OER as a certain solution for uncertain times: A reflection on the initiatives undertaken in Morocco during the covid-19 period

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a high degree of uncertainty about the state of education. During this critical period, the entire educational landscape was in need of relevant educational resources that could be shared between and within educational networks. In this regard, open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) have played an important role in ensuring educational continuity. Research has shown that open approaches will help make the higher education ecosystem more resilient to future crises and the sustainability of this ecosystem can be fueled by the widespread use of OER and OEP. However, additional work is still needed in this area either at the personal, organizational, or institutional level. In this paper, we discuss the potential of OER and OEP, as certain solutions, to improve quality and widen access in uncertain times such as the COVID-19 crisis, we also present an analysis from an OER perspective of the initiatives undertaken at the Cadi Ayyad University (UCA) in Morocco as example in order to assess the extent to which they can be considered as OER. On the other hand, we highlight the benefits of this experience, as well as identify the barriers that hinder the adoption of open solutions in order to propose some recommendations and guidelines to foster the implementation of these solutions.