June 2015 the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science formulated an ambitious program for open and online education in the Netherlands in its Strategic Agenda “HO2025, de waarde(n) van weten” (“Higher Education 2025, the value(s) of knowledge”). According to Minister Mrs. Jet Bussemaker: “I aim to ensure that all Dutch higher education institutions have made their teaching materials available in open format by 2025 (Open Access to Higher Education), propelling the Netherlands to a leading global position.”(…) “As apart of this process, we must also ensure that the various Dutch higher education institutions recognise each other’s MOOCs and Open Educational Resources” (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, 2015, p. 30)

To realize these ambitions, a taskforce within the Ministry investigated which measurements where needed for this. This resulted in a program “Open and connected higher education – Exchange of digital learning materials”. One of the elements was to start with two so-called “moonshot projects” in cross-institutional open sharing of learning materials. These projects should on the one hand serve as good practice for Dutch Higher Education and on the other hand provide more detailed insight into what is needed for the Ministry to take the next step in implementation of their ambitions.

The two projects are on developing resources on mathematics, done by the 4 Universities of Technology, and on developing resources for the Bachelor Nursing program, done by 5 Universities of Applied Sciences.

In this presentation we will provide more insights into the background and approach of these projects and compare them with similar approaches for supporting national policies elsewhere.