Suchergebnisse

WOS: 000488075600012 ; Bridging Asia and Europe in geography and culture, Turkey assumes a special role and unique position for South East Europe. Since its foundation in 1923, it has developed into the "18th largest economy in the world" (The World Bank, 2015, "Turkey Overview"). According to 2016 data, Turkey has a population of about 79 million with a median age of 31.0 years (Turkish Statistical Institute, 2016), which makes provision of educational services a critical public service for the country's economic and social development and realizing its transition into a knowledge society (Yilmaz,2012). However, a digital divide between Turkey and the European Union as a direct neighbor exists (Yilmaz, 2012). Hence, providing quality education has been one of the top priorities in Turkey in its struggle to accomplish both the transition to knowledge society and its economic goals. Educational provision simultaneously constitutes a central political and societal challenge.

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project "Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures-EduArc", funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or (O)ER) framed within the digital transformation of ten different Higher Education (HE) systems (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey and the United States). Following a comparative case study approach, we investigated issues related to the existence of policies, quality assurance mechanisms and measures for the promotion of change in supporting infrastructure development for (O)ER at the national level in HE in the different countries. The results of this mainly documentary research highlight differences and similarities, which are largely due to variations in these countries' political structure organisation. The discussion and conclusion point at the importance of understanding each country's context and culture, in order to understand the differences between them, as well as the challenges they face.