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Welcome to this webinar on Wednesday 20th October at 11:00 - 12:00 (CEST)
Watch the recorded webinar
Maha Bali, PhD, Associate Professor of Practice, Center for Learning and Teaching, American University in Cairo, Egypt.

In this session, participants will explore diverse understandings of open educational practices, and have opportunities to analyze different practices along three continua: content/process centricity, teacher/student centricity and pedagogical/social justice focus. Participants will dig deeper into certain practices and consider how a practice can work well in one context but not another, and how to imagine redesigning it to better promote social justice along three social justice dimensions: economic, cultural and political.

The session will build upon this article: Bali, M., Cronin, C., & Jhangiani, R. S. (2020). Framing Open Educational Practices from a Social Justice Perspective. Journal of Interactive Media in Education. 2020 (1), p. 10. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jime.565

The webinar will use the web-conferencing tool Zoom. Please make sure you have connected your webcam and headset before you enter the meeting room.

Maha Bali is Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield, UK. She is co-founder of virtuallyconnecting.org (a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences) and co-facilitator of Equity Unbound (an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum, which has also branched into academic community activities Continuity with Care and Socially Just Academia). She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education. She blogs regularly at http://blog.mahabali.me and tweets @bali_maha

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ONL212 Topic 2 event: Webinar - Sharing and openness

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Welcome to this webinar on Wednesday 20th October at 11:00 - 12:00 (CEST) Watch the recorded webinar Maha Bali, PhD, Associate Professor of Practice, Center for Learning and Teaching, American University in Cairo, Egypt. In this session, participants will explore diverse understandings of open educational practices, and have opportunities to analyze different practices along three continua: content/process centricity, teacher/student centricity and pedagogical/social justice focus.

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Think about the process you follow when reviewing textbooks and other materials for your course. You can then adopt a similar or a modified evaluation process. You may wish to consider the following questions and suggestions when evaluating OER:

​ Does this OER cover the content you'd like your students to learn in this module?

How accessible is this content? Is it too technical / robust and challenging enough for your students?

How can you use the content? Verify the license that the resource is under. Can you remix or revise the OER as long as it is for non-commercial purposes? Who do you have to acknowledge if you use it? Will you be able to do so?

Once you determine how you can use the OER, what would you like to do with it? Do you need only a portion of it for your class? You might want combine this OER with another OER or resource. Does the NUS library have access to materials that could act as supplemental materials?

As you collect more OER and other resources, save them in a central location. Take note of how you plan on using them based on the learning objectives and weekly lessons on your syllabus in order to identify gaps .

Adapted from: Open Educational Resources (OER): Evaluate OER, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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LibGuides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Evaluating OER

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Think about the process you follow when reviewing textbooks and other materials for your course. You can then adopt a similar or a modified evaluation process. You may wish to consider the following questions and suggestions when evaluating OER: ​ Does this OER cover the content you'd like your students to learn in this module?

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How do we account for the digital divide in our classrooms?

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How do we account for the digital divide in our classrooms?

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Topic 1: Online Participation and Digital Literacy

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Accounting for (and exposing) the great digital divide

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Accounting for (and exposing) the great digital divide

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While one big positive of pushing for OER is its potential to improve social inequity and universal access to educational resources. However, with COVID-19, the rapid shift to online learning and digitalisation of other essential services, the underdeveloped digital infrastructure is exposed, even for more developed and "smart" countries like Singapore. Consequently, the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the population (e.g., children from poor families, digitally illiterate elderly) are struggling to keep up with the new normal.

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OER AFRICA

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What's New

In this week's article, Leanne Rencken delves into the ongoing collaboration between the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) and OER Africa. OER Africa has developed three learning pathways, as part of its grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and, along with AfLIA, is piloting them with university and academic librarians on the continent.

African Library and Information Associations & Institutions (AfLIA) Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, 2019

Image courtesy of AfLIA, CC BY
Report by Leanne Rencken,[1] for OER Africa.
Three inspiring conversations with remarkable African librarians provided me with great hope that our libraries on the African continent are in good hands.

Why did I have these conversations? My mission was to find out more about the ongoing collaboration between the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions ( AfLIA) and OER Africa.
OER Africa has developed three learning pathways, as part of its grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and, along with AfLIA, is piloting them with university and academic librarians on the continent.
The pilot project focused on three learning pathways:

Find Open Content is a short tutorial for participants to acquire the skills necessary to search for open content, decipher Creative Commons rights and permissions and evaluate the accuracy and relevance of Open Educational Resources (OER) identified.

Adapt Open Content provides a rapid solution to adapting open content for new purposes. It covers adaptation options, and how to revise and remix open content.

Publish using Open Access explains what Open Access is, and why academics might consider publishing in this way. It goes on to discuss publishing options, guidelines, and touches on other Open movements.

I spent a few delightful hours on Zoom calls with Dr Nkem Osuigwe, who is based in Nigeria, but commutes to Accra, Ghana for work, Dr Sarah Kaddu, who is based in Kampala, Uganda and Dr Ayanda Lebele, who is based in Palapye, Botswana.

With their shared vision, curiosity, thirst for knowledge, leadership, and a collection of PhDs, it's not surprising that I'm in awe of these three women who, in one way or another, are stewards of library science and services on the African continent.

Dr Nkem Osuigwe, who is the Human Capacity Development and Training Director at AfLIA, chatted to me about the pilot, in which 50 librarians across Africa participated, and who, by completing these learning pathways, are testing innovative alternative approaches to continuing professional development (CPD), to reduce dependence on traditional workshop-based professional development.

Dr Osuigwe reveals herself through anecdotes; she is a great storyteller and admits she is driven by curiosity and her love for anything that concerns reading. She is the only librarian in a family of medical professionals, her late father, husband, and children included. She explains that she holds a position of importance in her home, because doctors can't know everything, and often turn to their in-house librarian for research assistance.

This same thirst for knowledge, and innate hunger to find out more about how the world works led to her appointment at AfLIA and how she approaches her current position.

As she describes it, AfLIA is the platform for all librarians in Africa to come together, learn from each other, and encourage one another. It's a strong network of different types of libraries, as well as an advocate for better operating environments for libraries on the continent. One of her most vivid memories, from when she first started out at AfLIA, is of a goosebumps-inducing visit to a library in Nakaseke, just outside Kampala. She was struck by how much the humble, two-room establishment influenced and involved the community it served.

"This little library could get news from the radio, TV, newspapers, but also books. They knew when and where it was going to rain, the cost of seedlings, how to get better produce. They were passing this information down to members of the community, so, in turn that made the community go there to find out, 'where do I sell my bananas today, at what price, how do I sell them, which market will give me higher prices...' That was the first time I realized that public libraries can really do awesome things when the people that work there understand what it is all about, when they engage their user communities more."

Thanks to this need to know more, see more, and do more, coupled with her networking skills, Dr Osuigwe stumbled across open licensing. She pursued a friendship with Amna Singh of StoryWeaver on Twitter, and, through these interactions was introduced to Pratham Books (India) and its enormously appealing StoryWeaver project. This work sees the creation of openly licensed children's storybooks that can be translated, copied, and adapted at will, because of the Creative Commons licence used. Once she had made the connection, written a book for the platform, and participated in a StoryWeaver competition to translate children's stories, Dr Osuigwe had a better idea of the potential for open licensing, what it means for African libraries, and how children can access books in their mother tongue.

And because Dr Osuigwe goes all-in with everything she does, she continued to make fruitful connections, initially via Twitter and then in-person, between AfLIA and Wikimedia, as well as AfLIA and OER Africa. Subsequently, several productive projects have ensued.

For the learning pathways pilot, AfLIA selected potential participants from amongst its tertiary-level librarian community. They received questionnaires to ascertain their knowledge of OER and open licensing, Open Access, and using the Internet to retrieve information. Librarians from nine universities in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda were ultimately selected.

Dr Lebele and Dr Kaddu were two of the participants selected to participate in the pilot project, which consisted of an introductory Zoom call, followed by a call for participants for each learning pathway. The librarians had two weeks to complete the learning pathway(s) they had chosen. Participants also received pre- and post-pilot questionnaires and a user experience survey.

For Dr Kaddu, who works as a lecturer at the East African School of Library and Information Science at Makerere University, CPD is critical, because she's got to stay relevant to her students, who are a lot more digitally savvy than she was when she studied for the same degree. As she explains it:

"When you look at the information landscape today, you'll see that it's characterized by plenty, there is a lot of information available out there, so the question is, how do I navigate all this information?"

She also says that the webinars AfLIA has provided, as well as the digital skills it is supplying to support educators in their daily work, have been well received.

"They raise awareness of existing trends that we might otherwise take a while to get to know. AfLIA, being a continental voice, has been key in unifying all that is needed on the continent, there is one place to go for guidance on curricula, for example, and it's been very useful."

In fact, Dr Kaddu, who completed the Adapt Open Content and Publish Using Open Content learning pathways, has taken these resources and worked them into her own curriculum, so when her publishing seminars with the masters and doctoral students come up, she is teaching them a lot of what she's just learnt.

While Dr Osuigwe believes that much of what librarians learn during their formal education can become obsolete in five to ten years, Dr Kaddu reckons that sometimes it feels like three to six months. To counter that, she says:

"You must continuously learn and discover what is out there to make your work better, something that is going to complement what you are doing, to make your work appreciated, otherwise your learners will challenge you. Acknowledge that there is a gap, while you are teaching, and challenge your students to help."

Prior to the pilot project, Dr Kaddu had a vague awareness of OER, and the symbols representing the various Creative Commons licensing options. However, following these tutorials, she says a lot has now been clarified for her, and in turn for her students.

'They were really awesome, they were well designed, the information was easy to find, the materials were very, very clear,' she says of the tutorials, and although she only had to complete two of the three, she's working on learning pathway one in her free time.

Like many others in her line of work, Dr Kaddu is mindful of the fact that 'academics are supposed to publish'. She says knowing what she now knows, she plans to publish more and is advocating for open content.

"I really want people to put their content out in the public domain, so that it can be utilized. If we publish to a greater audience, who are available to comment on our work, we can only improve. When info is in the open, it attracts many benefits. I no longer want to have it 'closed' - that's selfish, and it's not taking Africa anywhere. We need to add on to the existing literature, content, and data we have. We want to promote our scholars."

It's going to take some convincing though. Dr Kaddu says the initial reaction, amongst her students, to publishing using open access, is negative. She says, 'we need to be into it, to participate in it and promote it, then they will appreciate it'.

Dr Ayanda Lebele is the Director of Library Services at the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST). She tells me that it's impossible to talk about her professional self separately from her private self because 'I'm passionate about librarianship, it's generally who I am.' While she has this in common with her colleagues from Nigeria and Uganda, there are other similarities in their approaches to work.

'For it to be functional, and effective, it's the people that matter the most,' says Dr Lebele, describing her team of librarians or, as she sees them, her work family, at BIUST.

To this end, she has entrusted a lot of the processes around CPD to her team, directing them where necessary, but also letting them find their own way. That way, she's constantly learning as well.

With regards to the learning pathways, she had 16 members of her team sign up for the tutorials. It was a challenge, as they were just going into lockdown in Botswana at the time, so there was the related anxiety, difficulty in adapting to working from home, and data and device limitations.

But she's pleased to report that they succeeded and are still reaping the benefits. One of her team members, Winnie Jamara, was the self-appointed champion for the completion of the course work, while another, Barulaganye Hulela has taken the knowledge on board and applied it specifically to podcast development.

'She adapts content we get from the open access platforms and uses it to suit the BIUST context, and to disseminate information to our audience, who we no longer interact with face to face due to COVID-19,' Dr Lebele explains. 'Through the pathways we did, we're able to enhance our service delivery.'

Just as Dr Kaddu admitted that there was some hesitancy in her students adopting the idea of open publishing, Dr Lebele has seen a similar attitude from teaching academics at her own institution. She believes that, as librarians, they have some responsibility towards changing this mindset.

'We see ourselves as knowledge workers,' she says.

"We don't just manage giving people information, we also manage how they participate in knowledge creation. We have a responsibility to help those who don't have the awareness, to know their role is not just to be reading knowledge created by other people; they also have to package their own knowledge, so that somebody else may benefit from it in a context that best suits their environment."

Having completed the Adapt Open Content and Publish Using Open Content learning pathways, Dr Lebele is a great believer in the subject matter, but would like to see a more basic introduction to open licensing and OER. She explains further, saying we need to take a step back to where people are, bring them on board and build their interest. She's concerned that 'people don't see the need'.

Dr Osuigwe shares this sentiment:

"People inherently want to learn, but the point is that sometimes you don't know that something exists, and so, you don't hunger for it. Once you're curious to know what's happening in your field, and you dig into it, you stir up that hunger to learn."

Finally, Dr Osuigwe chatted to me about motivation, what will drive librarians to complete these tutorials, and thus embrace this unique opportunity for CPD.

With reference to open licensing and OER, she says:

"This is an area that people do not know much about, and it's also an area that will help librarians generate more resources for their user communities. Where they can go and learn how to collaborate with others and to create resources if needs be. That's the motivation for me! I believe that in everybody there's a curiosity quotient, there's that element in everyone born in this world to find out what's next. But you know, life kind of puts out the fire in almost everyone, so what we are trying to do is to reignite that fire to find out what's next, what can be done, how can this be achieved. This is the adventure!"

If you'd also like to get in on the adventure and find out more about open licensing and OER, you can complete the learning pathways available here on the OER Africa website. Related articles:

[1] Leanne Rencken is an enthusiastic, happy person with years of experience in content creation, curation and publishing. She has travelled extensively across Africa, from Botswana where she grew up, to Nigeria, Kenya, Angola and beyond. She believes in the transformative power of great content, no matter the platform or product. Most recently this love of story-telling has led to her to pursuing travel, teaching English as a foreign language, and freelance writing and editing on a wide-range of topics.

Sustainable food systems and climate change are pressing global issues that go hand in hand. Will these challenges be left to the youth because they will be most affected? This article will explore what role OER can play in empowering youth to transform food systems.

Image courtesy of Billy Chester, Unsplash

On 9 August, 2021 the world's leading climate scientists delivered their starkest warning yet about the deepening climate emergency. Sustainable food systems and climate change are pressing global issues that go hand in hand. Will these challenges be left to the youth because they will be most affected? This article will explore what role OER can play in empowering youth to transform food systems.

International Youth Day, which takes place on 12 August, aims to bring youth issues and challenges to the attention of the international community while also celebrating the potential of youth as partners in today's global society.

Glover and Sumberg [1] explain why the youth are an important demographic:

Today's youth generation is the largest in history, and the global population of young people is concentrated in low- and middle-income countries located in South and East Asia and Africa (The World Bank, 2006; IFAD, 2019). The interests and needs of this youth generation are important, not only because they are many, but because they will need-indeed, they are entitled to expect-decent work and livelihoods, as well as long and healthy lives; yet, to achieve this objective for so many people will be challenging in an era of ecological stress. From a development perspective, today's youth generation is on the front line: it will have to cope with the effects of environmental and climate change, which are likely to accelerate and intensify during their lifetimes and those of their children.

The 2021 theme for International Youth Day is 'Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health'. In Africa, food security and sustainable farming practices have always been important. While the agricultural industry continues to be the largest source of employment in many African countries, off-farm food-related activities are expected to be important for future job opportunities, including for youth.[2]

Stakeholders in the educational and agricultural sectors need to ensure that youth have the support mechanisms to amplify efforts collectively and individually to protect the Earth and life, while integrating biodiversity in the transformation of food systems. Given the planet's growing population, producing sufficient healthier food sustainably will not ensure human and planetary wellbeing if other crucial challenges are not also tackled, such as social inclusion, health care, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation. [3]

Empowered youths can lead community development efforts to facilitate the improvement of lives in their community, appreciating and supporting cultural differences, and being custodians of the land, water and wildlife. Youth in Africa are expressing strong readiness and passion in actively contributing to the processes of delivering solutions that transform food systems. [4]

The next generation recognises that our future depends on functioning food systems, and at the same time, it is Africa's youth that holds the power to deliver them. To begin with, young Africans are informed and educated, alert to the twin threats to our prosperity of malnutrition and climate change. We do not farm like our parents and grandparents farmed, nor do we eat the way our forebears ate.

- Mike Nkhombo Khunga, Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Global Youth Leader, Malawi, and vice-chair of the UN Food Systems Summit's Action Track 5: building resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses [5]
How can OER empower youth to fulfil this role?
Technical and Vocational Training (TVET) in agriculture faces specific challenges, such as a lack of formalized training programmes and agriculture not being an aspirational career.[6] OER can be used as an important building block for skills development in the TVET sector. This is especially important in the field of agriculture and food systems, as openly licensed content can be contextualized and adapted to be culturally and environmentally relevant, while documenting agricultural practices can help to share these beyond local communities. Agricultural content for TVET needs to be linked to advances in technology, facilitate innovation, and have greater relevance to a diverse and evolving agricultural sector, with a focus on agribusiness and entrepreneurship. Digital technologies, OER, and open education practices in this sector can provide access to innovative models of agricultural processes and marketing that may not have been accessible before. They can also provide a means for sharing this knowledge from one generation to the next, despite the change in many rural societies where more children are enrolled in school and spend less time in the fields with their elders. Open education practices can, when well implemented, contribute to reduce the costs of producing and distributing course material, expand access, meeting the needs of learners in different contexts, and therefore be beneficial to learners in the developing world.

OERs can contribute to making informal and formal skills training accessible and affordable in the farming and food systems industries. Beyond technical skills, building capacity for effective management, decision-making, communication, and leadership are required to create jobs in the agricultural sector. OERs can be part of finding, implementing, and sharing innovative solutions to make employment in food systems appealing and to strengthen different sectors managing our food from farm to fork, while ensuring the existing knowledge is not lost on the way. These OERs can be integrated or adapted for community development programmes or used for informal learning if they are accessible, thereby enabling and supporting youth to become leaders in the development of sustainable and resilient food systems.

OER Africa has resources on food security and African agricultural practices, some of which were developed as part of a programme to train household food security facilitators to work as change agents in the areas of agriculture, food and nutrition using participatory learning in a structured environment focusing on households within communities.

All the resources developed for this programme are available here: https://www.oerafrica.org/household-food-security-programme

The Young Professionals for Agricultural Development website has some suggestions for ways to engage youth in agriculture.

Digital Green works with partners to create digital solutions to assist rural communities and increase the effectiveness of smallholder farmers in the developing world. These solutions are shared using a CC BY licence and include production and dissemination of community videos to share knowledge [7] and using open-source software to share data to assist farmers boost agricultural productivity and food security.

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) works toward inclusive, agriculture-driven prosperity for Africa by strengthening the production and dissemination of more gender-responsive agricultural research and innovation. AWARD invests in African scientists, research institutions, and agribusinesses so that they can deliver agricultural innovations that better respond to the needs and priorities of a diversity of women and men across Africa's agricultural value chains.

This toolkit synthesizes a decade of learnings and resources from agriculture and forestry mentoring programmes implemented by Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD), the International Forestry Students' Association (IFSA) and AWARD.

This NEPAD concept note provides information on how to curate openly licensed skills development course materials and content aimed at African youth.

There is increasing urgency to tackle global issues such as climate change and food system challenges. African youth lie at the centre of opportunities to galvanize and sustain positive change at a systemic level and OER provide an invaluable tool to assist them with the skills and knowledge to do so.
Why is 'Open Education' important? Promoting diversity and inclusion in the OER space Open pedagogy Access the OER Africa communications archive

How has COVID-19 highlighted the need for open access?

As the world continues to grapple with the uncertainties that the COVID-19 pandemic presents, the need for accessible, rigorous, unbiased knowledge has never been more urgent. However, this need stands in the wake of a barrage of misinformation, disinformation, and 'fake news'.

In spite - or perhaps because - of this, the Open Access (OA) movement has gained even greater traction over the past 18 months, in an effort to make research on COVID-19 more widely available and to make research in other fields accessible to remote teachers and learners. But what is OA? Why is it increasingly important and how has COVID-19 advanced the OA cause?

Read the full article here

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In this week's article, Leanne Rencken delves into the ongoing collaboration between the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) and OER Africa. OER Africa has developed three learning pathways, as part of its grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and, along with AfLIA, is piloting them with university and academic librarians on the continent.

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Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, awareness of OER by both teachers and students has increased significantly compared to the pre-pandemic era. The effects of such increased awareness of OER may result in more students and teachers increasingly using OER compared to the pre-pandemic era.

Furthermore, Covid-19 may alter the current paradigm of the use of traditional textbooks to digital textbooks. During the pandemic, numerous digital textbooks and course materials were disseminated and encouraged by some teachers. For instance, in a course I teach, students found some of these digital textbooks and reading materials quite easy to understand. Therefore, I believe there is a tendency for other teachers to continue and increasingly use such digital textbooks and materials.

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UNISA

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Unisa Open

The following sites on Unisa Open contains useful information for Unisa staff.

Unisa OpenCourseWare

A number of colleges and sections are also involved in OER production at Unisa.

Please check UnisaOpenCourseWare regularly to find open resources

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LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: Unisa & OERs

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Skip to Main Content It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results. The following sites on Unisa Open contains useful information for Unisa staff.

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University of Cape Town

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Open Educational Resources can be briefly defined as "teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and/or re-purposing by others". Adapted from: http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources

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There are a few OER in South Africa, and they are made available by Universities that receive government funding.

University of the Witwatersrand

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LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: OER Resources

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Before we can even talk about support from institutions, we would firstly have to talk about the institution embracing OEP. Most institutions in Africa are exclusive and their drive is a positive bank balance which excludes those who do not contribute to it.

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Our Main Focus:

OER Africa is undertaking collaborative work to develop the professional competences and skills of stakeholders within African higher education institutions so that they can implement OER practices to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

We are:

Developing and testing effective models of continuous professional development for supporting OER practices,

Sharing knowledge gained through a range of mechanisms, and

Developing an evidence-based CPD framework comprising a set of inter-related learning pathways on effective OER practices.

Our website showcases resources and information to help with understanding OER; information on what is happening in OER in higher education in Africa; and OER courseware that has been developed in Africa and research, and policies around OER in Africa. More detail on our current and past work is available in About Us

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OER Africa is undertaking collaborative work to develop the professional competences and skills of stakeholders within African higher education institutions so that they can implement OER practices to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

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Teaching in a Digital Age - Second Edition 

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Teaching in a Digital Age - Second Edition 

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Guidelines for designing teaching and learning
Author:A.W. (Tony) Bates

Chapter 11: Trends in open education

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Teaching in a Digital Age - Second Edition - Open Textbook

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Book Description: The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when all of us, and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology. A framework for making decisions about your teaching is provided, while understanding that every subject is different, and every instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching.

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Resources leadership and institutions can provide to enable colleagues transition to OER

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Resources leadership and institutions can provide to enable colleagues transition to OER

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- Large open well-resourced repositories

- Training support to use OER

- Multimedia tools to create OER
- Create a support system with professionals to assist teachers when faced with difficulties

- Create collaborative networks that drives curation works (finding, modifying, evaluating, and making accessible OER content.

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As they face more challenging academic standards and an increasingly diverse student population, many schools and districts are finding that a tool central to almost every classroom-a textbook-is no longer enough.

I saw this firsthand. As our California district transitioned to 1:1 technology, teachers began abandoning textbooks in favor of digital resources-videos, primary source materials, and interactive tools-that were better fits for inquiry-focused and project-based activities. The unanswered question was whether those self-curated resources, which individual teachers collected online, were consistent in quality.

That's how the Grossmont Union High school district became part of the open educational resources, or OER, movement, using openly licensed textbooks and learning resources that are intended to be freely used and adapted. Three years later, five of our high school courses are textbook-free, drawing from a central OER text and a variety of supplemental resources, activities, and lesson materials. These resources were chosen by teams of teachers in four subject areas assigned to vet and curate OER materials. Teams are now working to adapt materials in additional subjects.

Far from just replacing costly textbooks, OER materials have the potential to provide more relevant, engaging materials adapted by teachers to meet the needs of their specific student populations. Nationally, a growing base of research suggests that both K-12 and higher education students perform as well-if not better-when teachers use high-quality OER. And momentum is growing: 121 districts in 20 states have joined the U.S. Department of Education's #GoOpen initiative, which supports "the use of openly licensed educational resources to transform teaching and learning."

The reality, however, is that districts are largely on their own in this work. Federal and other outside resources are limited. Most states also leave curriculum development and vetting to districts, meaning they have to take the lead when it comes to supporting-and funding-the use of OER.

But OER implementation is less about saving money than it is shifting learning away from off-the-shelf curricula and toward student-centered classrooms. Those who see OER as a cost-savings effort will be disappointed, as adopting these materials effectively requires ongoing investments in time and training. And districts which leave decisions up to individual teachers won't scale the benefits to teaching, learning, and student engagement-or understand whether materials are valid or being appropriately used.

The national nonprofit Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education has developed a free open-source guidebook for school librarians involved in OER curation, informed by lessons from my own district and 14 others. (This OER-curation framework was developed in partnership with Florida State University's School of Information and supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.)

When planning to harness the power of open educational resources, we found that district leaders should start with the following factors:

* Well-resourced libraries and professionals. Because of their expertise in content curation and helping students navigate online resources, librarians play an important role in expanding the use of OER. This role, however, comes at a time when school libraries and librarians have been marginalized, despite research showing "correlations between high-quality library programs and student achievement," particularly in districts serving low-income and minority students. According to a 2018 analysis by the Education Week Research Center, the nation's public schools have lost 20 percent of their librarians and media specialists since 2000, with districts serving students of color hit the hardest.

It's hard to see how districts can make OER work without strong libraries and librarians. In our district, we've realized how important librarians are in cataloging resources and identifying supplemental materials with the right fit for our programs. As we start the curation process with new subjects, librarians are now involved from the beginning.

* School district and school building leadership buy-in. Leaders must not only support initial OER adoption, but champion how this work advances desired changes in teaching and learning and set clear policies that identify the roles educators will play in curating materials. Librarians and educators must be empowered by district leaders and principals to create and nurture collaborative networks to drive the curation work, which includes finding, modifying, evaluating, and making accessible OER content.

* Dedicated funding. Districts must redirect cost savings from eliminating textbooks to support educator staffing and time to develop the materials. Support for training and curation require ongoing investments in time and money. In our district, cost savings have also been used to purchase additional supplemental materials that amplify the benefits of OER materials. From the beginning, we also worked with our teachers' union to include in our collective bargaining agreement provisions to pay teachers for their time planning and curating OER materials.

Joining the open educational resources movement is never going to be seamless, but it offers real returns. In our district, OER has supported broader efforts to bolster student engagement. We know students learn more when they see themselves in the classroom. The use of OER enhances educators' ability to adapt materials in ways that meet the needs of their individual students, improving equity and engagement. That's an important benefit which, instead of overblown promises of cost savings or digital classrooms, can bolster support from parents and the community.

It also doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. OER can serve as a valuable supplement to established curricula and proprietary learning programs. Teachers often find that pre-designed curricula and learning materials have gaps or miss opportunities to connect lessons in a relevant way to their students. OER offers an opportunity to supplement those materials to make them more timely and relevant to students and current events.

One of our biggest lessons was that good OER use mirrors good classroom practice. In our district, OER has accelerated our emphasis on inquiry and project-based learning. Teachers have said the curation process itself has helped them think more deeply about not just the materials they teach, but how they teach. When implemented well with educators in the lead, OER can become a vehicle to rethink instructional practices in ways that serve our real students rather than the imagined students for whom the textbooks are written.

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How to Harness the Tremendous Potential of Open Education Resources (Opinion)

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As they face more challenging academic standards and an increasingly diverse student population, many schools and districts are finding that a tool central to almost every classroom-a textbook-is no longer enough. I saw this firsthand.

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More people have realized that they can study and work at the same time. Life-long learning will support more interest in open educations and MOOCs. I guess creating short modules or micro-learning activities can make universities less dependent on teaching resources and all universities can put together different courses by a subset of relevant existing modules. Maintaining/updating and making sure the quality will remain over time will be a challenge for teachers, if they are incorporating others OER-material that could be slightly out of their area.

So if we already create online material for "our own students" the development work is already done, the cost of sharing is low. Some modules will be open to attract new students, but it the whole portfolio of courses/material will be open I don't now.

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Sometimes the "investment" in terms of cost for course literature or course fee increases the feeling of high value/quality. It also relates to the students motivation.
Therefore it is important to have a common understanding
on quality and what learning is about.

If I give the student access to a top-cited article that is free to read online or require them to buy an expensive book and to the same exercise I guess the outcome will be different.

My students indicate that a guest lecture is of high value/a great activity to include in a course.
But I have feeling that including an another teachers pre-recorded lecture/material would be perceived as laziness.

I try to talk with my students about Higher Education in regards to their responsibility to critical thinking and looking for alternative references to back-up their arguments.
Also, I explain to them that I will not provide all the answers (using open-ended problems/problem-based learning), I ask for more active participation.

No matter what material or resources we include in a course, we need to support the students how to use the material, and how to do that will be different from course to course/time to time/between different activities but also depending on the background of students.

Contextualize the material is maybe what I'm searching for.

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A website in Swedish (I guess google translate can help you a bit) the title is something like: "The Legal Handbook - A digital guide in the world of internet for teachers and students"

It brings up some legal perspective related to Creative commons and also has a Q&A related to OER.

At the moment SUNET (Swedish University Computer Network) has the role to provide datakommunikation and also host different services.

We are only allowed to use services that SUNET/our university have agreement with, even if the plattform is free to use.

The legal perspective and what sources to trust is one key aspect that we need support with from management. Individual teachers can not spend time to investigate all this by themselves.

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Legala handboken - En digital guide i internetdjungeln för lärare och studenter

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Legala handboken är en digital guide om den snårskog av lagar och regler som styr IT-stödd utbildning för dig som är lärare, bibliotekarie eller student.

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...that was held on 29 July 2021 examined the post pandemic  sustainability of OER production, use and funding models.
The main conclusions are presented here.

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The barriers to using OER, highlighted by OPAL 2011

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The barriers to using OER, highlighted by OPAL 2011

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Lack of;

institutional support

technological infrastructure for sharing and adapting tools

... or inadequate users’ skill and time

adequate and quality resources (culturally relevant OER to user)

Personal issues (for example, time and trust)

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Q3 In what way could the pandemic lead to an increased interest for shifting towards open education and sharing of open educational resources? 

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Q3 In what way could the pandemic lead to an increased interest for shifting towards open education and sharing of open educational resources? 

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Another view on the UNESCO recommendation by David Wiley

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Another view on the UNESCO recommendation by David Wiley

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David Wiley: "The UNESCO definition of OER requires something impossible – a copyright license that grants permission to engage in an activity that isn’t regulated by copyright law."

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This week on the blog I'm serializing a talk I gave for CSU Channel Islands last week as part of their Open Education Week festivities. My talk was titled, The State of Open: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In this first bite-sized installment I'm going to address the major flaw in the OER definition provided as part of the recent UNESCO OER Recommendation. I've written about this in general terms before, but with more time to ponder I now have a much clearer - and simpler - understanding of the problem.
tl;dr - The UNESCO definition of OER requires something impossible - a copyright license that grants permission to engage in an activity that isn't regulated by copyright law.
The definition in the recommendation as set forth in Section I. Definition and Scope reads:

1. Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.

2. Open license refers to a license that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials.

UNESCO (who coined the term) and many others have historically defined OER exclusively in terms of copyright status. This continues to be true in the new definition above - OER are resources that are either (1) in the public domain or (2) released under a copyright license that grants a specific set of permissions.

The first part of the problem with the definition is a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright, which is revealed in the list of permissions required for a license to be considered "open" and, consequently, for an educational resource to be considered "open." That list of permissions is repeated in both sections I.1 and I.2 of the new recommendation, albeit in slightly different forms. For a license to be "open," it must grant the following permissions: "no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation, and redistribution by others."

The second part of the problem has to do with the nature of copyright. Copyright regulates four kinds of activity:

Making copies

Making adaptations

Public display or performance

Distributing copies

When you combine parts one and two, you arrive at the problem. The list of permissions UNESCO requires to be included in an open copyright license is impossible to include in a copyright license. The table below maps the activities regulated by copyright into the language of the UNESCO definition.

"Access" is not an activity that is regulated by copyright. Consequently, access can be neither prohibited nor permitted by a copyright license. Here is a brief list of activities copyright cannot regulate:

Going for a walk

Eating a piece of cake

Planting a maple tree

Driving a car

Accessing an educational resource

Pause for just a moment and imagine what some of the consequences would be if copyright regulated access. If traditional copyright protection prohibited no-cost access, libraries could not exist. You would be prohibited from having no-cost access to books under standard copyright protection. Only specially licensed materials could be made available in a library - materials with a copyright license that specifically permitted no-cost access. Obviously copyright doesn't work this way.

The UNESCO definition of OER requires something impossible - a copyright license that grants permission to engage in an activity that isn't regulated by copyright law. It's worth understanding that if a country, organization, or other entity were to adopt and strictly adhere to the UNESCO definition of OER, only works in the public domain would qualify as OER (since it's impossible for a copyright license to meet the requirements necessary to be "open" according to the UNESCO definition).

At the same time the UNESCO definition requires copyright licenses to include a permission they cannot grant, it also fails to require them to include the most important permission they can grant - permission to make a copy. Without permission to make a copy, it is quite impossible to exercise the permissions to adapt, re-use, and redistribute.

This problem could have been avoided if the final recommendation had maintained the language of the last public draft, which was based on the 5Rs. The 5Rs specifically and purposefully map directly into the activities regulated by copyright. All the permissions required to be granted by a copyright license under the 5Rs definition can be expressed in a copyright license.

Until UNESCO is able to change their definition, I would encourage you to consider a definition based on the 5Rs like the one at opencontent.org/definition/ or openeducationalresources.org.

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Actually, the UNESCO Recommendation Makes Most OER Impossible

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This week on the blog I'm serializing a talk I gave for CSU Channel Islands last week as part of their Open Education Week festivities. My talk was titled, The State of Open: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

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UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER)

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UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER)

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The Recommendation outlines five Areas of Action, namely:

1. Building the capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER;

2. Developing supportive policy for OER;

3. Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER;

4. Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER; and

5. Promoting and reinforcing international cooperation in OER.

More on UNESCOs recommendation on OER

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Preamble
The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), meeting in Paris from 12 to 27 November 2019, at its 40th session,

Recalling that the Preamble of UNESCO's Constitution affirms, "that the wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of man and constitute a sacred duty which all the nations must fulfil in a spirit of mutual assistance and concern",

Recognizing the important role of UNESCO in the field of information and communications technology (ICT) and in the implementation of the relevant decisions in this area adopted by the General Conference of that Organization,

Also recalling Article I of UNESCO's Constitution, which assigns to UNESCO among other purposes that of recommending "such international agreements as may be necessary to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image",

Affirming the principles embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that all people have rights, duties and fundamental freedoms that include the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers (Article 19), as well as the right to education (Article 26), and the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits; and the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary, or artistic production of which one is the author (Article 27),

Also affirming the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples in formulating national legislation and implementing national policy,

Noting the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Article 24), which recognizes the rights of persons with disabilities to education, and the principles contained in the 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education,

Referring to the recommendation adopted at the 32nd session of the General Conference of UNESCO in 2003 with regard to the promotion of multilingualism and universal access to information in cyberspace,

Also referring to the 1997 UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel as well as the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, which stresses that as part of academic and professional freedom teachers "should be given the essential role in the choice and the adaptation of teaching material, the selection of textbooks and the application of teaching methods",

Reaffirming the importance of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which underlines that the "spread of information and communications technology and global interconnectedness has great potential to accelerate human progress, to bridge the digital divide and to develop knowledge societies...",

Recognizing the leading role of UNESCO in the field of education and in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), which calls for the international community to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,

Further referring to the Education 2030 Framework for Action that lists a set of strategic approaches for the implementation of SDG 4, and which underlines that increasing access must be accompanied by measures that improve the quality and relevance of education and learning, and in particular that "education institutions and programmes should be adequately and equitably resourced with safe, environment-friendly and easily accessible facilities; sufficient numbers of teachers and educators of quality using learner-centred, active and collaborative pedagogical approaches; and books, other learning materials, open educational resources and technology that are non-discriminatory, learning conducive, learner friendly, context specific, cost effective and available to all learners - children, youth and adults",

Acknowledging the Declaration of Principles of the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society, committing "to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge",

Also recognizing that the development of information and communications technology (ICT), including artificial intelligence and others, provides opportunities to improve the free flow of ideas by word, sound and image but also presents challenges for ensuring the participation of all in Knowledge Societies,

Further recognizing that quality basic education as well as media and information literacy are prerequisites to access and benefit from information and communications technology (ICT), including artificial intelligence and others,

Recognizing that, in building inclusive knowledge societies, Open Educational Resources (OER) can support quality education that is equitable, inclusive, open and participatory as well as enhance academic freedom and professional autonomy of teachers by widening the scope of materials available for teaching and learning,

Considering the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 13.1), the 2007 Cape Town Open Education Declaration, the 2009 Dakar Declaration on Open Educational Resources, the 2012 Paris Open Educational Resources Declaration, the United Nations Millennium Declaration and the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action, which all recognize "the right of everyone to education",

Building on the Ljubljana OER Action Plan 2017 to mainstream OER to help all Member States to create inclusive knowledge societies and achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, namely SDG 4 (Quality education), SDG 5 (Gender equality), SDG 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure), SDG 10 (Reduced inequalities within and across countries), SDG 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the goals), thereto:

1. Adopts the present Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER), on this twenty-fifth day of November 2019;

2. Recommends that Member States apply the provisions of this Recommendation by taking appropriate steps, including whatever legislative or other measures may be required, in conformity with the constitutional practice and governing structures of each State, to give effect within their jurisdictions to the principles of the Recommendation;

3. Also recommends that Member States bring the Recommendation to the attention of the authorities and bodies responsible for learning, education and research, and consult relevant stakeholders concerned with learning and education;

4. Further recommends that Member States report to it, at such dates and in such manner as shall be determined, on the action taken in pursuance of this Recommendation.

I. DEFINITION AND SCOPE
1. Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.

2. Open license refers to a license that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials.

3. Information and communications technology (ICT) provide great potential for effective, equitable and inclusive access to OER and their use, adaptation and redistribution. They can open possibilities for OER to be accessible anytime and anywhere for everyone, including individuals with disabilities and individuals coming from marginalized or disadvantaged groups. They can help meet the needs of individual learners and effectively promote gender equality and incentivize innovative pedagogical, didactical and methodological approaches.

4. Stakeholders in the formal, non-formal and informal sectors (where appropriate) in this Recommendation include: teachers, educators, learners, governmental bodies, parents, educational providers and institutions, education support personnel, teacher trainers, educational policy makers, cultural institutions (such as libraries, archives and museums) and their users, information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure providers, researchers, research institutions, civil society organizations (including professional and student associations), publishers, the public and private sectors, intergovernmental organizations, copyright holders and authors, media and broadcasting groups and funding bodies.
II. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
5. One key prerequisite to achieve SDG 4 is sustained investment and educational actions by governments and other key education stakeholders, as appropriate, in the creation, curation, regular updating, ensuring of inclusive and equitable access to, and effective use of high quality educational and research materials and programmes of study.

6. As is articulated in the 2007 Cape Town Open Education Declaration and the 2012 Paris OER Declaration, the application of open licenses to educational materials introduces significant opportunities for more cost-effective creation, access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation, redistribution, curation, and quality assurance of those materials, including, but not limited to translation, adaptation to different learning and cultural contexts, development of gender-sensitive materials, and the creation of alternative and accessible formats of materials for learners with special educational needs.

7. In addition, the judicious application of OER, in combination with appropriate pedagogical methodologies, well-designed learning objects and the diversity of learning activities, can provide a broader range of innovative pedagogical options to engage both educators and learners to become more active participants in educational processes and creators of content as members of diverse and inclusive knowledge societies.

8. Furthermore, regional and global collaboration and advocacy in the creation, access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation, redistribution and evaluation of OER can enable governments and education providers to evaluate the quality of the open access content and to optimise their own investments in educational and research content creation, as well as ICT infrastructure and curation, in ways that will enable them to meet their defined national educational policy priorities more cost-effectively and sustainably.

9. Noting these potential benefits, the objectives and areas of action of this Recommendation are as follows:
(i) Capacity building: developing the capacity of all key education stakeholders to create, access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt, and redistribute OER, as well as to use and apply open licenses in a manner consistent with national copyright legislation and international obligations;
(ii) Developing supportive policy: encouraging governments, and education authorities and institutions to adopt regulatory frameworks to support open licensing of publicly funded educational and research materials, develop strategies to enable the use and adaptation of OER in support of high quality, inclusive education and lifelong learning for all, supported by relevant research in the area;
(iii) Effective, inclusive and equitable access to quality OER: supporting the adoption of strategies and programmes including through relevant technology solutions that ensure OER in any medium are shared in open formats and standards to maximize equitable access, co-creation, curation, and searchability, including for those from vulnerable groups and persons with disabilities;
(iv) Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER: supporting and encouraging the creation of sustainability models for OER at national, regional and institutional levels, and the planning and pilot testing of new sustainable forms of education and learning;
(v) Fostering and facilitating international cooperation: supporting international cooperation between stakeholders to minimize unnecessary duplication in OER development investments and to develop a global pool of culturally diverse, locally relevant, gender-sensitive, accessible, educational materials in multiple languages and formats.
III. AREAS OF ACTION
10. This Recommendation addresses five objectives: (i) building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER; (ii) developing supportive policy; (iii) encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER; (iv) nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER, and (v) facilitating international cooperation.

(i) Building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER

11. Member States are recommended to strategically plan and support OER capacity building, awareness raising, use, creation and sharing at the institutional and national levels, targeting all education sectors and levels. Member States are encouraged to consider the following:
(a) building awareness among relevant stakeholder communities on how OER can increase access to educational and research resources, improve learning outcomes, maximize the impact of public funding, and empower educators and learners to become co-creators of knowledge;
(b) providing systematic and continuous capacity building (in-service and pre-service) on how to create, access, make available, re-use, adapt, and redistribute OER as an integral part of training programmes at all levels of education, including assistance in initial training programmes for educators. This should include improving the capacity of public authorities, policy makers, as well as quality development and assurance professionals to understand OER and support their integration into learning, teaching, research and everyday life;
(c) raising awareness concerning exceptions and limitations for the use of copyrighted works for educational and research purposes. This should be enacted to facilitate the integration of a wide range of works in OER, recognizing that the fulfilment of educational goals as well as the development of OER requires engagement with existing copyright protected works;
(d) leveraging open licensed tools, platforms with interoperation of metadata, and standards (including national and international) to help ensure OER can be easily found, accessed, re-used, adapted and redistributed in a safe, secure and privacy-protected mode. This could include free and open source authoring tools, libraries and other repositories and search engines, systems for long-term preservation and frontier technologies for automatic OER processing and translation of languages (where appropriate or needed), such as artificial intelligence methods and tools;
(e) making available easily accessible resources that provide information and assistance to all OER stakeholders on OER-related topics, including copyright and open licensing of educational material; and
(f) promoting digital literacy skills in order to master technical use of software, codes and open licenses with a view to encouraging the development and use of OER.

(ii) Developing supportive policy

12. Member States, according to their specific conditions, governing structures and constitutional provisions, should develop or encourage policy environments, including those at the institutional and national levels, that are supportive of effective OER practices. Through a transparent participatory process that includes dialogue with stakeholders, Member States are encouraged to consider the following: (a) developing and implementing policies and/or regulatory frameworks which encourage educational resources developed with public funds that are openly licensed or dedicated to the public domain as appropriate, and allocating financial and human resources for the implementation and evaluation of policies;
(b) encouraging and supporting institutions to develop or update legal or policy frameworks to stimulate the creation, access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution of quality OER by educators and learners in a manner consistent with national copyright legislation and international obligations; and to develop and integrate a quality assurance mechanism for OER into the existing quality assurance strategies for teaching and learning materials;
(c) developing mechanisms to create communities of practice, promote teacher professional development using OER, create networks of experts of OER and properly recognize OER creation as a professional or academic merit;
(d) developing mechanisms to support and incentivize all stakeholders to publish source files and accessible OER using standard open file formats in public repositories;
(e) embedding OER policies into national policy frameworks and strategies and aligning them with other open policies and guiding principles such as those for Open Access, Open Data, Open Source Software and Open Science;
(f) addressing the inclusion of OER in transforming education, adjusting, enriching or reforming curricula and all forms of learning so as to exploit OER potentials and opportunities, and encouraging the integration of different teaching methods and forms of assessment to motivate the active use, creation and sharing of OER; and assessing the impact of OER on inclusive and equitable quality education;
(g) encouraging and supporting research on OER, through relevant research programmes on OER development, sharing and evaluating, including the support of digital technologies (such as artificial intelligence); and
(h) developing and implementing policies that apply the highest standards to privacy and data protection during the production and use of OER, OER infrastructure and related services.

(iii) Encouraging effective, inclusive and equitable access to quality OER

13. Member States are encouraged to support the creation, access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution of inclusive and equitable quality OER for all stakeholders. These would include those learners in formal and non-formal education contexts irrespective of, inter alia, age, gender, physical ability, and socio-economic status, as well as those in vulnerable situations, indigenous peoples, those in remote rural areas (including nomadic populations), people residing in areas affected by conflicts and natural disasters, ethnic minorities, migrants, refugees, and displaced persons. In all instances, gender equality should be ensured, and particular attention paid to equity and inclusion for learners who are especially disadvantaged due to multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. Member States are recommended to consider the following:
(a) ensuring access to OER that most suitably meets both the needs and material circumstances of target learners and the educational objectives of the courses or subjects for which they are being provided. This would include offline (including printed) modalities for accessing resources where appropriate;
(b) supporting OER stakeholders to develop gender-sensitive, culturally and linguistically relevant OER, and to create local language OER, particularly in indigenous languages which are less used, under-resourced and endangered;
(c) ensuring that the principle of gender equality, non-discrimination, accessibility and inclusiveness is reflected in strategies and programmes for creating, accessing, re-using, adapting, and redistributing OER;
(d) ensuring public investments and incentivizing private investments in ICT infrastructure and broadband, as well as other mechanisms, to provide increased access to OER, particularly for low-income, rural and urban communities;
(e) incentivizing the development and research of OER; and
(f) developing and adapting existing evidence-based standards, benchmarks and related criteria for the quality assurance of OER, as appropriate, which emphasize reviewing educational resources (both openly licensed and not openly licensed) under regular quality assurance mechanisms.

(iv) Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER

14. Member States, according to their specific conditions, governing structures and constitutional provisions, are recommended to support and encourage the development of comprehensive, inclusive and integrated OER sustainability models. Member States are encouraged to consider the following:
(a) reviewing current provisions, procurement policies and regulations to expand and simplify the process of procuring quality goods and services to facilitate the creation, ownership, translation, adaptation, curation, sharing, archiving and preservation of OER, where appropriate, as well as to develop the capacity of all OER stakeholders to participate in these activities;
(b) catalyzing sustainability models, not only through traditional funding sources, but also through non-traditional reciprocity-based resource mobilization, through partnerships, networking, and revenue generation such as donations, memberships, pay what you want, and crowdfunding that may provide revenues and sustainability to OER provision while ensuring that costs for accessing essential materials for teaching and learning are not shifted to individual educators or students;
(c) promoting and raising awareness of other value-added models using OER across institutions and countries where the focus is on participation, co-creation, generating value collectively, community partnerships, spurring innovation, and bringing people together for a common cause;
(d) enacting regulatory frameworks that support the development of OER products and related services that align with national and international standards as well as the interest and values of the OER stakeholders;
(e) fostering the faithful linguistic translation of open licenses as defined in this Recommendation to ensure their proper implementation;
(f) providing mechanisms for the implementation and application of OER, as well as encouraging the feedback from stakeholders and constant improvement of OER; and
(g) optimizing existing education and research budgets and funds efficiently to source, develop and continuously improve OER models through inter-institutional, national, regional and international collaborations.

(v) Promoting and reinforcing international cooperation

15. To promote the development and use of OER, Member States should promote and reinforce international cooperation among all relevant stakeholders, whether on a bilateral or multilateral basis. Member States are encouraged to consider the following:
(a) promoting and stimulating cross-border collaboration and alliances on OER projects and programmes, leveraging existing transnational, regional and global collaboration mechanisms and organizations. This should include joining efforts on collaborative development and use of OER as well as capacity building, repositories, communities of practice, joint research on OER and solidarity between all countries regardless of their state of OER development;
(b) establishing regional and international funding mechanisms for promoting and strengthening OER and identifying those mechanisms, including partnerships, that can support international, regional and national efforts;
(c) supporting the creation and maintenance of effective peer networks that share OER, based on areas such as subject matter, language, institutions, regions and level of education at local, regional and global levels;
(d) incorporating, where appropriate, specific clauses relating to OER in international agreements concerned with cooperation in the fields of education;
(e) exploring the development of an international framework for copyright exceptions and limitations for education and research purposes to facilitate cross-border exchange and cooperation on OER; and
(f) supporting the contribution of intercultural communication skills, the management of multicultural groups, the design of communities of practice and community adjustment strategies in the local implementation of OER to promote universal values.
IV. MONITORING
16. Member States should, according to their specific conditions, governing structures and constitutional provisions, monitor policies and mechanisms related to OER using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, as appropriate. Member States are encouraged to consider the following:
(a) deploying appropriate research mechanisms to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of OER policies and incentives against defined objectives;
(b) collecting and disseminating progress, good practices, innovations and research reports on OER and its implications with the support of UNESCO and international open education communities; and
(c) developing strategies to monitor the educational effectiveness and long-term financial efficiency of OER, which include participation of all relevant stakeholders. Such strategies could focus on improving learning processes and strengthening the connections between findings, decision-making, transparency, and accountability for inclusive and equitable quality education and research.

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Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER)

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Preamble The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), meeting in Paris from 12 to 27 November 2019, at its 40th session, Recalling that the Preamble of UNESCO's Constitution affirms, "that the wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty

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One important general support for handlining the issue of copy right when sharing teaching material  is the Creative Commons.
More about Creative Commons here.

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Q2 How would you introduce the idea of openness to your students? 

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Q2 How would you introduce the idea of openness to your students? 

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Q1 What support would colleagues and I need from the leadership and institution? 

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Q1 What support would colleagues and I need from the leadership and institution? 