About the OER World Map
The OER World Map is the place on the web where anyone involved in Open Education can share information, experiences and ideas related to their work. Anyone can contribute to the information on the World Map and anyone can access the information on the World Map.
Since the OER World Map’s beginnings in 2014, the team and the partners of the OER World Map are striving to make Open Educational Resources (OER), related projects, actors, data and events visible on a global scale. The World Map is being built by hbz and graphthinking GmbH in association with The Open University (UK) funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
In 2019, after five years of developing, tweaking and tinkering with the OER World Map, the team has put their impact, their goals and challenges under review. We have come up with a renewed vision and a mission that feel like they can be our guiding lights in the future.
Our Vision
We strive for a world where humans connect, share and collaborate across borders in order to foster democratic participation, social justice and sustainable development. We believe that opening up education - its institutions, its practices and its resources - is necessary to make this happen. The OER World Map contributes to this vision by facilitating the exchange of data, experiences and ideas between open educational actors and communities.
Our Mission
We aim to facilitate exchange of data, information, experiences and ideas between different people and Open Education communities. We believe that Open Education has the potential to enhance education for all, to foster democratic participation, sustainable development and social justice. Helping others to open and transform education, its institutions, practices and resources is what gets us going every morning.
Get involved
- Browse through the World Map and the many excellent projects, people and institutions who care about Open Education as much as we do.
- Create a profile on the World Map and add your own work, events or institution to the World Map to make it even more visible to others.
- Get in touch with us for all kinds of questions, comments and inquiries.
Team and Partners
The OER World Map is being built by hbz and graphthinking GmbH in association with The Open University (UK) funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
We collaborate with open educators across the world to ensure the inclusion of diverse perspectives and backgrounds. We are aware that the current core team is all-male and euro-centric and we aim to take steps that help us ensure the inclusion of diverse perspectives on Open Education and our work.
Jan Neumann, hbz (Project Lead)
Jan (@trugwaldsaenger on Twitter) head of legal affairs and organisation at hbz. He studied law, economy and systems thinking and has more than 15 years of experience within (international) project management for different publishing houses and libraries. His story with OER began 2012 when he saw Susan D’Antoni presenting her vision of an OER World Map at the World OER Congress in Paris. Jan is a member of the German Comission for UNESCO and its educational advisory board, he speaks at conferences.
Felix Ostrowski (Technical Lead)
Felix (@literarymachine on Twitter) acts as hbz’s partner in this project. He is a web engineer, Linked Data technologist and knowledge management consultant who has been on the web since the mid-’90s. After graduating in communication studies and computer science he worked as a software developer and repository manager at hbz from 2008 – 2010. He was also a driving force behind the institution’s Linked Open Data (LOD) strategy. In 2010 he moved on to work as a research assistant in a joint project on digital long term preservation of the The Berlin School of Library and Information Science, Stanford University Libraries and the German National Library. Since 2013 Felix is the founder and managing director of Berlin based graphthinking GmbH.
Felix Link (Design)
Felix joined the project in October 2015, being the UI-/frontend-designer of the OER World Map. He studied graphic and communication design from 2006 to 2012. Since 2008 he has been working as a freelance designer for both agencies and own clients, developing and implementing projects in corporate, editorial and web design. He is interested in design as a conceptual and integrated process as well as a characteristic expression of its content.
Adrian Pohl (Metadata & General Support)
Adrian (@acka47 on Twitter) has been working at the hbz since 2008. He is the metadata and RDF vocabulary expert for the development of hbz’s linked open data service “lobid” and also responsible for the project management. He has been actively promoting open knowledge, web standards and the use of open source software in the international library community. Adrian initiated the establishment of a German-speaking working group for OER metadata within the Competence Center for Interoperable Metadata (KIM) of the German Initiative for Network Information (DINI).
Matthias Andrasch (Webdevelopment & General Support)
Matthias (@m_andrasch on Twitter) studied Media Education and learned Webdevelopment early in his life. He is fascinated by Open movements such as Open Source, Open Science, Open Education and Open Educational Resources. Before working in the hbz he experienced challenges regarding OER first-hand while working in the OERlabs project.
OER World Map Team Alumini
- Philipp von Böselager (Back-End Developer)
- Ben Buschfeld (Design)
- Karin Driesen (Online Editor)
- Dr. Robert Farrow (Project Communications)
- Johannes Schnettker (Front-End Developer)