Open online education (OOE) is increasingly viewed as an activity of educational innovation with systematic implications for the organization and the potential to contribute to the quality of education. This raises the question, which strategies and solutions will help innovate (higher) education and contribute to improvement of the quality of education and the accessibility of higher education. SOONER, a nationally funded five-year research-project, focusses on fundamental research and accompanying research on OOE. The fundamental research projects are centred on self-regulated learning, motivation as key to drop-out and scalability of feedback and assessment in OOE environments. The accompanying research is aimed at gaining insight into the question to what extent open online education interventions may contribute to quality of education and which planning approaches and organizational (pre)conditions lead to sustainable success. This will be done by systematically collecting data and evidence about the conditions and dependencies of variables of approximately 40 ICT-innovation projects in higher education institutes for 4 consecutive years.
