Fostering Government Support for OER
Preamble
Information technology can help to equalise the distribution of high quality educational opportunities throughout the world. In particular, having learning materials freely available for adaptation and re-purposing can expand access to learning of better quality at lower cost. A campaign to make freely adaptable content, known as Open Educational Resources (OER), widely available has gathered momentum with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. A global community of OER producers has emerged and institutions are incorporating these resources into their teaching and learning strategies. Moreover, whereas the early traffic of OER was from developed to developing countries, exchanges are becoming more multi-directional as developing countries become active producers of OER.
Nevertheless, knowledge of OER and their potential is still sparse among leaders and policy makers in governments and institutions. Until these bodies adopt policies and practices to encourage open access to educational materials, OER will remain outside the institutional mainstream.
However, actions by COL and UNESCO over the last two years have begun to spread awareness of the value of open content beyond the ‘OER Community’. It is now time to secure commitments from governments in all regions of the world to the principle of open access to educational materials produced with public funds. The UNESCO World OER Conference scheduled for 20-22 June, 2012 in Paris, where governments will be invited to adopt a statement encouraging universal access to quality content, provides a major opportunity.
This project has two aims:
1) to ensure the drafting of a meaningful statement, and
2) to maximise buy-in from governments.
This will require extensive information sharing on good practice and broad participation in drafting the statement. The work will be judged successful if governments of developing and developed countries adopt a robust statement supporting a policy of making publicly funded materials available under open licenses.
Nevertheless, knowledge of OER and their potential is still sparse among leaders and policy makers in governments and institutions. Until these bodies adopt policies and practices to encourage open access to educational materials, OER will remain outside the institutional mainstream.
However, actions by COL and UNESCO over the last two years have begun to spread awareness of the value of open content beyond the ‘OER Community’. It is now time to secure commitments from governments in all regions of the world to the principle of open access to educational materials produced with public funds. The UNESCO World OER Conference scheduled for 20-22 June, 2012 in Paris, where governments will be invited to adopt a statement encouraging universal access to quality content, provides a major opportunity.
This project has two aims:
1) to ensure the drafting of a meaningful statement, and
2) to maximise buy-in from governments.
This will require extensive information sharing on good practice and broad participation in drafting the statement. The work will be judged successful if governments of developing and developed countries adopt a robust statement supporting a policy of making publicly funded materials available under open licenses.
