Sustainable Development Goal 4 of the United Nations aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning. In line with this goal, the ZHAW is committed to Open Educational Resources (OER). These resources refer to materials for teaching and self-study that are either published in the public domain or under an open licence, making them freely accessible, adaptable and shareable. The ZHAW recognises the potential of OER to foster collaboration and cooperation, promote the development of skills and develop new didactic methods.

Shared platform

A key factor for visibility and the success of open teaching and learning materials is a central location where they can be found. The national OER repository went online in July 2024. The platform provides access to a wide variety of teaching and learning materials including texts, images, audio and video files as well as entire course units for reuse. It was designed for students, lecturers and the general public. The project is led by the ZHAW University Library, in collaboration with the education infrastructure provider SWITCH, the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland and three teacher-training universities. The aim is to get all Swiss universities to work together, to pave the way for innovative university teaching and to strengthen the exchange between university lecturers.