Best Practice Integration Examples from the Austrian Higher Education Sector

How do you ensure that Open Educational Resources (OER) become more than just a few well-intentioned documents gathering digital dust in the corner of a repository? In this edition of Epistemicast we take a look at some real world examples on how to encourage OER creation, contribution, use, and reuse. 

We discover the vital importance of pulling OER into teaching and learning workflows, with integration into learning platforms (Moodle), online courses (MOOCs) and dedicated hubs. And we explore how the University of Vienna is giving OER, and teaching more generally, a more prominent position on staff’s academic profiles and in CRIS systems. 

Our guide through the topic is Claudia Hackl-Mayerhofer, resident OER expert at both the University of Vienna’s Centre for Teaching and Learning, and as a part of the broader Austrian national shared services team. And as the organizer of OER Barcamp Austria Hackl-Mayerhofer is also uniquely positioned to give us an informed overview of best practice examples coming out of the Austrian higher education system. 

Links:

Claudia Hackl-Mayerhofer Official Bio.

Mag. Claudia Hackl-Mayerhofer, M.A. LIS

As part of the Shared OER Services, Claudia Hackl-Mayerhofer advises Austrian higher education institutions on the strategic and institutional integration of Open Educational Resources (OER). She leads the ‘OER’ Special Interest Group at fnma, where OER practitioners from the Austrian higher education sector collaborate on current developments. Drawing on the synergies between Open Education and Open Science, she develops media-based teaching support resources and services for universities. She is also involved in the further development of the integrated system landscape for OER at the University of Vienna.

Claudia Hackl-Mayerhofer holds teaching positions at Austrian universities on topics such as OER, research data management and digital teaching and learning. Her professional background lies at the intersection of higher education pedagogy, computer science and library and information science (University of Vienna and Humboldt University of Berlin).

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Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education: Best Practices from Austria

Podcast: Epistemicast Host: Rory MacDonald Guest: Claudia Hackl (OER Specialist, University of Vienna & Austrian Higher Education Sector)

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1. Introduction: Unlocking Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education

Welcome to Epistemicast

Meet Claudia Hackl: Austria’s OER Expert

We figure out how we can configure and adapt the system landscape for teaching staff and university staff to really use OER in their day-to-day life at university.

Claudia Hackl

Host:  Hello and welcome to Epistemicast. In this edition, we’re looking into the topic of open educational resources or OER. We’ll be exploring exactly what’s encompassed by this increasingly broad term as well as uncovering some innovative best practice examples from within the Austrian higher education sector. Our guide for today’s topic is Claudia Hackl, resident OER guru at the University of Vienna and a key adviser to the broader Austrian higher educational sector, as well as being the organiser of OER Barcamp Austria. I started out by asking Claudia to explain her different roles in more detail.

Claudia Hackl:  Yes, I have two roles regarding OER. One is at the University of Vienna, and one is in the shared OER services for the whole Austrian higher education context. At the University of Vienna, my focus is on the integrated system landscape regarding OER. So I work together with the IT services and the central university library, and since I’m at the media didactic unit of the University of Vienna, we also work together with the e-learning team from the IT services. What we do is figure out how we can configure and adapt the system landscape for teaching staff and university staff to really use OER in their day-to-day life at university—not only infrastructure-wise, but also regarding qualification offers and community formats.

With the shared OER services, I consult with Austrian higher education institutions on how they can make steps toward open education and integrating OER into their university systems and workflows. We have a search engine for OER that covers all connected OER repositories available in the Austrian higher education sector, an OER registry, and a service portal—the OER Hub—where teaching staff, stakeholders, and service providers can access information, training, conferences, and community-building formats.

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2. Defining OER: What Materials and Licences are Included?

The UNESCO Definition of Open Educational Resources

Creative Commons Licensing (CC BY vs. CC BY-SA)

OER under the UNESCO definition are learning, teaching, or research materials in any format under an open license like Creative Commons.

Claudia Hackl

Host:  For many people, one of the most confusing aspects of OER is the diversity of the different resources, purposes, and end uses encompassed by the term—from individual specialist artifacts in diverse collections of online resources through to complete online courses, and from teaching aids and collaborative lesson plans through to research data targeted at PhD or postdoctoral studies. So I asked Claudia if there was a single definition of OER capable of covering all of this diversity.

Claudia Hackl:  Yes. We work with the UNESCO definition of OER. OER in that sense are learning materials, teaching materials, or research materials. Learning materials can be whole courses, revision sheets, or games; teaching materials lean into classic presentation modes; and research materials can include research datasets that students analyze to gain confidence. Crucially, OER is not restricted to any specific format—it can be an open-source application, a PDF presentation, or a podcast.

What is essential is that it must be under an open license. OER under the UNESCO definition works with Creative Commons licenses, which are common in the scientific field. The two typical licenses we use are CC BY and CC BY-SA. CC BY means that if you reuse the material, you attribute the author. CC BY-SA means ‘share alike’—it must be republished under the exact same open license to remain in an open context.

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3. Building an Interoperable OER Technical Ecosystem

The Dual Architecture: iMooX vs. The OER Registry

Standardised Metadata Across Austria, Germany, and Switzerland

In Austria, all universities with OER repositories agreed on one joint metadata system, ensuring high technical interoperability.

Claudia Hackl

Host:  Where you’re appealing to all of these different audiences and the resources themselves can be so diverse, how is it that you encapsulate that into a single ecosystem? It must be very difficult when you say you’re working with the IT department to put together a system or database that actually delivers on all of those objectives. How do you handle that?

Claudia Hackl:  In Austria, we have two primary ways to access OER in the higher education sector. On one side, there is iMooX, the massive open online course (MOOC) platform hosted by TU Graz, which focuses on the learner experience. Learners create a profile, enroll in a course, complete quizzes, and earn a certificate.

On the backend side, we have the OER Registry search engine, where you can download individual granular resources—ranging from presentation slides to short music clips. To make this work, all Austrian universities with OER repositories decided on one joint metadata system. This aligns with the metadata standards used across Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, using Learning Object Metadata (LOM) tailored to higher education with standardized vocabulary for high interoperability.

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4. Seamless Workflow Integration: Connecting Moodle LMS and OER

The Moodle OER Plug-in and Single Sign-On (SSO)

Streamlining Quiz Scores and Course Integration

With our Moodle plug-in, teaching staff can quickly search and curate custom OER collections targeted directly to their individual course learning outcomes.

Claudia Hackl

Host:  Interesting that you mentioned interfaces. How does it operate if I am a learner—how do I get to the resources focused for me as opposed to those for a teacher or researcher? Is it done through a singular interface, or can people build their own interfaces from the metadata?

Claudia Hackl:  On the iMooX platform, learners and staff use Single Sign-On (SSO) with their university credentials, allowing students to enroll directly or allowing professors to incorporate MOOCs into formal university courses for grade credit.

For granular OER items, we developed a Moodle plug-in. Moodle is the central learning management system (LMS) where faculty and students interact with course materials. Through our plug-in, the OER search engine connects directly inside Moodle. Teaching staff can search and curate custom OER collections targeted to their specific learning outcomes without leaving their e-learning interface. Furthermore, quiz results completed on the iMooX platform can automatically transfer points back into Moodle for student grading, making the workflow much slimmer and easier.

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5. Community Building & Innovation: The Austrian OER Barcamp

Bringing Together 29 Higher Education Institutions

AI Tools, Automated Publishing, and One-Button Studios

Our primary goal is to maximize available time for teaching staff to engage directly with their students, using automated OER workflows to handle the rest.

Claudia Hackl

Host:  One of Hackl’s core roles in coordinating shared OER services across Austria is organizing the OER Barcamp.

Claudia Hackl:  This year, we hosted OER Barcamp Austria and had over 120 registered participants from 29 Austrian higher education institutions. It was a diverse group consisting of technical experts, metadata specialists, repository managers, media didactics staff, e-learning teams, strategic decision-makers, and sustainability experts.

Host:  When you gather such a diverse group in a free, organic format like a Barcamp, it’s fascinating to see the direction things move in.

Claudia Hackl:  Yes! We saw decades-long open education experts engaging alongside newcomers who brought fresh questions about building repositories or media production services. One key topic was workflow integration—making OER publication part of daily teaching life. We explored automated semester-end publishing, testing AI tools to generate metadata drafts (such as descriptions, keywords, and discipline tags), and implementing One-Button Studios. With One-Button Studios, an instructor can walk into a studio, record a teaching video, and have it automatically published to a repository. Our main goal is to free up faculty time so teachers can focus on direct student engagement.

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6. Peer Curation and Trusted Content

Sharing Curated Collections inside Moodle

Combating Misinformation with Faculty-Verified Materials

Students want trusted content curated by professors so they can easily filter out unreliable sources and fake news.

Claudia Hackl

Host:  Is there any aspect of crowdsourced wisdom or peer rating systems happening within OER, where learners recommend and push the best resources to the top?

Claudia Hackl:  During our target group user studies with teachers, students, and student assistants, many users asked if curated OER collections could be shared beyond single courses. Students specifically highlighted that having materials curated by professors makes it easier to identify trusted, high-quality content and filter out unverified information or fake news. Based on this request, we are exploring feature updates for our Moodle plug-in to allow cross-course collection sharing, as well as evaluating repository rating systems with our IT team.

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7. Incentivising Academics: Integrating OER into Research & Career Profiles

Incorporating Teaching Publications into CRIS and DOIs

Fulfilling Open Science Requirements for Research Grants

By assigning DOIs and integrating OER into CRIS research systems, we make teaching contributions visible in formal scientific evaluation.

Claudia Hackl

Host:  What is the real benefit or driver for the university and academics to produce these resources and support this infrastructure?

Claudia Hackl:  Academic staff regularly publish journal articles and research data, but teaching activities are often less visible in career evaluation. We are showing staff that teaching materials can be published as OER to make their teaching output visible in scientific discourse. We are connecting OER platforms like Phaidra to CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) so that OER publications appear alongside journal papers on academic profiles.

Additionally, assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to OER collections provides permanent citation links that academics can list on their CVs. Furthermore, grant funding bodies increasingly require knowledge transfer, open science, and OER/MOOC integration as mandatory criteria for awarding research grants.

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8. Institutional Strategy: National OER Certification in Austria

Certifying OER Practitioners and Higher Education Institutions

The Interdisciplinary Model: IT, Libraries, and Didactics Working as One

Austria’s strength comes from our interdisciplinary approach—combining higher education didactics, IT departments, and library expertise into one team.

Claudia Hackl

Host:  Is involvement largely driven by a university’s civic mission, or is there a direct institutional benefit?

Claudia Hackl:  Austria has a official national OER Certification scheme funded directly by the Ministry. Individual educators can certify as OER Practitioners, and universities can certify their repositories, policies, and qualification frameworks to earn an official OER Certified Higher Education Institution badge. We already have several certified universities and hundreds of certified OER practitioners listed in a transparent national registry.

Globally, OER is often driven primarily by libraries through networks like ENOEL (European Network of Open Education Librarians). But Austria’s unique strength is our interdisciplinary model—bringing together didactics, IT services, and libraries as one unified team.

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9. Conclusion and Episode Wrap-Up

Summary of Best Practices and Key Takeaways

Looking Ahead: Digital and Data Sovereignty

Integrating OER across academic workflows ensures that digital tools serve the ultimate goal: providing students with the best possible educational experience.

Rory MacDonald

Host:  Our thanks once again to Claudia Hackl for some really practical insight and best practice examples from within the Austrian education system, and for showing us the importance of integrating OER into academic workflows. As usual, we’ll post all relevant links in the podcast description on the Epistemicast website. Keep tuned in for upcoming interviews on digital and data sovereignty. Thank you for listening!