The purpose of the policy forum is to establish guidelines for mainstreaming open educational practices - practices which
support the production, use and reuse of open educational resources - at the institutional level. Open educational practices
help learners, educational professionals, organizational leaders, and policy makers improve quality in higher education and
adult education and training. The forum will be held in cooperation with the CONCEDE initiative which focuses on the innovative
topic of quality related to user-generated content, with the intent of promoting concepts of quality in vocational education
and training, higher education and adult learning.
The policy forum will examine the results of both initiatives (OPAL and CONCEDE) and their activities, and will seek to define strategies for the future. The forum aims to bring together decision makers with an interest in establishing a strategy to take forward the results of these initiatives, and will concentrate on how to best capitalize on the use of open educational practices for the benefit of quality educational provision supported through ICT.
Speakers
The policy forum will be opened by Indrajit Banerjee, Director, Knowledge Societies UNESCO, and will include contributions from Grainne Conole, Professor of Learning and Innovations at the University of Leicester, UK, Ulf-Daniel Ehlers, Professor of Educational Management and Lifelong Learning and Vice President for Quality and Academic Affairs at Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooporative State University, Germany and Rory McGreal of Athabasca University, Canada. Zeynep Varoglu and Abel Caine of the Knowledge Societies Division Communications and Information Sector at UNESCO will also report on the UNESCO/ Commonwealth of Learning Partnership for OER including the newly launched OER Guidelines for Higher Education.
The OPAL Initiative is implemented through a consortium including the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE), the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL), and a number of European universities, and is supported by the European Commission.
To register for participation in person or online for the seminar, please go to the following link: www.oer-quality.org/policyseminar