DC-OER The Transformative Role of OER in Digital Inclusion | IGF 2023

Dudley Stephen Wyber

Libraries and librarians have a significant role to play in the realm of Open Educational Resources (OER). They serve as catalysts for the discovery, awareness, and curation of OER while helping to overcome biased views about their value. Libraries actively update their roles by connecting individuals who need knowledge with available resources, thus raising awareness of the potential benefits that OER can offer.

Librarians, in particular, contribute to the curation of OER by evaluating these resources in line with the needs of faculty and other stakeholders. They bridge the gap between various resources and users, identifying any gaps or deficiencies in the existing OER portfolio. Librarians assist in ensuring that faculty and stakeholders have access to a comprehensive collection of OER.

It is important to note that the OER landscape is currently dominated by a few regions of the world. This geographic imbalance highlights the need for greater collaboration and dissemination of OER from a global and inclusive perspective. Librarians can empower stakeholders to create and share their own OER, contributing to a more diverse and inclusive OER ecosystem.

Librarians’ involvement extends beyond curation and dissemination. They provide guidance on usage rights and assist stakeholders in navigating complex legal frameworks surrounding copyright. Librarians can advocate for better regulatory frameworks that include robust educational exceptions in copyright laws, ensuring that OER are not only accessible but also legally protected and supported.

Dudley Stephen Wyber emphasizes the importance of adopting a recurring circular learning approach in education. This model advocates for active learning and participation, encouraging individuals to learn, explore, contribute, and continuously improve. Wyber also underscores the active involvement of teaching professionals and librarians in facilitating the use of online resources. According to Wyber, simply making educational content available online is insufficient; active facilitation and support are necessary to foster uptake and utilization.

Librarians should feel confident and responsible for guiding faculty and students to make the most of OER. By providing support and assistance, librarians enhance the educational experience and help individuals maximize the benefits offered by OER.

Additionally, there is a suggestion to apply the interoperability logic used to achieve compatibility between Open Access (OA) repositories to OER repositories. The work done by organizations such as COAR in Canada serves as a reference in this regard. Interoperability between repositories would enable seamless sharing and integration of OER, contributing to the growth and effectiveness of the OER ecosystem.

Finally, it is essential to strive for equity and parity between OER and Open Access. OER should be brought to the same level of recognition and value as Open Access, creating a system where both types of resources are equally supported and encouraged. This would foster a more open and inclusive education system, benefiting learners and educators worldwide.

In conclusion, libraries and librarians play a multifaceted role in the realm of OER. They contribute through the discovery, awareness, and curation of OER, bridging the gaps between available resources and users. Additionally, librarians guide stakeholders in utilizing rights, creating their own OER, and advocating for favorable legislative and regulatory frameworks. Their involvement, combined with the adoption of recurring circular learning approaches and the pursuit of interoperability and equity, is vital in realizing the full potential of OER in facilitating quality education for all.

Tawfik Jelassi

Open Educational Resources (OER) play a pivotal role in increasing access to quality education worldwide. In 2019, UNESCO adopted the recommendation on OER, a UN normative instrument to support inclusive access to digital learning platforms. This highlights the significance and recognition of OER in the educational landscape.

The recommendation by UNESCO advocates for the use of openly licensed digital education tools that can be accessed through the Internet. By embracing OER, educational institutions and learners can benefit from a wide range of freely available, adaptable, and shareable educational materials. This promotes inclusivity and equal opportunities for learners globally.

UNESCO’s emphasis on OER aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4: Quality Education. OER contributes to the achievement of multiple SDGs, including quality education, access to information and ICT, gender equality, and global partnerships. The adoption and implementation of OER can help bridge educational gaps, address gender disparities, and foster collaboration among nations.

Moreover, OER is part of the broader concept of digital public goods. These digital resources, including OER, drive sustainable models of education, knowledge sharing, and innovation. The 2019 OER recommendation highlights the importance of international collaboration for content, capacity, and infrastructure development, aligning with the Global Digital Compact principles. These principles promote an inclusive, open, secure, and shared Internet, enabling widespread access to knowledge and educational resources.

In addition to the global significance of OER, there is a recognition that the internet should be used as a force for good. UNESCO envisions a digital ecosystem where the internet serves as a powerful tool for learning, advancing human rights, and sustainable development. The internet has the potential to facilitate access to information, promote freedom of expression, and provide opportunities for lifelong learning.

To guide the development and use of the internet responsibly and inclusively, UNESCO established the OER Dynamic Coalition. This coalition brings together stakeholders from various sectors to build values and principles guiding the development and use of the internet. The coalition aims to ensure that the internet is harnessed as a tool for education while also promoting peace, justice, strong institutions, and partnerships.

In conclusion, the adoption and promotion of Open Educational Resources are vital for enhancing access to quality education worldwide. The UNESCO recommendation on OER highlights the importance of openly licensed digital education tools accessible through the Internet. By embracing OER, stakeholders can contribute to the achievement of the SDGs, drive sustainable models of education and innovation, and utilize the internet as a powerful tool for learning while advancing human rights and sustainable development. The establishment of the OER Dynamic Coalition further showcases the commitment to shaping the future of education inclusively and responsibly.

Audience

During the discussion, the speakers exhibited curiosity and a desire to understand the best practices related to decentralised repositories and open technologies. The conversation extensively explored various aspects of the implementation and functioning of these concepts.

Both speakers maintained a neutral stance throughout the discussion, refraining from taking a definitive position. However, they did not provide any specific supporting facts or evidence, leaving the conversation open-ended.

The Sustainable Development Goals and their connection to decentralised repositories and open technologies were not mentioned during the dialogue. This suggests that the primary focus of the conversation was to explore the concepts themselves rather than their potential impact on sustainable development.

The main takeaway from the discussion was the speakers’ curiosity about best practices in decentralised repositories and open technologies. Although the lack of supporting evidence or detailed arguments may indicate that this was an introductory exploration or a starting point for further research, it is important to note that no additional noteworthy observations or insights were identified.

Overall, the conversation revolved around the speakers’ neutral interest in decentralised repositories and open technologies, without delving into specific examples, cases, or implications.

Neil Butcher

The analysis examines various arguments and stances regarding education policies and their impact on sustainability, intellectual property, digital accessibility, procurement processes, and the quality of teaching materials. These arguments provide insights into the importance of effective policy implementation and its influence on achieving sustainable development goals.

A key point highlighted is the need for policies to enable government agencies to use open licences. Without such provisions, it is unlikely that open licences will be effectively utilised. Another crucial aspect is the inclusion of accessibility considerations in procurement processes. The analysis argues that accessibility should not be overlooked during contract execution, as it may compromise the educational experience for individuals with disabilities.

The quality of accessible teaching and learning materials is also a prominent focus. The analysis suggests that an excessive emphasis on quantity and accessibility could overlook the importance of quality. Instead, curated collections of resources that promote high-quality teaching and learning experiences are proposed.

The government’s responsibility in ensuring accessible and supportive public education systems for all is emphasized. The analysis states that the government plays a crucial role in providing accessible and supportive education, regardless of individuals’ backgrounds or abilities. Additionally, the monetization of the education space by the private sector is critiqued, with an argument for prioritising the quality of teaching and learning experiences over financial gains.

Investment strategies in education are highlighted as a means to prioritize the quality of teaching and learning experiences for everyone. Adequate investment in education is seen as essential in providing a conducive learning environment and promoting positive outcomes for all learners.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are also scrutinized, with a warning against compromising the quality of learning experiences while expanding access. If OER does not ensure high-quality learning experiences, it may be detrimental to education.

Furthermore, the analysis emphasizes the importance of community representation in improvement processes within education. Representatives from the target communities of learners should lead improvement efforts, ensuring that the education system meets their specific needs and addresses inequalities.

In conclusion, the analysis presents various perspectives on education policies and their implications for sustainability, intellectual property, digital accessibility, procurement processes, and the quality of teaching materials. Key takeaways include the importance of effective policy implementation, the need for open licences and accessibility considerations, the role of the government in providing accessible public education, critiquing the monetization by the private sector, the significance of investment strategies for quality education, the impact of OER on learning experiences, and the importance of community representation in improvement processes within education.

Tel Amiel

Open Educational Resources (OER) projects require sustainable funding to ensure their development and continued existence. This funding can be obtained through partnerships and donations from foundations. However, the success of sustainable funding models, such as open procurement, may vary in different contexts.

The practices surrounding OER and community engagement are essential factors for their success. Without active community involvement, the implementation of OER loses its meaning. It is crucial to foster collaboration and engagement within the educational community to maximize the benefits of OER.

Policies alone are insufficient to guarantee the effective implementation of OER initiatives. They need to be actively monitored by a diverse set of stakeholders. Involving various individuals and organizations from different sectors ensures that the implementation remains aligned with the goals and objectives of OER. Additionally, OER should be seen as an evolving concept that requires ongoing monitoring and adaptation to meet changing educational needs.

OER possesses unique qualities that make it a real public good, particularly in multi-stakeholder processes. Its adaptability, remixability, and reusability enable the inclusion of diverse cultural groups and cater to different educational requirements. Engaging with these resources in a pedagogical context enhances their value as a public good.

The potential of OER is currently understated, especially in interconnected, multilateral contexts. There is a need for further exploration and utilization of OER to maximize their impact. OER’s ability to share, revise, remix, and reuse content makes it a valuable resource that can enhance education on a global scale.

Successful implementation of OER requires the allocation of serious responsibilities and the active involvement of individuals. Without meaningful participation and responsibility, OER initiatives may stagnate and fail to realize their objectives. Therefore, it is crucial to involve people at all stages of the implementation process to ensure the effective utilization of OER.

In conclusion, sustainable funding is crucial for the success of OER initiatives, and partnerships and donations from foundations can provide the necessary financial support. Open procurement models are advocated by governments for sustainable funding, but their effectiveness may vary depending on the context. Community engagement, active monitoring by stakeholders, and recognizing the unique qualities of OER as a public good are vital for their successful implementation. Further exploration and utilization of OER are needed, especially in interconnected, multilateral contexts. Meaningful implementation of OER requires the involvement and allocation of responsibilities to individuals. Without active participation, OER risks becoming stagnant legislation with limited progress.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe

Various stakeholders engaged in discussions about the importance of Open Education Resources (OER) and the challenges associated with its adoption. It was universally agreed that raising awareness among decision makers is crucial for OER adoption. Decision makers play a significant role in implementing and supporting OER initiatives. Developing OER strategies helps raise awareness and garner support from stakeholders.

The involvement of middle to top-level management was seen as vital for the successful implementation of OER. Without their support, gaining buy-in and implementing the recommendations for OER adoption would be difficult. This highlights the importance of securing support from influential individuals within educational institutions and policymaking bodies.

One major challenge in realizing OER strategies is concerns over funding. Governments are particularly concerned about finding adequate resources to support OER implementation. One suggested solution is for governments to ensure that part of the budget for OER production is supported by donors. This approach would alleviate the financial burden on governments and facilitate the production of open educational resources.

Designing OER strategies requires a collective effort involving multiple stakeholders. It was observed that five countries successfully developed their OER strategies through such collective efforts. This highlights the importance of engaging all relevant stakeholders, including educators, policymakers, and educational institutions, in developing and implementing OER strategies.

An important observation from the discussions is that many West African countries lack a dedicated budget for educational resource production. This poses a significant challenge to implementing OER strategies. The absence of a budget specifically allocated to educational resource production hinders the development and dissemination of OER. Therefore, it is imperative to raise awareness about the importance of investing in educational resource production and secure adequate funding to support OER initiatives.

In conclusion, the discussions on OER emphasized the need for raising awareness among decision makers, securing middle to top-level buy-ins, addressing funding concerns, fostering collective efforts involving multiple stakeholders, and promoting investment in educational resource production. These insights are crucial for the successful adoption and implementation of OER, contributing to the goal of quality education (SDG 4) and partnerships for sustainable development (SDG 17).

Patrick Paul Walsh

The stakeholders involved in the discussion, including government, academia, the private sector, and intergovernmental systems, agree that engagement is crucial for a comprehensive partnership. They recognize the need to work with UNESCO, SDSN, and a joint committee to implement the UNESCO-EOR recommendation. Additionally, there is a partnership agreement in place to manage an open education resource overlay platform, repository, or journal.

To ensure the quality of submitted courses, a rigorous quality assurance process has been established. Courses are evaluated not only for their academic and scientific content but also for compliance with UN policies and legal frameworks. The objective is to provide a community of practice with guidelines and playbooks on ensuring quality in submitted courses.

Various educational technologies are being used to manage and organize the courses. This includes open journal systems, copyright licensing management, and other tech tools. The effective utilization of these technologies is considered essential for managing the courses.

Community engagement is emphasized as a crucial aspect of the project. Collaborating with various user groups such as governments, corporates, academics, and schools is necessary to develop the required metadata and effectively manage the archives. This collaboration is referred to as “diamond engagement” and is seen as essential for the system to work effectively.

The freedom to create and contribute to a global knowledge commons is a fundamental principle. The open education resource recommendation supports the creation and contribution of educational content to the global knowledge commons. The content should be easily accessible, and everyone should have the opportunity to contribute freely.

The project also places importance on accessibility and inclusivity. Materials, including slides and videos, should be made accessible to all, including those with visual impairments. Ensuring compliance with disability regulations and providing equal access for everyone is considered crucial.

The decentralization and adaptability of open education resources to local contexts are promoted. It is essential to make sure that the resources can be repurposed and translated to suit specific local contexts. This flexibility ensures that the resources remain relevant and applicable in different regions.

There is a concern about the control of academic work archival by commercial entities. The argument is that academic works should not be owned by private entities, and hosting and archiving should be done by libraries rather than commercial entities.

Decentralized repositories are seen as beneficial as they allow for easy updates of courses. This enables courses to be updated locally and reuploaded to the system, ensuring that the content remains up-to-date and relevant.

Behavioral issues and the psychology of implementing digital infrastructure are important factors to consider. Jeffrey Sachs has highlighted the reality of sunk costs in initiating such projects, and the marginal costs of implementing digital infrastructure are relatively low. There is also the potential to add commercial value to the project, which could eventually generate returns on investment.

Government mistrust in receiving returns on their investments poses a significant challenge. The argument is that governments need to invest now for future returns, but past experiences of not receiving expected returns have eroded their trust.

There is disagreement regarding the commercialization of open education resources. While some reject the idea of commercializing the infrastructure or content, others propose value-added commercialization with profit-sharing arrangements if a private entity gains income from the public resource.

Advocacy exists for public or stakeholder ownership of open education resources. The argument is that open education resources should be either publicly owned or owned by relevant stakeholders to ensure their accessibility and availability to all.

In conclusion, the stakeholders involved in the discussion emphasize the importance of engagement in building a comprehensive partnership. Quality assurance processes have been implemented to ensure compliance with UN policies and legal frameworks. Various educational technologies are being utilized to manage the courses effectively. Community engagement is crucial for developing metadata and managing archives. The discourse on open education resources highlights the freedom to create and contribute to a global knowledge commons, as well as the need for accessibility, decentralization, and public ownership. Behavioral issues and government mistrust pose challenges, but there are also opportunities for commercial value and return on investment. Collaborative efforts and a shared vision are crucial for the successful implementation of open education resources and the promotion of quality education for all.

Melinda Bandaria

In order to create a more inclusive education system, it is crucial for teachers to have an awareness of who is excluded and the reasons behind their exclusion. Some common barriers include the cost of learning materials, physical challenges such as hearing or sight impairment, language barriers, and cultural diversity. By understanding these barriers, teachers can better address the needs of excluded students.

To enable more inclusive teaching and learning, teachers should possess knowledge of accessibility guidelines, universal design for learning, and cultural and linguistic diversity. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines provide a framework for making online platforms accessible to different types of learners. Integrating the basic principles of universal design for learning into Open Educational Resources (OERs) ensures that they can be accessed by all students. Furthermore, translating OERs into local languages and respecting cultural diversity can enhance inclusivity.

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are a valuable tool in making teaching more inclusive and breaking down barriers. OERs address the cost barrier of learning materials, as they are freely available for use. They can also be modified to integrate features of universal design for learning, tailored to meet the needs of diverse learners. Additionally, translating OERs into local languages ensures that content is accessible to students who face language barriers.

Teachers need to possess the necessary skills and knowledge to make OERs more accessible and inclusive. Training programs for teachers should include training in cultural and linguistic diversity, understanding copyright laws and licences associated with OERs, and the ability to convert OERs into alternative formats such as OJO, Braille, and simplified text. Making OERs compatible with assistive technology and determining the readability of materials are also important skills for teachers to have.

The training for teachers should not stop at developing OER materials but should go beyond that to include a wide range of knowledge and skills to make OERs more inclusive and accessible. This requires ongoing learning and continuous professional development. Teachers should not only develop and share OERs but also make them accessible and inclusive for all learners, which necessitates additional knowledge and skills.

To ensure the quality of OERs, a quality assurance framework is important. This framework enables the evaluation of the OERs that teachers use, ensuring that they meet certain standards of quality. It serves as a guide for teachers in selecting and utilising high-quality OERs that enhance inclusivity in education.

Both teachers and universities have a role to play in ensuring the quality of OERs. Teachers are crucial in creating and sharing OERs, while universities can support them in this process. OERs are often reused, remixed, translated into local languages, and shared by teachers and universities, making collaborative efforts essential in enhancing the quality and inclusivity of OERs.

Policies should be implemented to promote the development and use of OERs. Institutional policies can actively encourage the use of OERs, creating a supportive environment for teachers. Moreover, it is beneficial to use public funds to produce OERs and make them open access, ensuring that cost is not a barrier to their availability.

Incentive systems for faculty members are also important in promoting the use and creation of OERs. Especially for universities, providing incentives to teachers and faculty members who utilize and create open educational resources helps foster a culture of innovation and inclusivity in education.

In conclusion, creating a truly inclusive education system requires teachers to have an understanding of barriers and exclusion, as well as the necessary skills and knowledge to make learning materials accessible and inclusive. Open Educational Resources (OERs) serve as a powerful tool in overcoming barriers and promoting inclusivity. By implementing policies and providing support, both teachers and universities can play a vital role in ensuring the quality and accessibility of OERs. With ongoing training and incentives for faculty members, education can become more inclusive for all learners.

Zeynep Varoglu

The OER (Open Educational Resources) Recommendation 2019 was unanimously adopted by all member states, providing a clear definition of OER and focusing on capacity building, policy implementation, quality assurance, inclusive multilingual OER, sustainability, and international cooperation. Zeynep Varoglu played a significant role in presenting and supporting the OER Recommendation 2019.

Open procurement models have become popular for developing and sustaining OER projects, although their effectiveness can vary depending on the country or context. While open procurement is seen as a transition to a more sustainable OER model, its implementation may face challenges in certain countries.

Multi-stakeholder working groups play a crucial role in monitoring policies and ensuring the success of OER initiatives. These groups can adapt to changes in OER through collaboration and representation of perspectives from all stakeholders.

Community engagement is identified as critical for the relevance and success of OER initiatives. Incentives and recognition are important for motivating individuals at all levels to actively participate in advancing OER goals.

The OER Dynamic Coalition event at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a vital platform for knowledge sharing and collaboration among stakeholders. With around 500 participants from government, institutions, and civil society, it focuses on implementing the OER Recommendation.

The importance of openness in education and knowledge sharing is emphasized during the event. Zeynep Varoglu actively supports this idea, advocating for openness in education.

In conclusion, the OER Recommendation 2019 provides a comprehensive framework for the development, implementation, and sustainability of OER initiatives. Stakeholder involvement, such as Zeynep Varoglu’s support and multi-stakeholder working groups, along with community engagement and platforms like the OER Dynamic Coalition event, contribute to advancing OER goals. Emphasizing openness in education and knowledge sharing is crucial for promoting inclusive and quality education globally.

Lisa Petrides

The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, led by Lisa Petrides, focuses on various aspects of Open Educational Resources (OER). They are involved in building OER libraries, providing professional development, and researching the impact of OER. Moreover, they emphasize the significance of OER repositories as the infrastructure supporting libraries. The institute promotes the implementation of the CARE framework, which prioritizes good stewardship of OER by emphasizing contribution, attribution, release, and empowerment. They also stress the importance of understanding the provenance of resources to build a transparent knowledge base. Additionally, the institute advocates for the accessibility and inclusivity of OER, viewing educators as experts in their knowledge, promoting decentralization in knowledge distribution, and resisting commercial private partnerships in education. They emphasize the need to integrate various open areas, such as education resources, pedagogy, data, science, access, and publishing, for better outcomes. Through these efforts, the institute aims to contribute to quality education and drive positive changes in the education system.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
in Senegal. No, no, no. So it’s a pleasure to have you. We hope that our other panelists will be able to join us online and that they can participate in this session. So let me check once again. Do we have Zeynep online? I just rang her. She’s coming. Okay, great. Okay, thank you. So, and Neil? Neil Boettcher? Neil Boettcher is not yet online. Yeah. I hope, I hope while, while waiting for them to join, why don’t we give us two minutes for each of you to introduce yourself. Let’s say one minute, not two. Okay. This isn’t quite about one minute. Yeah, okay. Yeah. One minute.

Lisa Petrides:
Hello. My name is Lisa Petrides and I run the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education and we build OER libraries and we do professional development and we do a lot of research around the impact of OER.

Tel Amiel:
My name is Tel Emil. I’m a professor at the University of Brasilia. I had the UNESCO Chair in Distance Education and we had the Open Education Initiative, which is an activist research group for open education. Thank you. Over to you.

Patrick Paul Walsh:
Yeah, you have it. Yeah. Hello, everyone. So, my name is Patrick Paul Walsh. I’m a full professor at University College Dublin, but on secondment to the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network as Vice President of Education and Director of the SDG Academy. Thank you.

Dudley Stephen Wyber:
Thank you very much. My name is… Stephen Weiber, I’m Director for Policy and Advocacy at the International Federation of Library Associations, which is sort of the global peak organization for libraries of all sorts.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you very much, dear participant. We want to wish you a warm welcome to this session on the transformative role of open educational resources in digital inclusion. We are going to start the session by listening to an opening remark from Mr. Taufik Djelassi, who is the Assistant Director General for Communication and Information.

Tawfik Jelassi:
Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen, dear colleagues, I am pleased to address you today at the 2023 IGF Forum and the first session of the Open Educational Resources Dynamic Coalition. This year’s theme, The Internet We Want, brings together policymakers, experts, civil society, and businesses to tackle the challenges and opportunities in our evolving digital landscape. UNESCO is committed to fostering dialogue and cooperation for a more inclusive, secure, and sustainable internet for all. We envision a digital ecosystem where the internet serves as a powerful tool for learning, and open educational resources play a pivotal role to increase access to quality education worldwide. In 2019, UNESCO adopted the recommendation on OER, which is a UN normative instrument to support inclusive access to digital learning platforms. Today, we gather in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, to explore the transformative potential of OER in the age of the internet. Where information is needed. information, and educational materials are abundant. In alignment with the UN Secretary-General’s call on our Common Agenda, UNESCO has been advocating for the adoption of openly licensed digital education tools to be accessible through the Internet. The 2019 OER recommendation guides our efforts towards an open, accessible, and equitable education future. It emphasizes international collaboration for content, capacity, and infrastructure, aligning with the Global Digital Compact principles for an inclusive, open, secure, and shared Internet. Central to our discussion is the recognition of digital public goods, especially OER, defined by the UNESCO OER recommendation. The five areas of action, namely capacity building, policy support, inclusive and multilingual quality content, sustainability, and international collaboration, form the foundation for accessible online learning platforms benefiting both learners and educators. Digital public goods, such as OER, drive sustainable models of education, knowledge sharing, and innovation, thus contributing to the sustainable development goals, including quality education, access to information and ICT, gender equality, and global partnerships. This session is not only about dialogue, it’s a call for action. Digital transformation is rapidly reshaping societies. The platform society is intertwining digital platforms and artificial intelligence. We must navigate data privacy, transparency, and governance intricacies to effectively harness their potential. We call for all governments, partners and stakeholders to unite to implement the 2019 OER Recommendation and other norms that cultivate open and secure spaces for education. As stakeholders, our collective efforts through the OER Dynamic Coalition are crucial in shaping an inclusive, equitable and digitally empowered future via open educational resources. Your contributions will be invaluable in advancing our shared mission. Dear participants, UNESCO has been actively promoting open educational resources to expand access to quality education worldwide, underlying principles such as openness, accessibility, privacy and freedom of expression in the digital age. The OER Dynamic Coalition brings together stakeholders from various sectors to build values and principles guiding the development and use of the Internet. Let us work together to ensure that the Internet remains a force for good, advancing human rights and sustainable development. Thank you for your kind attention.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you to the ADG, the Assistant Director General for Communication and Information at UNESCO for this opening remark in which, among other points, he highlighted that this meeting is about a call for action. We were normally to have Zeynep to present the Dynamic Coalition. I don’t know if Zeynep is online. Zeynep? So far, she’s not. It’s not yet online. So we are going to have a series of session during which some of our panelists will have shared their experiences from the different initiatives in which they are involved throughout the world. So I’m going to invite Dr. Melinda Bandaria to share their experience on the critical role in developing, creating, and reusing, as well as adapting and sharing OER. What skills do teachers need to ensure that the OER used in the courses is inclusive and accessible? Over to you. She’s joining us online.

Melinda Bandaria:
Yes. Thank you very much, and good day to everyone. Thank you for having me in this session to share my perspective about OERs and the important role of teachers in making OERs accessible and inclusive. So as introduced, I am Dr. Melinda Bandaria, and I am participating from the Philippines. I am also full professor and chancellor at the University of the Philippines Open University and appointed as ambassador of Open Educational Resources by the International Council for Open and Distance Education and has been actively involved in the OER Dynamic Coalition of UNESCO. So as to the question, considering that teachers and educators play a critical role in developing, creating, reusing, adopting, and sharing OER, so what are the skills and knowledge do teachers need to have so that we can ensure that OERs that are being used in their courses are inclusive and accessible? As we go through the skills and knowledge, it should also guide us in terms of developing training programs, courses for OERs, especially with the participation of our teachers. So… First, teachers need to know who are excluded in the teaching and learning ecosystem and why they are excluded. This knowledge would enable the teachers to put in place mechanisms and implement strategies to address the identified barriers. So in most cases, the barrier has to do with the cost of the learning materials, which using OERs aims to address. The other common barriers include physical challenges like hearing or sight impairment, language, given that most OERs are in English language, and other learners may feel excluded because of disregard to cultural diversity. So considering this, the teacher should have knowledge on the following. First is accessibility guidelines, like for instance, the Web Content Accessibility Guideline to make the online platform accessible to various types of learners. Universal design for learning, the knowledge about it can guide the teachers on how they can integrate even just the basic principles of universal design for learning to the OERs that they will be using, especially given the nature of the OERs that they can be reduced, then teachers can integrate the basic features of universal design for learning to these OERs. Cultural and linguistic diversity or making the content inclusive. In one of the studies conducted in Southeast Asia, one of the barriers cited by students on the use of OERs is that they are not available in the local language. So teachers can translate these OERs that they will be using in their courses and make sure that there is respect to cultural diversity, that there’s nothing in the content that would be offensive to a specific person.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you, Dr. Melinda, for your input and for clarifying some of the principles that may actually help teachers to create content that are inclusive. Let me return to Zeynep, who informed that she’s not. online. Zeynep, can you make a short presentation of the OER dynamic correlation before we move forward? Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, can you put up

Zeynep Varoglu:
the slide? Is it possible or not? No? If it’s not, it’s okay. This is the second slide. Otherwise, I’ll just go on. It’s a great pleasure to be here with you today. I’m very sorry there’s something wrong with the camera and I will try and fix it during the course of the session. I would just like to present you very quickly the OER recommendation 2019. This recommendation was adopted by all member states by consensus in 2019 and it basically has a very clear definition of OER which explains to you exactly what OER is and what it is not. I will read it out to you right now. The definition is that any learning, teaching or research material in any format that resides in the public domain or is under a copyright that has been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, reuse, repurposing, adaptation and redistribution by others. There is a clear definition of open license. I would invite you to go to the website of UNESCO, look up the name of the OER recommendation 2019 to have the full text. There is five areas of action and we’ll be going through each of the areas of action in this presentation. The first one is capacity building, the second is policy, the third one is on quality, inclusive multilingual OER and the fourth is on sustainability and the fifth one is on international cooperation. And the international cooperation is the basis of this OER recommendation, which of this OER dynamic coalition, which brings together the panel before you. I’d just like to also point out that the stakeholders in this recommendation are the entire knowledge community. So we have the education community, we have libraries, museums, and we have also publication. You have on the screen in the chat, if you’re online, you have the text of the recommendation there. We have a very full panel, so I will stop here and give the floor back to you, Michelle, to continue.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you, Zareb. Can we stop the presentation, please? Yes. Okay, thank you. I want to check to know if Mr. Papaluga is online. Has he joined us? Oh, no. Papaluga was to share the experience on how learners can draw from the various cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic background to create inclusive OER content. If he’s not online, then let me check if Ms. Jian Osman. Is he online? If not, can I check to make sure that Mr. Nail Bocha is online? Nail? Yes, I am online. Thank you, Nail. So this gives us the opportunity to move forward with the second part of this presentation, where I’m going to invite Elisa Pretodist to share her experience on OER repository. Elisa?

Lisa Petrides:
Yes, thank you. Will the slide be on the screen? Would it be easier to share from my screen? He can share. Okay, go ahead. I’ll use the right slide. But I’ll not be able to move. with this. Great, thank you so much. So I want to talk about really the sharing of knowledge and what that means in terms of OER libraries and repositories. The repository is really the underlying infrastructure of libraries. They’re vast and diverse. They’re across the world. They contain often metadata description of how content is created and used and adapted, which is extremely important. It’s not enough to have platforms where these content reside, but it’s equally as important to know, have very good descriptions for both the educator as well as the learner who is going to be using these resources. It’s not enough just to have a whole library if we don’t really understand what’s in it and why we might want to use it. Just like the librarian in a physical library, that person is probably one of the most important people in terms of their function, in terms of the search and discovery. So similarly in the online content, we rely on the metadata and often librarians behind the metadata creation to guide us through that kind of content. I want to just talk about this through the CARE framework, which is something that you can look at careframework.org because it’s, what it is, is the CARE framework is a way to show what is good OER stewardship and how to become OER stewards of OER. And so I thought it might be an interesting way to apply the CARE framework to platform and tools and how they can be designed in a user-centric way. So the first part of CARE, so its contribution is the… see attribution, release, and empower. So contribution is about advancing the awareness, improvement, and distribution of OER. And what this means specifically in terms of platforms and metadata is that we really have to focus on portability, interoperability, and the ability to adapt or localize. In terms of attribution, we’re talking about conspicuous attribution. And what I mean by that is if we don’t know the provenance of the resource, where that resource came from, how it’s been used along the way, we really lose the ability to describe and build a transparent knowledge base. And as you heard Zeyneb talk about in the OER recommendation, what we’re trying to create is really a commons, the knowledge commons around OER. The third piece, 30 seconds, did you say? No? Release, making sure that the content can be used beyond the platform in a way that it requires the platform to be interoperable with others. And last is empower. And perhaps I think one of the most important attributes today is meeting the needs of all learners, including those who have been traditionally excluded. So this requires content that is culturally relevant, inclusive, and accessible to those with disabilities. And again, when we think about the metadata that’s describing this content for search and discovery, I think that the CARE framework really helps to illuminate what those factors are. Thank you.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you, Elisa, for sharing that on the importance of metadata and also OER repository. I’m turning now to Stephen to ask about the importance of collaboration, how to make this possible, collaboration between educational stakeholders to support OER initiatives.

Dudley Stephen Wyber:
Thank you very much, Michelle. And thank you for the invitation to be here today. I think just as an introductory point, there’s a lot of talk at the moment about digital public infrastructures and digital public goods. And OER is such a powerful example of this and is so often overlooked. So it’s really important that we’re having this session here today. So I think. At risk of repeating Lisa’s points, but without an attractive acronym to make sense of them so that everyone can take notes. The roles that libraries tend to play, often it is, I think as you said, supporting with a discovery awareness. As we know, the fact that something is available on the internet does not necessarily mean that it’s actually accessed or used. There’s an awful lot of shouting into the void online. Libraries have proven effective in so many cases and actually then updating their original roles of putting people who need knowledge in touch with knowledge, raising awareness of the possibilities. I think combating some of the assumptions there are that because OER is free, it’s worthless. And there is always this sort of human tendency to believe that unless you’ve paid for something, it’s not worth it. Wrong. Overcoming some of the ideas and the prejudices that doubtless exist about OER as resources. I think Lisa’s already covered the point about curation, but I think curating in a way that responds to need. Actually, again, bridging the materials that are out there, the resources that are out there, working with faculty, working out what’s actually there. So again, there’s that bridging role in there. I think, once again, working with educational stakeholders to take a critical overview. And I’m conscious, again, I risk echoing Lisa in this point that clearly the landscape of OER that’s available right now is, it is primarily from some parts of the world. There’s an awful lot coming from the parts of the world that have produced traditional textbooks and traditional materials. But given the training and given the experience they have in trying to evaluate the whole of knowledge that’s available, librarians can have a really powerful role working with stakeholders to think, well, what’s missing? What are we not seeing as opposed to what we are seeing? And actually then, once again, again, working to make sure that we’re coming up with OER that fits. I’m going to jump to the last point, but also in that role of encouraging. Librarians can have a really powerful role, too, in giving guidance about how do you use rights, what are the options, what are the channels for faculty, for education stakeholders to feel sufficient agency, sufficient empowerment to produce their own, which really does require to work with materials that are there, to produce their own materials, to share them, to really actually deepen that knowledge commons. And then I think the final point is, please do count on librarians as allies in pushing for legislative and regulatory frameworks that are favorable, that have decent educational exceptions in copyright, so that you’re not unnecessarily held back in using materials for educational purposes. It fits within the recommendation, but it’s an ongoing fight.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you very much, Stephen, for sharing this. I’m going to turn to Patrick. When we are considering stakeholder engagement, I think the private sector can play a key role in this. So Patrick, what are the strategies that we can put in place to engage the private sector?

Patrick Paul Walsh:
Yeah. So the answer, just to say, the question I prepared is the broad partnership, which is a partnership between government academic libraries, intergovernmental system, and the private sector. So it’s the whole comprehensive partnership. So we have signed, or we’re working with UNESCO, SDSN, and a joint committee to implement the UNESCO-EOR recommendation. And we have a partnership agreement that we’re going to run what’s called a open education resource overlay platform, or repository, or journal, whatever way you want to think about it. And basically, we basically want to have courses submitted to us that we can quality assure and recommend. that we can put into archives that are properly metadata, open license, et cetera, quality assured, and then they can be used inappropriately in government for educational training or corporates or schools or academia in their courses. And of course, the whole reason for demonstrating this on the essay, for example, if we did it with SDG Academy courses, which are all up on edX, is to really show a community of practice how you’d actually do this with guidelines and kind of playbooks that people could actually apply this in other contexts. But just to give a sense of the partners and what’s going on. So one, people should be able to submit their LMS as their courses, and they’d be refereed and not just refereed from the point of view of academic and science content, but also adherence to say UN policy or UN legal frameworks, et cetera. So they’re quality assured and published in the normal academic way. When they went to the repositories, they will follow fair care and Farr’s principles. So thank you for explaining the care principles. But basically, this stuff has to be findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable, but there has to be what I call good citizenship or stewardship of it and also good governance of it. You do need quite a lot of ed tech, and I’ve actually listed all the kind of ed technologies that you’d have to use for this type of, let’s call it publication or e-publication in terms of the open journal systems or the way you would do your copyright licensing or the way you would manage your indicators and metadata and so on and so forth. But just to give you a sense that, and just two seconds then. So where the partnership comes in though, when we’re developing the metadata and how it’s archived, we have to talk to the users, and the users are governments who have training in their LMSs, the corporates. who have their HR training, the academics who are, and schools who are doing their curriculum and their courses. And in a sense, you have to have what we call the diamond engagement. So it’s not enough just to do diamond publication, which is free to publish and free to use, but you actually have to work with the curators and then the users to get the whole system working effectively, or else it’s not going to work.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you. Thank you very much for three of you for this session, during which you have shared your experience on how to achieve a multi-stakeholder approach into the development of OER, and also on how to engage the different stakeholders in academia, the private sector, and the realization of inclusive OER. I’m going to turn to Zeynep for the next session, the next panel. Zeynep?

Zeynep Varoglu:
Thank you very much, Michel. We have the pleasure now to look at Now and Forever, about sharing resources within a policy framework and within the framework of sustainability. Our first speaker is Neil Butcher, who’s going to look at issues related to national education policies. Neil, the floor is yours.

Neil Butcher:
Thank you very much, and greetings, everyone, from Johannesburg in South Africa. As you can see here, I’m focusing on national education policies. I think what we’ve seen in the world of OER is that sustainability really depends on governments developing and implementing sustainable policies. There’s a lot of OER policies. Unfortunately, many of those policies exist in paper, but are not really being implemented in practice. And I think in the context of the discussions on accessibility today, it’s important just to recognize that 15% of people around the world have some form of disability. So governments really are the key agency that are going to be responsible for ensuring that the good ideas that we’ve heard about in the previous presentations… are implemented and sustained and financed. So we’ve spoken about the importance of content accessibility, the application of critical principles, the repositories that are available to support web accessibility, and so on. And so in the bottom bullets, what I’ve just tried to unpack is some of the important things that are critical for national policy. And I think that starts with bullet four, which is to develop policies that provide for the understanding and application of open licenses to content and software. This may seem like an obvious point, but if our intellectual property and copyright policies nationally are not providing for and enabling government agencies to use open licenses, then it’s unlikely that that will actually ever be done. We also then need in our policy to unpack the meaning of digital accessibility and its practical implications for policy. And the practical implications are the important part. There’s a lot of lip service to the importance of digital accessibility, but the kinds of ideas you’ve heard about in the previous slides really need to be documented in policy and the implications for content development and other processes that are being funded by governments need to be stated very explicitly. So these explicit requirements about digital accessibility need to be contained in the policy, and they need to be binding in the sense that when governments are spending money on content development, there needs to be an obligation that this is built into what government agencies are expected to procure. So the accessibility plan for existing national and other education initiatives, the kinds of ideas we’ve heard about in the previous presentations on the repositories, these initiatives are really important, but if government is not committing to sustaining them on an ongoing basis, we’re unfortunately not going to see that the kind of impact that we’re looking for and that’s been discussed by my colleagues. And so that will bring me to the last point that I consider to be the most important. is policies need to be explicitly stating what the accessibility considerations should be for content creation projects, for educational projects, and how those need to be embedded in the procurement processes. So I think this is the key hurdle at which we tend to stumble, is that we have a lot of good principles and ideas often documented in policies or contained in guidelines, but when we get to the point of procurement and when there’s urgency to move ahead with, say, procuring a content creation policy for the development of educational materials at national level, unfortunately, the procurement processes don’t enforce obligations for the service providers to make sure that the content they’re creating adheres to accessibility guidelines and making sure that that’s a condition of payment for the services being received. So unfortunately, what tends to happen is the contracts are executed and this critical consideration of accessibility is left on the sidelines. So I would say of all the things that we can do that would be most important, we lead up to this one. If we don’t include some references to the importance of accessibility and making sure that there is accountability for delivering those obligations in the procurement process, all of the other excellent work that we might’ve done will unfortunately have been for nothing. So I think those are some of the critical guidelines at the national level we need to consider. Thank you very much.

Zeynep Varoglu:
Thank you very much, Neil. It’s a very clear presentation on the national policy issues. Colleagues, I’d also like just now to ask Melinda Bandeleria to kindly come back to the point that was started at the beginning, which was on bringing this national policy into the classroom in terms of institutions. The person, the colleague who’s kindly taking care of the slide, if they could go to the second slide, you’ll see the slide from Melinda. Melinda, the floor is yours.

Melinda Bandaria:
Yes, thank you very much, Zeynep. And as I mentioned earlier, the skills and knowledge that the teachers should have so that they can make OERs more accessible and inclusive should guide the policies and also in developing training programs for teachers. So I have mentioned already cultural and linguistic diversity, and also the knowledge about copyright laws and licenses that are associated with OERs. So about the skills that should also be integrated into the training programs for teachers. Of course, teachers should know how to convert their open educational resources materials into alternative formats such as OJO, Braille, or even simplified text to cater to students with different needs. They should also have the skills to provide captioning and transcription for hearing impaired learners when reusing OERs and be able to provide descriptive text for hyperlinks and alternative texts for images, especially for those who are screen readers. And of course, the technological skills will be very handy so that they can make sure that the OER platforms and materials that they are using are compatible with assistive technology that the learners, different types of learners will have access to. And the most probably, we are not very much conscious about this, is for them to determine about the text readability of the materials that they are using, and knowing how to determine, like using different mechanisms like the Pug Index measurement. So at the end of the day, it is also making use of the technology platforms to make this materials open educational resources material. So what I’m trying to emphasize here is that our training for teachers should not stop with them developing. sharing, knowing the licenses appropriate for the materials that they are producing, but also acquiring this different knowledge and skills, which are essential to make the open educational resources that they are using more accessible and inclusive to the various types of learners. So, I think that’s all from my end. Thank you very much for allowing me to finish my presentation and contribution to this forum. Good day to everyone.

Zeynep Varoglu:
Thank you very much, Melinda. Thank you very much. So, there’s a very concrete response to policy, which is put into action at the national level and at the institutional level. And with that, I’d like to turn the floor now to give the floor now to Michel. Michel is a communication information advisor from UNESCO Dakar, and he will talk about successful example of an OER initiative at a regional level, which can serve as a model of good practice. So, Michel, the floor is yours. I think it’s further on.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Yeah. Thank you, Zainab. As part of our initiative for implementing the OER recommendation in West Africa, we started by conducting research with the different stakeholders, the academia, the teacher training institution to understand what are the shortcomings that may prevent the adoption of OER. And we came out with some observation that without middle to top level buy-in of the OER, it’s going to be difficult for most of the country to actually engage in the implementation of the recommendation. So, we turn out to raising awareness among decision makers, the Minister of Education, Minister of Youth, and Minister of Higher Education, and also all the middle decision makers within the education sector, and also to explain to them the importance of OER and how OER can actually contribute to quality education within the country. country. And this led to what? This led to commitment from many of the countries in West Africa to develop a national strategy for OER. So we start with Burkina Faso. So we were successful in actually developing, with the Ministry of Higher Education, a national OER strategy. And that is yet to be validated. As you know, the country has been into some troubles, and then this has halted the progress toward the adoption of the OER national strategy. We also succeeded in convincing the Senegal to engage in the elaboration of its own OER strategy. So today, we are working toward the validation of the national strategy. It was a collective effort with multiple stakeholders involved in the design of the strategy. It’s covered all the dimension of the OER, actually contextualizing with the reality of each country. We also made the same thing in Togo, where the country also engaged in the development of the OER strategy, the same thing in Congo, and also in Djibouti. So so far, we have about five countries that are in the process of adopting the OER national strategy. And all the strategy, what is really interesting is that the very process of elaborating the OER was quite interesting in raising awareness for the recommendation. Because by being involved in the process, many came to have a better understanding on the why and on the importance of the OER recommendation. So that today, we are having in many of those countries, there are a team of experts who are becoming the advocate for the OER within the country. So the challenge that we see so far is the challenge of funding. We have seen that everywhere where the strategy was developed, there was this concern about how the government is going to actually fund. How are they going to find the resources to actually support the realization of the strategy? And one of the suggestions was that government can actually ensure that from now on, whenever there is a project with donors involving the production of educational resources, government should ensure that at least part of the project support the production of open educational resources within the country. So we hope that with that experience, we are still in the process of the adoption of the OER strategy. But the strategy in all those countries has already been elaborated, but still to be validated at the national level. So this is what I can share regarding the experience that we have in West Africa. Thank you.

Zeynep Varoglu:
Thank you very much, Michel. And thank you for sharing this experience in West Africa, which is very, very, very strategic. I’d like to give the floor now to Dr. Talamil, who is the Jung Professor and UNESCO Chair in Distance Education at the University of Brasilia, Brazil, who will talk about sustainability models. Tal, the floor is yours.

Tel Amiel:
Thank you. So one of the things that we have to worry about based on a couple of presentations that came before is, what does it mean to be sustainable for OER? And of course, the first thing is the issue of money, right? Whenever we’re funding these kinds of things, just like when we talk about free software, we know that development of free software and development and sustaining of these projects takes money. And so there are many ways. And I just want to highlight three. One of them is related to what Michel just mentioned, which is the idea of open procurement. So many governments around the world are trying to implement open procurement in their systems. And so there are many ways of doing that. And so one of the things that we have to worry about is how do we build the infrastructure to be able to be able to do that? And so I think the first thing is, how do we build the infrastructure to be able to be able to do that? And so I think the first thing is, One of the ideas that we push the most is this idea that if you’re using public funds, you should have public assets, public goods. So open procurement models are very popular, but I think they fluctuate quite a bit. I mean, in some countries, it’s very easy to push the idea of complete open procurement. Everything that you produce with public funds should be open. In other countries, we have to be open to the idea that this might not work exactly as we expect. You have to be more restrictive on your licenses, or not all resources will be open, and some will and some will not. I like to think of open procurement as a transition, you know, especially if you’re going from an all rights reserved model. You have to kind of try different ways of making this work until maybe eventually you’ll get complete open procurement. But there are other ways to do this. Just like with free software, we have models for open with added value. So you might provide the resources for free, which is a key stone of OER. The resources must be free, but then services like customization or training and all these kinds of other things can be by cost. And then also, something that doesn’t last forever, but is good to get things started, particularly in new projects, whether it’s in a government or institution, is partnerships and donations from foundations. I think people are very keen on funding these kinds of things for openness. But then the financial aspect is one. For OER particularly, there are two others. Neil mentioned policy, so I’ll be very brief on this, but it’s not just about putting the policies on paper. We have plenty of those, and some are much more effective than others. But one of the things that works really well is having working groups that are cross-sector. We’ve heard a lot about multi-stakeholders, but actual multi-stakeholders with people actually doing things and representing their corners of the world, doing things together and monitoring these policies. That works really well in many countries. That has worked very, very well. And groups that can evolve, right? So OER is not something that stands over in time as one solid thing. The entry of generative AI has changed quite a bit our perspective. and OER, so we have to have people thinking about this from the perspective of teachers and legal issues and so forth. So these working groups work for that. And finally, OER, as it’s an educational endeavor, that’s the core. The practices around OER is what really matters. And so if you don’t have community engagement, if you don’t have people that are buying into this at all levels, it makes absolutely no sense. It’s just legislation. It’s just money. It’s just resources, right? So we have to have people that have incentives, that have recognition for doing these kinds of things, and that can continuously raise awareness about where OER is at that moment.

Zeynep Varoglu:
Thank you very much, Kel. And right now, we’ve been very efficient with our time, so I’d just like to take this opportunity to actually do a meta discussion, because in fact, in front of you today on the screen, the majority of these colleagues are actually on the advisory board of the OER Dynamic Coalition. And this is the first OER Dynamic Coalition event at the IGF. We’re all very honored to be here before you. We have in the OER Dynamic Coalition, it was started in 2020. And the principle of the Dynamic Coalition was started in 2020, and we became an official IGF Dynamic Coalition in March 2023. But the spirit of Dynamic Coalition was in the body of this text from the beginning of the discussions, and in the background document to the text of the recommendation, which was presented before the member states. And before you, and in many of the presentations we have had, Melinda, who is the advisory board chair for capacity building, also Lisa, who is for policy, and Kel, who is for sustainability, and Neil for communication. And I’m sorry, I’m just going through the list. You have the different members of the party of the. of the advisory board. And these, the OER Dynamic Coalition has brought together, brings together up to now 500 stakeholders from the different stakeholder groups that were presented at the beginning of the session, the knowledge, community, education, culture, and also publications. And we bring together stakeholders from government, institutions, and civil society. And it focuses on knowledge sharing and collaboration in the implementation of the recommendation. And this format has turned into a very useful way of maintaining the dialogue and maintaining discussions and making the issue of the implementation of the OER Dynamic Coalition a priority for governments and institutions to date. And it’s a great pleasure to be here before you. We have some time ahead of us. So I would just like to maybe ask the panel two questions that were in the discussion, but unfortunately we haven’t had time to look at it, but I will just perhaps put it to the panel for the moment. The first one is how OER can be tailored to diverse needs of learners in terms of cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, fostering inclusive learning. And this goes to the area of the recommendation, which deals with quality, multilingual, inclusive OER. Could I ask perhaps if there are anybody, I don’t want to put anyone on the spot, but I will nonetheless do so. I hope you don’t mind. Could I perhaps give the floor to Lisa to start with? Would that be okay with you, Lisa?

Lisa Petrides:
Absolutely, of course. Okay, you’re to the left of Tali. And for those of you who don’t know Zainab, who has been running and spearheading this dynamic coalition from the beginning, she asks us to do something, we do it. So thank you, Zainab. I think the issue, let me just start by saying OER, as many of us I think on this panel here see it, is a public good. And just like air or water, education should be accessible to everybody who wants it, who needs it. And so I think what’s been really important in OER is to think of this practice of open education as something that brings education opportunities to not only the mainstream of education, but for those who have been excluded, for those who have left and we want them to come back, to those who simply have been, in some cases, somewhat not a part, or even in the worst cases, invisible to the processes of education. And we think about places where there’s no school systems that are operating because of war or other situations like this. So when we think about diversity of learners, I think the idea that the use of open educational resources as a knowledge transfer, as a knowledge building, is quite transformational. We’re not just talking about what already happens in our education systems. We’re talking about inclusive voices. So in some cases, that’s where students themselves are involved in the content creation, where faculty in higher education or teachers in primary schools are using their own cultural context and localization to actually adapt OER. And this is where we’re seeing some of the biggest transformational changes in the use of OER. And that is all around the world. I can speak for the US. But for many other parts of the world as well. So Zeynep, who do you want to have this next?

Zeynep Varoglu:
Is anyone else in the room? Does anybody want to say something? Tell, I see you smiling. all the way from here in Paris. This is nice. Would you like to add anything?

Tel Amiel:
I was waiting for you to give me the order. No, I think that one of the things that we talk about here, and especially in this context of IGF, is this presence of many different cultural groups and many different needs. And we understate the power of OER for doing this. I mean, if we’re talking about public goods, it means including everybody. And one of the greatest trends of OER is adaptability, remixability, being able to share and revise and remix and reuse, which is quite unique. And we don’t explore that enough, I think, especially in this multilateral, multi-stakeholder process of having people really engage with these kinds of resources is something that pedagogically makes a lot of sense and makes it really a public good.

Zeynep Varoglu:
Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m kind of handicapped here because I can only see what the screen shows me. So I can only see you up to Michelle. But Michelle, perhaps you can see

Patrick Paul Walsh:
better than I can. Would someone like to? Paul here. So just what I think is congratulations to everyone who was part of actually putting together the OER recommendation, because it really is a wonderful instrument. Just to answer your question, though, I think what’s in the recommendation, which is really important, is that this kind of freedom to create and to contribute to the global knowledge commons, that’s so important. And we have to even think about people with disabilities. So people in any part of the world should be able to freely and easily contribute to the content. And that’s one freedom. The other freedom, obviously, is accessibility. And I really like the previous speaker who talked about the content has to be like the PowerPoint slides and videos, et cetera, has to be compliant to people with visual impairment, et cetera, et cetera. That’s very important. But then the key point is that when you you use it, you can repurpose it, translate it, put it into your local context, put it back into the global knowledge commons again. So it’s really so important to keep it decentralized and in decentralized repository so all that can happen. But that’s why I think the recommendation is so wonderful because you might just think, oh yeah, free education resources, but it’s not about that. It’s actually about how they’re created, how they’re accessed, how they’re repurposed. So there’s much more to this than just what it looks like OER. And Stephen would like to contribute if that’s okay.

Zeynep Varoglu:
Sure, thank you, thank you.

Dudley Stephen Wyber:
Yeah, at risk of just reemphasizing a couple of points so far, I think I want to draw firstly on what Paul was saying about the knowledge commons. And actually, Edna, it’s an idea that was very strongly brought out in the futures of education report a couple of years ago about this idea of trying to move away from a sort of single direction model of you shall learn this body of knowledge and that is what you shall learn to a much more sort of recurring circular approach where you learn, you explore, you contribute, you improve. And that’s quite a radical thing it feels like, but actually making that clear that that’s the model that we’re going for is a significant one because it does create agency and it creates responsibility. And the other thing I wanted to pick up on something that Paul said about diamond engagement and this idea that it’s not just at the producer side, but also it’s important to have people therefore on the ground whose responsibility is not just to make sure that the stuff gets on the internet in the first place, but then that the stuff is taken down and used. And of course, that’s logically a role that obviously teaching staff have, but librarians in particular have and accepting that, I don’t know, we can’t just assume that if we shout out to the internet, someone will actually make use of the stuff and it’ll actually work, no. We can’t have a supply side only approach. approach here. We need to have a demand-side approach.

Zeynep Varoglu:
Thank you very much. I don’t know if there are any other inputs in the thing. Neal has raised his hand. Neal. Two people have raised their hands. Neal, please go ahead.

Neil Butcher:
Thank you very much, Zeynep. Maybe just to build on what previous colleagues have said, I think one of the things that I could emphasize possibly is just the importance of making sure that we don’t necessarily think that more is better, and that we focus collectively on ensuring that the way in which we invest resources has a very strong focus on producing high-quality teaching and learning resources and OER for accessibility purposes. I think very often we have a very technical way of thinking about that when we do engage in accessibility, so we just take materials and make them accessible at that technical level, but we’re not actually considering whether or not the quality of the teaching and learning materials justified making them accessible in the first place. The Internet is flooded with content, and the more flooded it becomes, the more I think that carefully curated collections of resources that we can feel confidence are encapsulating high-quality teaching and learning experiences of the kind that we just heard about. Stephen gave some really good examples, I think, of how that might look in practice. We just need to make sure that we take the time to invest properly in what we’re doing and not just rush the process of taking a whole lot of content and making it accessible. I think that’s doing a disservice to learners rather than helping them in the long run.

Zeynep Varoglu:
Thank you. Thank you very much. Melinda, would you like to add anything?

Melinda Bandaria:
I just would like to support the points raised by Neil in saying that we have to make sure that what we are using are quality OERs, so it is very important. that we have this quality assurance framework, which we can integrate in evaluating the open educational resources that especially the teachers are using for their courses. So that’s one point. And the important role of the teachers, the important role of the universities in making sure that this OERs, that’s what’s being circulated in the web, in the internet, are quality materials that are being reused, remixed, translated into the local languages, and shared alike by the teachers, by the universities who are into it. And of course, the more important thing is putting in place the policies that will support or provide the conducive environment for the OERs, the use, the development, and sharing of OERs to flourish. So if it is not possible for a national policy to be there immediately, then probably institutional policies can start the work, can do the work, and make sure that we have these things or the five action areas on the OER recommendations can be undertaken. So role of universities and policies, even at the institutional level, and then the national level

Zeynep Varoglu:
policies. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. We have, from the participants in the room and online, would anybody like to add anything? It’s a very funny thing to have moderation online and in the room, because you can only see so many, I see now only Melinda’s face, but I’m sure there’s a lot of people behind Melinda, but I can’t see them. So in that case, if we have some time left, and I would just like, yes, yes. We have one person in the room.

Audience:
Yes, thank you. Yeah, it’s a question, exactly. Niels Brock, DW Academy. My question was about the experience with decentralized repositories, so I would be interested if there are any best practices that some of you could share about this. and maybe also specifically in like open technologies for this, thank you.

Patrick Paul Walsh:
Yeah, so the basic idea, you know, ironically, I think a lot of universities who are engaged in getting up the rankings on let’s say commercial or branded journals, right? They want citations, that’s part of, you know, impact factors, it’s part of the whole reason why you get ranked as a university, but ironically, the way to gain citations to get a citation dividend is to make sure that on your research portal or your profile, that actually you link a preprint or an open paper in some way to the actual citation, because that will actually, if you put it in the repository, the local repository in your local library, you know, it’s more findable, and you know, you put in a keyword and people come to you, they don’t have to go to the branded journal, they come to you through the search engines, right? And if your metadata is really good, they’ll find you really easily, right? And then of course, they’ll read your preprint, but they’ll actually cite your actual publication and seemingly the citation dividend across different disciplines is enormous, right? So there is actually quite a bit of work, you know, on let’s call these learning objects like PDFs to put into repositories, okay? So what I’m talking about here though, is that I know particularly during COVID that on our LMSs, we all have kind of folders of digital objects, you know what I mean? Like videos and homeworks and so on and so forth. And the idea is that if you standardize how that LMS is structured, and that also can be archived in a local repository, right? That you’re able to, again, you know, true platforms to actually point. So for example, eLife do it for biology and it’s an overlay of repositories of the researchers and they publish their papers. So the idea of our platform would be actually to highlight LMS folders that you could just click, go to a repository, and then you can pull it up into your own LMS, right? This is basically the idea. And it’s a network of learning objects, you know, multimedia kind of learning objects, right? But the real benefit to doing it decentralized, and it’s actually because of Algebra Science and these, I think that the libraries are for interlibrary loans and they’re interoperable. The repositories are so interoperable because they’re actually building it for doing all this work of hosting and archiving for the commercial entities, right? So the academics create the work and sign over the property, right? And then they sell that back to the libraries. And then the libraries do all the work and archiving and preservation and other, this is ridiculous, right? So we have to try and get rid of the middle person and we have to try and just work librarians, academics and others just to work together to make that happen, right? But what was the point I was trying to make was, I’ve lost the point, but the decentralized system, you’re getting the, oh yeah. The key thing is that you can update your course locally. You can repurpose. that locally are, like others can take it, translate it, put it back into the system again, right? So in other words, rather than just giving away, you’re probably right, giving away a PDF that you can’t edit that goes, you know, into a library so that you can’t edit, that’s just nonsense as well, right? We should be able to update what’s in our repository. So my course, I might change 10% every five years, you know, but you see the idea that you would update it and that it becomes a kind of a real-time repository rather than something like, you know, 2005 publication in Nature or something, yeah.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you very much. Any other question from the room or online? Any comment, contribution? I just want to, following just what Amiel has said about the open government procurement, what we have learned from the context of West Africa, and this was a great surprise for us, is that we discovered that in many of the countries with whom we were working, they have no budget for educational resources production, no budget. So the idea of open procurement doesn’t fit in that context. So we had to, as part of the OER strategy, to raise awareness on the importance for the government to actually engage in the production of educational resources, adaptation and remixing, supporting initiative related to this. So we should not take for granted that countries already are committed to produce educational resources. It’s not the case. And we have this, and I’m saying all the five countries with whom we were working, they have no budget, no budget line to produce educational resources. I’m not talking about open education, but educational resources, they have no budget line. So this is a. a key challenge in such context. And the importance of raising awareness of the importance of a country to actually engage in the production of educational resources.

Lisa Petrides:
Thank you so much for making that comment. I think that if we think of the origins of the teaching profession, that the teacher or educator was the person with the internal knowledge. And over time, we’ve developed a system where, in fact, there are experts out there, all the way to the textbook publishing company. And this whole industry has started. And this is where the money and the procurement happens. But in fact, the native knowledge is around the educator. And it’s also around the learner, who is living, breathing, working in a community with a lot of knowledge and understanding. We found early on, when we were going to certain places to talk about OER, people were seeing what we had done in our library, OER Commons. And they would say, that’s nice. But we have oral histories here. Or we have other native or indigenous languages here. The knowledge is there. And if we think about having it, it’s sort of rethinking what teaching means, and who teachers are, and how teachers are trained. But we’ve gotten so far away from the idea where the educator is actually the expert in their knowledge. And that might be some kind of perspective that is brought there as well.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you. This was a very insightful exchange. You know, at the beginning of this panel, the Assistant Director General for UNESCO invited us to use the opportunity of this discussion to lay out key actions to undertake in order to advance the agenda of OER recommendation. So I’m going to turn to each of you. Let’s say two minutes. Or OK, three minutes. Yeah. What is the takeaway, and what are core actions that we need to consider for the future of the implementation of OER? I’ll start with Emil.

Tel Amiel:
So I think based on the experience that we’ve had in Brazil for 10 years developing policy on this is give people serious responsibilities for OER, make it a serious element, and give them the responsibility to do it and expect things to happen from people. So create the policies, get people involved, and then give them serious responsibilities for taking care that it’s going to be implemented. Without that, I think that if we don’t have people actually involved in this and around this, but the incentives to stay, it just becomes another piece of legislation that doesn’t move forward. It’s an agenda item that people talk about, but nothing ever happens around it. That would be, I think, the biggest takeaway for me.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you. Stephen?

Dudley Stephen Wyber:
So I think I’d probably underline, and this is probably sort of a takeaway recommendation for the sector I represent, the importance of trying to get ourselves to the same stage with OERs as we are with open access. And a point I would have made to the colleague from DW Academy is that there’s already a lot of really good work around how do you get interoperability to happen between OA repositories through organizations like COAR in Canada? Can we apply that same logic to OER repositories? And then just come back to the question you were actually asking me now, how do we mainstream? How do we do an end run around the development process here and make sure that librarians are seeing, in just the same way as they provide materials, that they really feel confident and they feel responsible for helping their faculty, for helping students make the most of OER so that they feel agency in order to help other people feel agency.

Melinda Bandaria:
Yes. Thank you very much. My key takeaways, of course, I’m very much focused on capability building as one of the action areas in the OER recommendations. So, initially, we were so much focused on just raising awareness, ability to use and develop and share OERs, but this discussion really brought us back to the essentials of making OERs more inclusive and accessible. So, we have to go beyond in this capability building initiatives. And, of course, I just would like to go back to what was also contained in the OER recommendation, and it will also bring us to that discussion on the lack of resources to produce OERs. And part of the OER recommendation is invoking that the public funds can be used to produce OERs. And if we use the public funds to produce these educational resources, then we are morally obliged to make them open access materials. So, I guess this is something that we should be doing, our advocacy, our commitment to making OERs more popular in terms of use and development. And the incentive system, especially for universities, that’s the sector I am representing, incentive system for the faculty members, for the teachers, when they use and create and share open educational resources to the community. So, these are my key takeaways from this forum. Thank you.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you, Melinda. Lisa?

Lisa Petrides:
Thank you. I have three quick things. One would be to resist this urge for strategies where one size fits all. I think the comment about decentralization was key, and we have to really keep working on that. and what that really means to have localized control of knowledge. Yet, in a decentralized model, it filters up in a way where we really do build this knowledge commons. The second piece is to not be seduced by the commercial private partnerships that are becoming much in vogue today. They’re wrought with a lot of internal problems that ultimately, I fear, will result in the locking up of knowledge. Not to mention, there are so many privacy concerns once you have commercial interests in terms of how data is used, who uses it, and data for whom. And the third one is a real positive recommendation, our takeaway, which is we really need to build bridges across open. That’s open educational resources, open pedagogy, open data, open science, open access, open publishing. Did I miss any of the opens? I think we’ve been operating in silos for too long, and we really need to start connecting those for real.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you. Patrick?

Patrick Paul Walsh:
So I fully endorse just what Lisa said. Excellent. Just to come back to my big thing, and of course, I’m going to hope to implement this overlay repository journal of SDG courses. But I guess the thing that keeps me awake at night is behavioral issues, as I call them, or psychology. So in other words, just to take an example of one of the stakeholders is the government. So you have to change the mindset. So what’s the problem there? So Jeffrey Sachs was discussing our project at the TESS, the Transforming Education Summit. And I think he said something very important. So he said the reality here is that there’s a bit of a sunk cost to set this up. I’m an economist, so there’s sunk costs and there’s marginal costs, right? So think of putting in electricity or a digital infrastructure, you know what I mean? Like to set up the power. points, to put in the railway tracks, to put in the ports. No individual can really do that. That has to be done by government. So there is a bit of a sunk cost to get this up and running. The beauty of it, though, is that the marginal costs are very low. And in fact, once it’s open, as Tell Amir was saying, there is possibilities to add value or commercialization, which would actually pay into the resource. So I could put sums together for the government saying, if you put up so much money and you put it into your policies and procurement, I can guarantee you within five or six years, the costs to librarians, to the academics, everyone was going to be way reduced, the marginal cost. And in fact, if any of these global knowledge commons issues are commercialized in any way, your property will actually accrue income or accrue value added. So I can create a business model. The problem for that, though, is you’re saying to the government, you put money up now and change your policies, and then later, you’re going to get a return. And that doesn’t sit well with government, because too many times have they given money for a return in the future, and they’ve never got the return in the future. Now, I could go on in terms of, what are the incentives for academics? What are the incentives for librarians, for interoperability of ed tech, interoperability of all the open opens, and so on. So to me, the problem is mindset and coherence and cooperation. And it’s not necessarily financial or technical or anything like that. It’s a real, what I call behavioral mindset issue that you have to address.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you. Naeem, are you online? Naeem?

Neil Butcher:
Thank you, Michel. I think the two key takeaways that I’d like to just reemphasize is, first of all, to recognize, notwithstanding nice conversations about how we should support the private sector in monetizing this space. and I’m not sure I agree with a lot of that. I think we have to recognize that the responsibility sits squarely with government to make sure the public education systems are accessible for all. And that involves proper investment in creating learning environments that actually support real accessibility. And the second takeaway for me related to that is that the investment strategy for that has to ensure the quality of the teaching and learning experience for everyone. I think if OER as a public good is simply expanding access to poor quality learning experiences for people at the margins, it’s doing the world a disservice and we need to make sure that the emphasis is very strongly on improving the quality of the learning experiences. I would just add one last and possibly obvious point, which is that the only way in which we can ensure that this happens successfully is to make sure that the processes by which this all takes place are actually led by representatives from the target communities of learners that we are aiming at. And I think if we look around the panel and certainly at this stage, I think it’s clear that we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we bring in the voices of the people who we hope will benefit from these conversations. So I think that’s another critical challenge that we face as we move forward.

Patrick Paul Walsh:
Yes. So Niall, just hopefully we’re on the same page. So I’m not saying you should commercialize the infrastructure or the content or anything like that. So this is a point about value added. So for example, if a private school takes the material, puts a letter book on it, adds things and then sells it out there that they should really, if they’re bringing in income, there should be some rent sharing on a public resource. Or. if a commercial company takes it and actually is doing kind of upskilling and training and again is charging money to do that, that there should be kind of rent sharing. So it’s commercialization on the margin if you like, but it’s not on the infrastructure or the open education resource at all. That has to be publicly owned or stakeholder owned as you say. So I hope that’s okay. And you mightn’t like the idea of the value added either, but just to be clear that it’s not commercialization of the platform or the actual resource.

Moderator – Michel Kenmoe:
Thank you. Zeynep, do you have one last comment? Zeynep? I see some mute. Zeynep? She’s online. I see that she’s online. Zeynep? I don’t know what technical issue. I want to express our warm thanks to all the panelists and all the participants of this session, those who joined us online and those present here in Kyoto. Can we give a round of applause to all our panelists and the participants, please? Thank you very much. Yes, Zeynep?

Zeynep Varoglu:
Yes, it works. OK, sorry. It’s been a bad, bad technology morning. Thank you so much. I was saying that it takes a village to raise a child, they say, but it takes a whole world to make learning possible. And it’s through an open educational. resources that I think the knowledge can really be shared. The point of this recommendation and the point of this panel, the point of this discussion, is about sharing knowledge openly. And I’d also like to thank very much all the panelists here and online. Just to let you know that the colleagues that are joining us online, we’re coming from three different continents right now into your room. And it is a great pleasure to be here. We would all very much like to be there in person, but unfortunately it hasn’t been possible. But thank you very much to all of you. Thank you, Zeynep. And have a great day to all of us. Thanks.