OpenScout

OpenScout stands for "Skill based scouting of open user-generated and community-improved content for management education and training". OpenScout is a project co-funded by the European Commission within the eContentplus Programme as a Targeted Project in the area of Educational Content (Grant ECP 2008 EDU 428016). OpenScout started in September 2009 and has a duration of three years.

OpenScout aims at providing an education service in the internet that enables users to easily find, access, use and exchange open content for management education and training.

OpenScout can be used by learners directly but also by training and education institutions that search for learning content to be integrated into their learning offerings.

The management education market is largely diversified, training topics range from general management and leadership to very specific issues like managing risks in banking industry. Despite the resulting growing need for management education and content the potential of already existing open learning materials is hardly exploited, neither in the business sector nor in SMEs where the need for lifelong learning is even greater.

To reduce the usage barriers OpenScout offers easy-to-use skill-based federated search and retrieval web services, provides an openly accessible tool library for improvement and re-publishing of open contents and establishes an open user community that opens up their content and adopts OpenScout web services in real contexts of use.