The OER conference in Stockholm (8&9 February 2010) addressed the scope for OER in Sweden. In many ways it could be ideal for adopting OER; there is a push towards distance learning that suits the geography and perhaps the personality and collaborative feel of the nation. The higher education system is strongly backed by the state and remains free of tuition fees at the moment – though that may not remain the case. Establishing OER in Sweden may help diversify the offering and further improve collaboration and flexibility.

The conference itself is conducted in Swedish with the notable exception of my own talk on “Erfarenheter från Storbritannien/Experiences from Great Britain”. During the introductory talks  I made a list of the words and phrases that I understood: “twitter” (tag #oerswe), “Times Higher Education”, “MIT”, Open Educational Resources. Google. Horizon Report. Phoenix. Business Schools. Open University. Quality.  Medicine. Revolution.  .com. Positive. Nokia.

This shows that even if the language is a bit of a barrier we are very much talking about the same things!

As well as my talk in English there was another international invitee from Norway, Jens Breivik, Norgesuniversitetet. My Norwegian is no better than my Swedish – but his talk covered both survey and case studies that have been carried out as background in establishing work with OER in Norway.  So I could appreciate the Maths and felt that the message he gave resonated with studies of “Net Generation Learning” by my colleague Chris Jones at the OU. The finding in common being that it is wrong to focus on the idea of a “digital native” generation arriving, but rather that there are a range of behaviours across a range of ages.

The afternoon panel remained in Swedish but I picked up some points and had a summary afterwards. It seems that the star of the panel was Agneta Stark, the Rector of Högskolan Dalarna, who declared her support for OER at her institution. I had spoken with Agneta at the start of the event and she described how Dalarna is now adopting distance/Internet teaching with a mix of on-campus and remote learners. She struck me as very astute and keen to move forward in an innovative way. Comments from others at the conference reflected the view that this is just what is needed to tip the balance in the absence of a country-wide action such as JISC initiated in the UK.

My trip to a cold but beautiful Sweden was all over in a day and I will miss the second part – perhaps just as well given it will be completely in Swedish, but I am sure it would still have been a pleasure to continue to mix with this interesting group. Thank you to Jan Hylén for inviting me.