Open Educational Resources for Environmental Education

Although Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCs) are more and more developed and available in European educational systems, there is a lack of MOOCs in the field of toxicology and environmental sciences. Starting from this fact, the “Learning Toxicology through Open Educational Resources – TOX-OER” project was granted and run between 2015 and 2018. Seven European High Education Institutions shared knowledge and skills and created seven toxicology-related OERs. The challenges and the experience gained during development of these OERs, especially the video presentations, supporting texts, additional documentation, and evaluation tests, are presented in the present paper. Our outstanding experience gathered during TOX-OER project, contributed to the decision to extend our initiative to a subsequent project, “Environmental Education – OERs for Rural Citizens” (EnvEdu – OERs). The new project aims to develop new OERs targeting rural citizens’ life-long learning focusing on environmental quality. The lessons learned from the TOX-OER project are presented not only for an effective transfer to the new EnvEdu – OER project, and for an efficient rural community acceptance, but also for other audience facing similar challenges and experience in creating OERs.