In 2007 the OECD published a report on the world wide ‘emergence of open educational resources’. Though it mentions a set of difficulties (e.g. financing, quality management, interoperability, and dominance of English) it seems rather optimistic in regard to the further development of OER. Concerning OER the main discussion is about – in a wide sense – institutional questions: why are OER produced regarding the motives and constraints of individual educators and educational institutions; how has the technology to be organized to provide interoperability, qualitative improvement, intellectual property rights management. However the report also mentions – rather casually – the impact OER will have on the process and organisation of learning. OER are expected to “bridge the gap between non-formal, informal and formal learning.” Surveys show that users of OER are often selflearners and it seems obvious that their number will increase. So the report even raises the question, if “the term ‘education’ should be replaced by ‘learning’ and a better term would be ‘open learning resources’.” Additionally, the teacher’s role as a supplier of and a guide to learning materials is diminishing. If teachers in this context have any influence on the learner at all it will be at best a kind of pilotage. Bridging the gap particularly between formal and informal learning implies that it cannot be defined completely in advance which digital object is an educational resource and which is not. Also the other way round – what is educational in one context is not necessarily educational in another. Educational resources are usually made to fit into a specific social context of teaching and learning. Their production implies a certain concept of their usage, i.e. the educational setting in which the intended teaching and learning takes place. In consequence it is also difficult for a selflearner to find an OER precisely fitting to his demands and to estimate its usefulness. He needs time and might even have to 'use' it at least partly, to know the quality. This is of course a demotivating constraint to the development and general usefulness of OER. Until now the development of OER is production driven, be it on the basis of an altruistic will to share and to establish an educational commons, or be it on the financing power of foundations and public authorities. Looking at other developments in the World Wide Web one might suppose that it is time for more customer driven approach. Business models based on payments by donors, the contributors (!) or by advertisers miss the creative information mechanism of prizes. The authors see only one candidate for a service additional to OER which is could be priced high enough to gear the prize mechanism in a way that highly reusable OER would be made accessible: the accreditation of the openly learned. Overall the change in the concept of learning and the mentioned institutional developments coincide in the problem of assessment and accreditation of competences, which have not been gained in formal educational contexts. The fundamental change in the process and organisation of learning applies particularly to higher education and lifelong learning where on the one hand the independent acquisition of knowledge is much more important and on the other hand diplomas offer a much more direct access to better career and payment options. The paper will thus explore these thoughts in relation to this educational level.

Theoretical analysis.

The assessment and accreditation of competences, which have been gained by using Open Educational resources could provide a 'customer driven' improvement in usability of OER - supplied by institutions providing exams, diplomas, degrees etc. for money.