Open Education API broadens educational horizons

Imagine this: a student is taking a course at another faculty, institution or abroad. The results are automatically transferred, without any manual work, minimising the risk of errors. More and more institutions in vocational education (mbo) and higher professional education (hbo) and university education (wo) are using the Open Education API (OEAPI) for this purpose. This standard makes collaboration between different systems easier.

07 July 2026

Key facts

Who: Hans Swart, OKE/OKx project leader at Npuls
Ben Parker, EuroTeQ project manager
Carlos Alonso Vega, Head of Campus Online IT Services at the Universidad Pública de Navarra
Challenge: Different institutions have different course types, data formats and systems. This hinders student mobility and creates administrative obstacles, with a risk of errors and inefficiency.
Solution: OEAPI is a common standard for sharing educational data (degree programmes, minors, courses, course components such as modules, enrolments, results) in a shared catalogue, whilst retaining each institution’s own systems.

The Open Education API (OEAPI) enables educational institutions to exchange educational data, from the faculty level right up to the European level. Institutions can share their course offerings, enrolment figures and results with one another. At an international level, OEAPI aligns with the European frameworks for initiatives such as Erasmus+, the European University Alliances and Centres for Vocational Excellence. The standard already forms the basis for a wide range of applications, such as RIO, OKE, OKX, eduXchange and Kies Op Maat.

Practical examples

The following three examples demonstrate the versatility of the OEAPI.

National: OKE and Alfa College

The Educational interfaces for Examinations (OKE) is a practical implementation of the OEAPI in mbo. It enables systems across the assessment process to communicate with one another automatically. Information flows seamlessly from the student information system to the assessment platform and back again, including results and assessment documents. This reduces manual administration, minimises errors and makes the digital assessment process more reliable. Alfa College is one of the mbo institutions that has implemented OKE.

Hans Swart, OKE/OKx project leader at Npuls, explains:

“This year, we have introduced the Educational interfaces for Examinations (OKE) for the vocational education sector: a standardised exchange of student, planning and results data. This standard is based on the OEAPI, applies across the entire sector and supports both theoretical and practical examinations.

For the administrative processing of maths exams via the Coöperatie Examens MBO (CEM) alone, almost 60 per cent of mbo institutions use this interface. This facilitates the processing of exams for approximately 300,000 students.

The OEAPI standard drives the standardisation of this process within vocational schools, thereby reducing administrative burdens and minimising the management workload for participating suppliers in relation to these interfaces. A win-win situation!”

The Netherlands in a European context: EuroTeQ

EuroTeQ Engineering University is an alliance of European technical universities, including the TU/e from the Netherlands. The alliance uses OEAPI to bring together educational data from the various partner institutions. This is done via a single shared course catalogue, enabling automatic enrolment and the sharing of results. Institutions do not need to abandon their own systems: OEAPI acts as a common language. In this way, institutions retain control over their own data and systems, whilst learners retain control over their own data.

Ben Parker, Project Manager at EuroTeQ:

“The universities that make up our consortium are all different. It is precisely this diversity that offers our students such great added value. However, the use of the OEAPI provides a standardised way of storing, transferring and receiving data, enabling the seamless exchange of course and student data.

It enables the uniform structure that the alliance requires, whilst also preserving the existing diversity at each partner institution. It helps to remove bottlenecks that limit the scale of student mobility and eliminates administrative barriers. This results in a significantly improved student experience.”

International: Unita

Unita is a European university alliance comprising 10 universities from Italy, France, Portugal, Romania and Spain. The alliance is working on a joint catalogue that provides access to all learning opportunities within Unita, from joint degrees to micro-credentials.

Carlos Alonso Vega, Head of Campus Online IT Services at Universidad Pública de Navarra:

“The aim is to provide a shared catalogue bringing together all the learning opportunities that Unita can offer within its own geographical area of operation. Following an evaluation of the available options, we opted for OEAPI. This was due to its proven effectiveness, its multilingual capabilities and its ability to process a wide range of information, which may be required for our educational provision.

Given the diversity of course types, regulations and multilingual requirements, it was a challenging task to find a common ground. We are now in the implementation phase, and OEAPI forms a central part of our catalogue of learning opportunities.”

OEAPI in the education ecosystem

OEAPI forms part of a broader open education ecosystem that extends beyond mere data exchange. It allows you to describe what a learner has achieved: from formal learning outcomes to promotional study choice texts, such as those used on orientation portals and your institution’s website. This makes it immediately clear to learners and other stakeholders what a programme entails and what it can offer. If you use OEAPI in combination with SURFeduhub, the platform for the secure exchange of educational data, you can provide educational data to data recipients in a standardised and secure manner via a single connection.

From OOAPI to OEAPI

OEAPI is an open standard under public ownership, developed by and for the education sector. The standard, which is used nationally, already fits well into the international digital education landscape. In the Netherlands, OEAPI is a logical and important building block that ties in well with sector-wide services currently under development, such as Register, enrol, sign up (AII).

The standard originated in the Netherlands under the name OOAPI (Open Education API) and was initially implemented within the Dutch context by various SURF members. It is important that Dutch systems, such as this standard, align well with developments in Europe and beyond. OOAPI is now also being used internationally to improve interoperability and alignment with international partners on the basis of a single, uniform standard. For this reason, the name has been changed to OEAPI (Open Education API), whilst the content of the standard remains unchanged.

Ready to get started with OEAPI?

Are you curious to find out what OEAPI can do for your educational institution? Visit oeapi.eu, read more at Open Education API: the road to flexible education, or get in touch with OEAPI’s product owner, Patrick van der Veer, via info@oeapi.eu.