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 Abel Caine |
UNESCO has partnered with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) to produce the UNESCO-COL Guidelines for Open Educational Resources in Higher Education and we are now inviting comments. The preparation of these Guidelines was a continuation of the COL-UNESCO initiative Taking OER Beyond the OER Community: Policy and Capacity that involved a number of face-to-face and online workshops in 2010 and 2011. An important milestone was a Policy Forum on OER held at UNESCO, Paris on 1 December 2010. These Guidelines are a follow-up to that event. Like the 2005 UNESCO-OECD Guidelines on Quality Provision in Cross-Border Higher Education, on which they are loosely modeled, these Guidelines for OER in Higher Education are intended to help key stakeholder groups (governments, higher education institutions, teaching staff, student bodies, quality assurance/accreditation bodies and academic recognition bodies) as they assess the implications of OER for their future policies and actions. The Guidelines have been developed through a broad consultative process. We now wish to extend that consultation further by inviting comments from members of COL's extensive networks. This is part of COL's continuing action aimed at alerting governments, in particular, to the importance of OER and inviting them to develop policies that grant open access, wherever possible, to materials of educational value developed with public funds. UNESCO and COL will sponsor further events, notably a conference in June 2012, to encourage countries to commit to the principle of making educational resources openly available. Please download the draft Guidelines from http:/ You can provide comments below or send personal comments to:
Please also watch that page as we will be conducting an online discussion on the Guidelines during the week of 19 September, prior to final publication. |
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John Graves |
The lesson of Wikipedia is that top-down quality control (filter, then publish) makes collaborative content creation impractical. So a recommendation to "Recognize the important role of educational resources within internal quality assurance processes: This should include establishing and maintaining a rigorous internal process for validating the quality of educational materials prior to their publication as OER." is likely to kill most initiatives to create OER. Better to encourage bottom-up quality control (publish, then filter) and recommend equivalents of Wikipedia's Five Pillars: http:/ |
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Cable |
Comments from: Creative Commons, Hewlett, Open Society Institute & OER - Brazil (CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE TO DOWNLOAD OUT COMMENTS) Hi All: Abel asked me to share the attached comments in this forum. Great idea - thanks Abel. This e-mail was sent on 5 September. - Cable Green (Creative Commons) ======= Greetings Sir John, Trudi and Zeynep:
I am happy to answer any questions about the attached comments. Please call or skype anytime: (m) +01 360-790-3114 / (s) cable.green |
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Bernard Nkuyubwatsi |
Hello Everyone, First of all, many thanks to UNESCO and COL for this guide which comes at the right moment. It will indeed be of great help in setting up ODeL and OERs policies in Rwanda. Rwanda Education Board was recently established under the Ministry of Education. This board has the Department of ICT in Education, Open, Distance and e-Learning under which there is the Digital Content Development, Open, Distance and e-Learning unit. I have been volunteering in this unit and I am inspired by that this guide which will definitely inform our policies. Referring to the guidelines recommended by international organizations such as UNESCO and COL will help get the joint support from the government, higher education institutions, accreditation bodies, teaching staff and learners.
I liked the fact that the guide considers the reality in developing countries especially the challenges related to the Internet connectivity and accessibility to software and hardware. Including other media such as radio in OERs dissemination would be great. This would help ensure the equity in OER accessibility recommended by Commonwealth of Learning and UNESCO (2011) in some society such as Rwanda where Internet penetration is still low.
I had some question on the following statement “Taking effective advantage of OER requires institutions to invest systematically in programme/course design and materials development and acquisition” (p.5). Does this means that if institutions are committed to use OER will spend more than keeping their traditional system? If so, what will motivate institutions with dwindling funds to adopt OERs? Alternatively, institutions can digitize their existing learning materials and publish them under Cc license. This is the strategy we will probably use in Rwanda to increase the accessibility of higher education learning materials. I like the fact that this strategy was suggested in this guide. This would encourage teachers publishing their own materials without feeling that they are of low quality. Then eventually, they would improve the quality of the materials as they develop the sharing culture.
The copyright issue does not seem to be of concern in many developing setting though. Students and educators innocently make copies of learning materials and rarely consider whether they are copyrighted or not. Equally, they do not apply copyright licence on the materials they produce such as examination papers, photographs and others. This issue is differently perceived in other settings where there is rigour related to copyright. However, OERs and Cc License would raise awareness of copyright infringement practices in places where this rigour does not exist yet, which will probably stop the infringement.
I also liked the description of students’ role in OERs movement. This role would probably change a little bit depending on the society’s maturity in adopting ICT in everyday life. In my setting, students would also take responsibility to keep ICT infrastructure in appropriate condition. For example, my institution’s students gave away their username and password to those of a neighbouring institution so that they can use the wireless. Later on, the Internet was no longer usable due to excessive number of external users. To address the issue, the ICT Centre had to invalidate all usernames and passwords and provide new ones to staff. As for students, they had to be connected by ICT officers without revealing the username and password to them.
Finally, I appreciated the inclusion of various stakeholders in education notably the government, higher education providers, teaching staff, students and accrediting body. Working collaboratively, these stakeholders will certainly promote the quality of OERs and their use and upgrade quality education in general.
References:
Commonwealth of Learning and UNESCO (2011) A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER). Available from http:/
I look forward to the growth of OERs movement,
Bernard
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