UNESCO OER Platform

1. UNESCO OER Platform ICT in Education, Science and Culture Section Information Society Division Communication and Information (CI) Sector www.unesco.org/webworld/en/oer www.unesco.org/webworld/fr/oer

2. What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)? UNESCO defines Open Educational Resources (OERs) as: • Learning especially eLearning resources and tools • in open document format • and released under an intellectual property licence, or in the public domain allowing free use and re-use 2002 UNESCO OpenCourseware Forum

3. What is the UNESCO OER Platform? The UNESCO OER Platform seeks to: • radically “enhance” UNESCO’s Clearing House function by • offering “certain” UNESCO publications as OER products and • allowing “stakeholders” to freely copy, adapt, and share their resources.

4. Who are the UNESCO Stakeholders? • Decision-makers and Policy-makersat Ministry or institutional-level looking for model policies, guides, or best-practices; • Teacherslooking for courses, syllabi, and teaching materials and • Learnersalso looking for additional courses to study

5. Functionalities of the OER Platform • Find and compare: stakeholders can freely use the UNESCO base product to find and compare content • Build and share:stakeholders can freely copy, build and share their unique adaptations • Translations: significantly higher than the 6 languages from UNESCO • Localization: incorporating the more relevant and superior quality and quantity of the national or regional literature base on the subject area; • Innovation: the creation of new, customized versions, e.g. Guide on Internet Access for Disabled Journalists based on the original UNESCO “The Net for Journalists” • Offline editing: critically important for countries with poor internet • Mobile phone access: taking advantage of 5 billion access points

6. An ideal CI OER Product • “UNESCO Model Curricula for Journalism Education” • Generic, adaptable, fully-prescriptive Curricula: • Course descriptions • Pedagogical approaches • Mode, weekly class agenda, number of teaching hours • Recommended text • Grading and assessment protocols • Available in 6 official languages • Adapted by 50+ institutions in 45 countries with backlog • The OER Platform allows a new journalism school to: • easily find courses, • compare how other schools have adapted them, and • freely copy and adapt the most suitable courses

7. Who will pilot the project? Piloted by: • Polytechnic of Namibia School of Communication • University of Namibia Department of Media Studies (Coordinated by UNESCO Windhoek) Development will commence very shortly Launch by November, 2011 We would like at least 1 OER Product from each Sector: • SC: Marovo Lagoon Encyclopedia • IOC: Ocean Teacher Academy • SHS: Bioethics Curriculum • CLT: Cultural Diversity Programming Lens • ED: Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE)

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9. OER Community on the WSIS Platform • Open community – www.wsis-community.org • 1,400+ members • 4 langauges: Eng, Fr, Sp, Pt • Call for language versions • UNESCO-maintained Global List of OER Initiatives • 250+ global list • Is your initiative on the list??

10. Open Educational Quality Initiative (OPAL) • EC-funded 2010 – 2011 Project: www.oer-quality.org • 7 partners: UNESCO, ICDE, EFQUEL, Aalto, OU UK, UCP, UDE • Objective: create an advanced OER Practices Framework • Building OPAL Register and OPAL Clearing House

11. 2012 World OER Forum • 10th Anniversary of the 2002 Forum • June, 2012 • Showcase world’s best OER policies, practices, tools, resources, and experts • Present the 2012 Paris OER Declaration • Start planning that trip to Paris 

12. Contact Abel Caine OER Programme Specialist ICT in Education, Science and Culture Section Information Society Division Communication and Information (CI) Sector UNESCO 1, rue Miollis Paris 75015 France E-mail: a.caine@unesco.org Phone: +33 (0)1 45 68 42 37