pp. 264–278. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.13.3.265
• Schön, S., Ebner, M., Berger, E., Brandhofer, G., Edelsbrunner, S., Gröblinger, O., Hackl., C., Jadin, T., Kopp, M., Neuböck, K., Proinger, J., Schmölz, A., & Steinbacher, H-P. (2023). Development of an Austrian OER Certification for Higher Education Institutions and Their Employees. In: Otto, D., Scharnberg, G., Kerres, M., Zawacki-Richter, O. (eds) Distributed Learning Ecosystems . Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38703-7_9

For any questions, please contact info@OER-Zertifikat.at