{"id":8684,"date":"2026-03-24T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2.zoppoz.workers.dev:443\/https\/euniwell-open-education.univ-nantes.fr\/?p=8684"},"modified":"2026-03-24T09:52:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T08:52:43","slug":"from-obligation-to-recognition-in-open-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2.zoppoz.workers.dev:443\/https\/euniwell-open-education.univ-nantes.fr\/from-obligation-to-recognition-in-open-education\/","title":{"rendered":"From obligation to recognition in open education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Featured image: “On The Road”<\/a><\/strong> by Andrius Banelis<\/a><\/strong> for Fine Acts<\/a><\/strong> remixed by the UNESCO RELIA Chair<\/a><\/strong> licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udc64 Luc Massou<\/strong> is currently a scientific adviser at the Directorate-General for Higher Education and Professional Integration (DGESIP) at the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Space, where he is responsible for coordinating initiatives on open educational resources and open education for the Ministry\u2019s 2023\u20132027 digital strategy, including ongoing work on the design of a national strategy for open education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some fellow teachers sometimes ask themselves: I am a civil servant, and my institution makes it clear that it is my duty to share my digital teaching resources, without necessarily being paid for it, even though it takes up a lot of my time. But is this really the case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking the French context as an example, we offer several responses to these various assumptions here, and then outline four courses of action to transform a perceived obligation into a shared recognition of commitment to open education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is creating OER really an obligation (particularly for civil servant teachers)?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To answer this, let us take the example of higher education in France, as it leads us to qualify this first premise. In fact, this \u2018obligation\u2019 to create open educational resources (OER) is more closely linked to requirements set out in calls for proposals funded by public money to support pedagogical innovation through digital technology, much like what is required for publications from scientific projects also funded by public money. It may also be linked to an institution\u2019s internal policy in favour of open education, but this scenario remains \u2013 for the time being! \u2013 still relatively uncommon to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these publicly funded projects, the aim is thus to help produce educational resources that are shared \u2013 or shareable \u2013 well beyond the initial scope of the funded project, as part of a drive towards open access to knowledge. The term \u2018digital commons\u2019 is often used to describe these outputs, emphasising the importance of the widest and most diverse communities possible (academic, but not limited to!) being able to take ownership of and develop these OER over the long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, these projects rely on authors (teachers or teacher-researchers in our example here) who volunteer to contribute to them. They are usually assisted by support staff (engineers or educational advisers, in particular) to design these OER. To summarise, the obligation we are discussing here is therefore largely determined in advance by the sponsor (and funder!) of these public projects, but does not fundamentally undermine the academic freedom of the authors who choose to participate\u2026 or not!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is creating OER time-consuming and unpaid?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yes and no. Designing an OER is indeed time-consuming, as it involves creating an educational resource for others, preferably with minimal contextualisation so that it can be easily adapted to educational contexts different from those of its original authors. One must therefore be able to put oneself in the shoes of other teachers or trainers, who will be potential re-users of this resource and who may also develop it further. This requires adherence to specific technical, legal and editorial constraints in order to make this OER modifiable, interoperable (i.e. independent of technical formats requiring specific software licences), inclusive and indexable (to facilitate its discovery via catalogues or search engines).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Producing an OER therefore requires support in the areas of educational design, digital technology and documentation, which is not always available depending on the schools or universities where the teacher-authors are based. Some countries, such as France, also co-fund national digital operators responsible for pooling these educational resources, who are thus tasked with disseminating and promoting them on a national and international scale via freely accessible online catalogues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, regarding authors\u2019 remuneration, it is not systematically absent. It may be covered, most often in the form of overtime, by the publicly funded projects mentioned earlier, or through internal recognition schemes within institutions (such as bonuses for educational innovation). It may also rely on mechanisms to reduce teaching hours, thereby freeing up time to devote to creating these resources. Here again, these mechanisms depend heavily on the prevailing local and\/or national contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An additional task\u2026 or not?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In our view, the real fundamental debate is this: should the creation of OER be considered an \u2018exceptional\u2019 task, added on top of teaching duties, or is it already statutorily included in teachers\u2019 duties? Let us again take the example of French higher education. The decree of June 1984<\/a> establishing the status of teacher-researchers is very clear: whereas scientific duties include the need to promote their findings and disseminate scientific and technical culture and information, the educational mission remains focused primarily on the transmission of knowledge through teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scientific aspect therefore fundamentally incorporates a \u2018centrifugal\u2019 dimension, that is to say, one that moves away from its centre in order to reach the widest possible audiences outside its own institution: a researcher publishes in order to give maximum visibility to their work, and thus allow knowledge to circulate freely. On the educational side, the dynamic seems \u2013 at first glance \u2013 to be rather the opposite; it is a more \u2018centripetal\u2019 mission that tends first and foremost to draw closer to its centre: teaching is geared towards meeting the internal training needs of the institution in which a teacher works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This concrete example certainly explains why producing OERs for a potentially very broad audience (far beyond one\u2019s home institution) is not necessarily self-evident and may be perceived as an additional workload by some teachers, whereas benefiting from the pooling of educational resources among teaching communities could save them time (particularly when preparing lessons) and also contribute to the wide and open dissemination of knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transforming a perceived obligation into a recognised commitment to open education<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As things stand, it therefore seems counterproductive to us to make the production of OER compulsory for teachers, as there is nothing in their terms of employment that actually obliges them to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge here is rather to provide them with better support to transform what is currently perceived as an obligation (or an additional workload) into a shared and recognised commitment based on common values that align, in particular, with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4<\/a>: \u201cEnsure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Four actions in support of open education, AI-generated image, CC BY-NC-SA<\/a>, 2026<\/em><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How can this be achieved? Here are four possible courses of action, inspired by our current work to design a national strategy for open education in French higher education, with a view to gradually supporting this transformation in the medium term:<\/p>\n\n\n\n