Report from UNESCO's 2012 World Open Educational Resources Congress

Report by Anne-Marie De Jonghe

The Learning Agency Network and the OER Services was present at the 2012 World Open Educational Resources Congress organized by UNESCO with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and in partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL).

According to the background document for the Congress “Open educational resources (OER) are any type of educational materials in the public domain or released with an open license that allow users to legally and freely use, copy, adapt, and re-share. OERs present a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education as well as facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building.” The term OER was created by the 2002 UNESCO Forum.

With the help of information technology the distribution of high quality educational opportunities can take place throughout the world. However, OERs are not mainstreamed in educational planning despite the great success of OER initiatives such as the OpenCourseware (OCW) Consortium, African Virtual University OER Portal, Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA), Khan Academy and many other examples at secondary school level. The costs and benefits of OER are still not well known. 

The Congress brought together Ministers of education and /of Human Resource Development, senior policy-makers, expert practitioners, researchers and other relevant stakeholders. The world’s good practices in OER policies, initiatives, and experts were discussed. Governments were asked to support the development and the use of OERs and adopt the 2012 Paris OER Declaration.

In preparation of the Congress:

• Policy Forums were organized in Africa, Arab States, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia and the Pacific.
• An OECD survey was carried out. Dirk Van Damme, Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, Directorate for Education, OECD pointed out that the survey indicated that there were high levels of activity in the domain of OER at all levels of education. He also mentioned several challenges such as economic sustainability, copy right issues, publishers’ attitudes, quality issues, and linguistic and cultural diversity issues. He emphasized the need for further research in the next two years with regards to the economics of OER (the business case for OER), the adequate governance model to make OER work and the way OER could lead to innovation of new teacher processes. 

A representative from the European Students Union, Magnus Malnes emphasized the support of the students for OER. According to him, OER reframed the debate about education as a public good and a human right. OER will create learning opportunities and will lead to a more student centred system. Students will have to change their behavior and ” learn to learn”, building competences and skills through OERs, no longer at a campus.
Speakers also spoke about the issue of public funded research which is being privately published. Open access to research could save millions.

During the discussions it became clear that:

• The potential for OERs is very high.
• The role of the “teacher” becomes important. He should become a professional also being able to work with OERs. (the OER Services is offering a specific training on that issue)
• The main challenge is quality. There is too much material already on the web, from diverse quality. (epprobate is offering specific services here)
• Collaboration among different stakeholders is necessary for updating and fine tuning the quality of OERs (Immersive Worlds aims into this direction).
• Therefore funding is needed. (or alternatively sustainable business models as currently developed in OER Services)

Neil Butcher (OER strategist, South Africa) emphasized that youth unemployment is high in many countries. He wondered what we were going to teach our youth? According to him, a curriculum reform is necessary. Therefore we need to upgrade our teachers and our academics. They do not have the skills necessary for the new environment and are often resistant to change. It will be a challenge to both adapt the curriculum and develop our teaching personnel at the same time. The policy environment promoting OERs requires a change of the academic environment, of the professorial role.

If many of the issues mentioned above are not solved, the OERs discussion risks becoming an utopian discourse.