The overall aim of OPAL is to support open educational practice. This will lead to greater effectiveness of teaching and learning by enhancing the quantity and quality of open educational resources that can be incorporated into higher education and further education provision.

Definition of open educational practices: Open educational practices (OEP) is defined as use of OER to raise the quality of education and training and innovate educational practices on an institutional, professional and individual level.

Description: OEP are practices which support the production, use and reuse of high quality open educational resources (OER) through institutional policies, promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning path. OEP address the whole OER governance community: policy makers, managers and administrators of organizations, educational professionals and learners.

OEP = OER Usage + Quality + Innovation