Using OERs at the border between formal education and professional development

This paper aims at discussing how the use of OERs can become a valuable resource for boundary crossing between the academy and the world of work. The background of our argumentation is that often there is a perceived distance between academy (considered as the place of theory development) and professional communities (considered as the place for the development of practice). While the discussion often focuses on the opposition between formal and non-formal use of OERs, we defend the thesis that a great potential resides exactly in the creation of hybrid practices crossing the boundaries between universities and professional communities, enriching academic discourse and providing scientific knowledge for professional practice. We exemplify our argumentation by discussing our experience in building a platform, called CommonSpaces, for the cataloguing, re-use and revising of OERs at the boundary between university and the world of work. This type of boundary crossing can release the great potential made possible by the development of technology-which allows to easily co-create, share, re-mix and revise educational content-and by the openness of OERs-which is a practical implementation of the philosophical understanding of knowledge as a public good resulting from collective efforts and should be accessible to everyone.