ENCORE+. Interview with Ildiko Mazar

The ENCORE+ project supports the uptake and innovation of Open Educational Resources (OER) for education and business. An improved understanding and strategy for enabling people to receive credentials for their learning with OERs has been identified as a key enabler for uptake. With this in mind, UNIR iTED team has conducted a series of in-depth interviews to explore innovative approaches to credentialising learning in the European OER ecosystem, the opportunities which they offer, and the barriers to their application. The interviews also contributed to an ENCORE+ report discussing the same topic.

Every two weeks up to January 2023 a new interview will be published.

Interview #5: Ildiko Mazar

Ildiko Mazar, currently employed by NTT DATA, has worked in eLearning and OER for about 25 years. Organising over 30 conferences and managing 50+ European projects that had open education at their core, she accumulated valuable knowledge and practical experience in the field. She has had roles as a producer, developer, implementer, and publisher of OERs, and has worked extensively in supporting aggregation and better machine readability of OERs and credentials. She is currently supporting the European Commission’s DG Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion in the development and implementation of the European Digital Credentials for Learning.

In this interview Ildiko describes her hopes for the ways that micro-credentialing and flexible learning can support personalised learning journeys for the citizens of Europe, and discusses the challenges that may be encountered by teachers and institutions. In doing so, she shares her detailed knowledge of the European Credentials for Learning initiative, and discusses its prospects for adoption, arguing that this has the potential to support authentication of the learning outcomes, and stackability of credentials. In addition to the benefits for citizens and their employability, she suggests that this may also stimulate the use of OERs.

The interview is published here.