ENCORE+. Interview with Timothy Read

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 here.

Interview #3: Timothy Read

Timothy Read is a Senior Lecturer at UNED, the Spanish National Distance Education University. He researches into open learning for languages and for social inclusion, particularly refugees and migrants. He played an important role in establishing OER practice at UNED, and in 2012 was the founding director of UNED Abierta / Open UNED, which remains an important part of UNED’s offering.

In this interview, he shares his experience of the early days of MOOCs, and reflects on the ways that open courses can be linked to formal qualifications, as well as the challenges this raises for teachers and institutions today. He identifies the barriers to linking OERs and credentials in terms of the business models and culture of institutions, and praises the work of the European Commission with Europass while critiquing the requirement for the use of eSeals.