Digital skills are now essential, not only in information and communications technology (ICT) jobs, but for employees across all sectors. The aim of this article is to detail how employees’ digital skills can be fostered through a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), how such an offer is used and what the effects of such a measure are. Using an approach oriented at action research and design-based research activities, the authors describe the basics of their finding on existing European competence frameworks for digital skills and European projects that used MOOCs, the development and design of the MOOC, the evaluation on the basis of learning analytics insights and a questionnaire, as well as a reflection. The MOOC was offered as Open Educational Resources (OER) on the Austrian MOOC platform iMOOX.at from March to April 2021, with 2083 participants, of whom 381 fully completed the course (at end of June 2021) and 489 filled out the final questionnaire.

The “Forum Neue Medien in der Lehre Austria” (fnma) is responsible for the development and introduction of a procedure to attest open educational resources (OER) competences and OER activities in higher education. The aim is to develop and implement a convincing and recognized procedure that succeeds in sustainably promoting and making visible OER activities and OER competences at Austria’s higher education institutions. Within this paper, the development of the Austrian OER certification approach, in other words its framework, will be addressed. A working plan and first results will be presented; among others, the competence framework and its compatibility with existing frameworks.

This paper explores the challenges and first experiences of implementing federated virtual learning management within the European University Alliance “Unite!”. Through the lens of Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), the study investigates the complexities inherent in connecting Learning Management Systems (LMS) across diverse institutional contexts. This research examines the general hurdles faced by European university alliances in adopting federated LMS. Additionally, it outlines the LMS infrastructure of Unite! in early 2024 and discusses the pilot initiatives undertaken to utilize LTI for connecting LMS platforms at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz). The pilots involve integrating Unite!'s Metacampus with various platforms, including Moodle-based systems from TU Graz. The pilots demonstrate that the integration of LTI is not trivial, as it impacts technology, administration, and teaching due to the novelty of the system (requiring an explanation of how it works). However, the implementation is successful, with difficulties encountered only in specific browsers. Drawing from these pilot experiences, the paper presents insights and lessons learned regarding the efficacy of LTI in facilitating cross-platform connectivity within Unite! and offers implications for future implementations.