1. Template Sections for completion:
Case Study Title:
LeMill
Case Study Country:
Finland
Type of organisation described by the case study, address of organisation,
hyperlink to organisation, hyperlink to case study source:
http://lemill.net/
http://blog.lemill.net/en/
Case Study Contributed by:
Aalto University
Case Study Sections:
Please complete Section 1 – mandatory. Please complete whichever of Sections 2-10
is/are relevant to the case study.
From an analytical perspective we are looking for the following generic questions to
be answered in the case study:
• What constitutes open educational practice in this case study?
• What are the elements of innovation in educational practice?
• How is OER being used to innovate educational practice?
• How is open educational practice used to improve quality?
Sections 1-10
1. Mandatory - A brief summary of the institution to be used as a case study
About 500 words please on a description of the institution, its OER history
and approach.
LeMill is a web community of teachers and other learning content creators
for finding, authoring and sharing open educational resources. At the
moment LeMill has more than 8000 reusable learning content resources,
more than 4000 descriptions of teaching and learning methods, and almost
1000 descriptions of teaching and learning tools. There are also teaching and
learning stories available. LeMill community has members from 61 countries.
At the moment content can be found in 13 languages.
LeMill was designed and developed as part of European Commission’s 6th
Framework Programme project CALIBRATE. Its aims were to support the
collaborative use and exchange of learning resources in schools. It brought

2. together eight Ministries of Education including six from new member states
and involved 17 partners in all. The continuation of development was
supported by Tiger Leap Foundation. The dissemination of LeMill is
supported by ESF AVO project. LeMill project is currently run by Media Lab at
the Aalto University (Finland) together with Centre for Educational
Technology at the Tallinn University (Estonia).
The most active users of LeMill are in Georgia and Estonia.
http://lemill.net/
2. Quality – OER/OEP
How does the institution approach quality in OER? Is there any current
indication of a quality concept or process? Does the institution perceive
quality from the perspective of the quality of open educational resources or
the quality of open educational practice? How does the institution show
quality through OEP versus quality of OEP? What methods, concepts and
practices are used to enhance the quality of OEP?
LeMill supports the idea of working in groups through LeMill community.
There are community blogs for interest groups to coordinate and discuss the
group's work.
All learning resources in LeMill are either in the stage of being "draft" or
"published". The member who started the project of making the content may
decide when the content will be published. The change from "draft" to
"published" does not change anything in the availability of the content. The
flag "published" just tells to the users of the site that the author(s) have
considered it to be ready. When content is public, its authors are shown. For
draft resources the authors are not shown. People can continue to modify
and improve the resource after publishing it.
If the user finds some content incorrect he/she can join LeMill and fix it. The
guidelines tell to respect other people's points of view and possible "deeper
thought and reasons" behind the content they have made. LeMill trust the
community’s self-evaluation, however the maintainer of the service pretty
much track all the editing made to the site. It can block vandals and even
report criminal activities for authorities.
3. Innovation
How can OER/OEP innovate educational practices? What current innovative
practices are there in the institution? Please do not regard innovation from
just a technology perspective!
In addition to content, methods, and tools there are teaching and learning
stories. A story is a description of how some content, methods, and tools
have been used together in a single learning event, such as a study course.
Stories loosely join the other resources together. From the stories users get
valuable hints on how the resources found from LeMill have been used in real

3. teaching and learning. Through stories they may share their own experiences
or use them to plan your own teaching.
4. Policy
What are the current OER/OEP policy arrangements at institutional and
national level across Europe/the World?
About 70% of LeMill use comes from Georgia and 15% from Estonia. These
two countries have been so active because the national ICT agencies (Deer
Leap Foundation and Tiger Leap Foundation) have promoted LeMill among
the teachers.
5. Actors
What actors are involved in OER/OEP? Is there any evidence to show that
OER actors do not always promote OEP but “only” access to OER?
6. Initiatives
What OER/OEP initiatives can be evidenced? Is there any evidence to show
that OER initiatives do not always promote OEP but “only” access to OER?
For all resources in LeMill (content, methods, tools, stories, group blogs)
LeMill use Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
LeMill support reusing and shared development of the content, methods,
tools and stories.
7. Open Educational Practices
Can you identify some case studies/ descriptions which form the illustrative
base for a more general model of OEP?
See answer to section 3
8. Tools and Repositories
What tools and repositories are being used to deliver OER/OEP? For example
GLOW, Connexions
Are there any other special tools for OER/OEP? e.g. Cloudworks, in
which practices can be discussed and validated?
Are there any tools for Visualisation? e.g. CompendiumLD
Are there any tools for Argumentation? e.g. Cohere
LeMill is a web site engine to author and share learning resources. All content
in LeMill server are free/libre/open for all web users. Anyone may also start
their own LeMill website. Users can download LeMill engine, install it on your
own server and put it online. After this you will automatically be part of the
global network of LeMill servers. Because of this the creators say that LeMill
is "do it yourself" learning resource website engine.
The Tools section is a place to describe different kinds of virtual or physical
tools users use or may use in teaching and learning. In this section the users
find tools that other teachers and educators are using.

4. 9. Strategies
Can you identify any strategies for organisations to use OER/OEP? Can you
identify any business models that promote OER/OEP?
10. Current barriers and enablers
What are the barriers to the use of OER/OEP? Is there any evidence to how
these barriers have been overcome? What are the enablers to the use of OER/
OEP?
The community is currently searching for additional money in order to be
able to maintain the service.