Switzerland’s Open Education Roadmap

A most interesting aspect of openness when it generates positive acts of unintentional serendipity. My initial post for this series was a draft that accidentally got published early. And I was not aware that our web site was experimenting with a means to publish posts into our OEG Connect community space (here it landed), until I saw a notification message. And that was shortly followed by a message from Barbara Class sharing what is our first post in this series.

Barbara shared “A Roadmap for Open Education in Switzerland” a collaboration she led that has produced this guide to provide the Swiss people a path to reach a vision of what education in general would look like in 50 years. The process in developing the guide addressed questions of “What is Open Education? How is it related to Open Science and other Opens and Commons? Why does it matter for Higher Education institutions? Why does Open Education matter for each and every citizen?” and was completed over 9 months including via a visioning exercise, a Delphi study with worldwide Open Education experts, and much review of the culture and practices of Switzerland.

The roadmap itself includes three strategic Focus areas each with a set of four action areas, all aimed at “Enabling legal, societal, political, economic and institutional ecosystems to support Openness and a renewed approach to Commons.”

I find it worth noting the framing of this national strategy in the way Open Education is related to Open Science, Openness in general, and the idea of the Commons.

Education is at a crossroads striving for more social oriented forms with collaborative practices and commoning perceived as opportunities to move forward (Le Crosnier, 2017). Switzerland is a fertile ground to revive and reinvent commoning because it can build on its historical background with natural commons. Commoning represents also a very interesting political structure that empowers citizens and communities (Haller et al., 2021). This is important because political choices do influence HEIs’ path and are critical in terms of bifurcations (Kauko, 2014). In addition, it makes sense that main actors, i.e. citizens and communities, for whom education is being designed are involved in bargaining powers. Education is considered a knowledge commons (Hess et Ostrom, 2007) and can benefit from the experience with natural commons management.

How is Open Education related to Open Science and other Opens and Commons?

We hope you take some time to explore the roadmap, make use of the resources and also the methodology sections. Bring your questions to OEG Connect and consider asking what a roadmap for Open Education might look like for your country, region, or organization.

Barbara shared a few more items of interest:

Do you have something we should add to our World of OEGlobal map? Tell us! Please reply to our query in OEG Connect or share your own item as a new topic for in the Spotlight area.

And thank you Barbara for being the first to share in this blog series– it looks like our next stop is going to be Santiago, Chile.

Join the Discussion in OEG Connect

Read the latest responses to this post below and join in on a discussion of the Open Education Roadmap.


Featured Image:

Screenshot of the Open Education Roadmap wiki site atop a road map of Switzerland
A combination of a screenshot of the Open Education Roadmap site and the Wikimedia Commons image Karte Grand Tour of Switzerland by NordNordWest shared under a  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license.

OEG Voices – Latest Podcasts

OE Global Voices

Welcome to the home of podcasts produced by Open Education Global. These shows bring you insight and connection to the application of open education practices from around the world. Listen at podcast.oeglobal.org

OEG Voices 081: Bea de los Arcos on We Like Sharing

Who would not want to be part of something called “We Like Sharing” especially when encouraged by the enthusiastic voice of Bea de los Arcos? This clever idea for a photo competition from TUDelft held annually since 2021 is less about prizes and more about generating an understanding of openness through the sharing of photographs, and at the same time, creating a rich visual collection of images representing openness… shared openly.

We Like Sharing has planned each year to coincide with Open Education Week and was also recognized in 2023 with an OE Award For Excellence in the Wildcard category. This conversation was recorded in late January 2025 in hopes of generating more interest, but was hardly necessary given the quality of this year’s 150+ submissions and the winners selected by public vote.

As usual there are more interesting, and anticipated, ideas and understandings that come from our OEGlobal Voices conversations. Listen to learn not only about We Like Sharing, but also Bea’s path from the seaside of Galicia, Spain to the innovative university in the city in the Netherlands painted by Vermeer, and maybe even a hint of bagpipes.

Listen to our conversation, get inspired to go outside with your camera and find interesting details to photograph… and hopefully share.

In This Episode

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

In this episode, Alan Levine talks with Bea de los Arcos about her inspiring project, “We Like Sharing.” They discuss how the initiative encourages Creative Commons licensing, open sharing of photographs, and the value of appreciating and documenting beauty in everyday moments. They also explore Bea’s personal journey, her love for walking, and the importance of community in open education.

  • Introduction and Background
  • Bea’s Personal Journey and Influences
  • Living and Working in Delft
  • Overview of the Extension School
  • Inspiration Behind ‘We Like Sharing’
  • The Evolution of ‘We Like Sharing’
  • Impact and Stories of Reuse
  • Ideas for Encouraging Participation
  • Bea’s Personal Interests and Hobbies
  • Conclusion and Final Thoughts

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 81

I love this photograph, it was one of the winners from last year. And it is a white wall and there are lots of hearts painted in different colors on the door.

It’s a wall and a door and lots of hearts.

So for some reason I love that photograph because there’s so much love in just the one wall. It’s actually called “Love on a Wall.” And that was picked up in Flickr by the algorithm In Explore. It attracted lots of views. so that allows me to go back to the [photographer] in this case, that person wants to remain anonymous. But it allows me to go to this person and say, “Hey, this is what’s happening for your photograph.” And of course they get super excited, “Wow!”

I know [many photos] have been reused because I see them on presentations by colleagues. So [they] pick the photograph, put it on a slide, and that’s a beautiful example of reuse.

But in this case, it was more interesting because one of those little hearts on the wall, so not the whole photograph, was used on the cover of a little booklet from the University of Leeds, a little booklet, called, “With Love from Your Supervisor.” It’s about giving advice to o PhD students about how to go about research. The cover is a little person holding the book and all these hearts. That’s love from your supervisor and that heart is one of the hearts in “Love on a Wall”. So I thought it was just amazing.

Bea de los Arcos on reuse of a We Like Sharing photo

A white wall and a door painted with scores of colourful hearts. ”Open is sharing love anywhere, any time, for everyone.”
Love on a wall flickr photo by Pelerecho shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license. This photo was a winner in the 2024 We Like Sharing photo competition.
Credits for cover art of With Love from a Dissertation Supervisor.
Cover art of With Love from a Dissertation Supervisor. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), 3D Art and design, Odysseas Frank, OD-3D artstation portfolio
Hearts on cover: Detail from “Love on a wall” photo by Pelerecho, released under
CC BY, part of the “We like sharing” collection, TU Delft, University of Technology,
The Netherlands, OEWeek24 Photo Competition entry number 81,
https://flic.kr/p/2pBDByZ

We encourage you to visit the full collection of over 1500 openly licensed images curated over the five years of We Like Sharing Open Photo Competition. Each image’s caption includes description text suitable for an alt image description and cut and paste text for full attribution to the photographer who shared it. If you reuse any images, please consider leaving a comment in flickr or contacting Bea, so she can communicate this back to the photographer.

We full expect to see We Like Sharing back in 2026 for Open Education Week. This is a very replicable activity and we have previously discussed with Bea in OEG Connect about what it takes to organize a spin off version.

It comes to you. One of the photographs that I took was when I was waiting for the tram and I just looked down. There was a campaign in Delft at the time around violence against women. [Someone] had this stamped on the pavement this hand and a message “stop violence against women.”

So, I was thinking, wow, become a bit more curious about what it is that is happening around you. Don’t look at your phone with your apps or your messages. No, just look. Look away from your phone– maybe that’s what it is. — look away from your phone. What can you see?

Bea de los Arcos on looking at the world around you

An open hand painted on the pavement beside the words 'Stop geweld tegen vrouwen', 'stop violence against women' in Dutch.
Stop flickr photo by B. de los Arcos is shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track calledPhoto Album by Crowander shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

Finally, this was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast, part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our showsWe have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descriptbut our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.