eMundus regional report: New Zealand

New Zealand as a small country with a population of only 4.2 million has made progress in establishing the foundations necessary for scalable uptake and integration of open education approaches in the formal education sector. The penetration of open source learning management systems in the tertiary sector is relatively high by international standards. The New Zealand Government has adopted an open licensing policy for Crown Copyright which encourages School Boards of Trustees to adopt open licenses. However, the framework does not extend to the higher education sector. Currently, open access policies and practices have been adopted at three tertiary education institutions. The OER Foundation is headquartered in New Zealand and at the time of writing, eight tertiary institutions from New Zealand are partners in the OERu international collaboration. Four of New Zealand's eight universities are experimenting with MOOCs covering the spectrum of cMOOCs, xMOOCs and OER­based micro Open Online Courses. Otago Polytechnic has been incorporating open online courses through the OERu collaboration since 2009. The OERu network is leading the development of practices to facilitate international learner mobility through credit transfer and course articulation.