Belgium is lacking behind when it comes to opening up their educational data. Therefore some bottom-up action is needed in order to make this possible. As a response, an interesting Kickoff meeting about Open Education was held on February 15 2017 in Brussels. Data providers, data re-users and data facilitators were sitting together and discussed the possibilities regarding open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices.

What’s the problem?

Students and staff want information which is up-to-date and easy to find. This can be brought by applications. The only problem is that most colleges aren’t keen to open up their data, whereas opening their data to build applications would make things a lot easier for students as well as for the colleges itself. It would change both institutional and wider culture.

Another problem lies in the fact that every institution works with a different database. Therefore it is also interesting to discuss about an open data standard for every college or university.

How can we solve this?

Organizations need concrete information about what data they have to open and its consequences. Therefore this working group can help to discuss the possibilities op Open Education to create some extra pressure to colleges and universities.

Do you want to be part of the Open Education Working group?

Are you interested or do you want to be part of the Open Education Working Group? Click here to join our Slack group and keep the discussion alive.