The Department of Economics participated in the following projects for the development of open courses:

• Project “Open academic courses of the University of Patras”, as part of the Pan-Hellenic project opencourses.gr, a national effort for the creation of Open Educational Resources
• Erasmus+ project “Open up Entrepreneurship“, for the development of the online course “Open: A learning walk in digital entrepreneurship”.

Open courses are free and open to the public, an Open Knowledge available to all!

The Department of Economics created the following ten (10) open courses for the academic year  2014-2015:

1. Introduction to Computer and Application, Emmanouil Tzagarakis, Victoria Daskalou
2. Operations Research (Applications using R), Konstantinos Kounetas
3. Issues on Digital Economy, Emmanouil Tzagarakis, Victoria Daskalou
4. Accounting I, Dimitrios Tzelepis
5. Accounting II, Dimitrios Tzelepis
6. Econometrics, Ioannis Venetis
7. Introduction to Economics for non-economists, Kostas Tsekouras
8. Energy Economics, Konstantinos Kounetas
9. Economics of Innovation and Technology, Kostas Tsekouras
10. Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, Dimitrios Skuras

The online course “OpEn: A learning walk in digital entrepreneurship” is targeting those self-employed, young and new entrepreneurs either just opening up their business or planning to do so in the near future.  The aim is to provide inspiration and support in developing a digital business.

OpEn is based on self-paced learning over a recommended duration of 8 weeks, considering that up to 4 hours per week can be dedicated in engaging with material on the course.  It is available in four languages (English, Greek, Italian and Spanish) and is structured around three main areas:

• Business Development: supporting the development of fundamental skills on business management
• Digital Development: developing capabilities in how digital technologies can be deployed in your business
• Personal Development: developing excellence in leadership, negotiating and collaborating skills

The OpEn course was implemented by the project “Open up Entrepreneurship“, funded by the Erasmus+ program through the National State Scholarships Foundation (IKY).