A Coalition to support the implementation of the OER recommendations
The UNESCO recommendations in Future International Collaboration in the field of Open Educational Resources (OER) was adopted on 25 November 2019 by 195 UNESCO Member States at the meeting of the UNESCO General Conference.
This is an important and unique milestone that offers opportunities to promote open education worldwide. Why is it so important: This Recommendations are an official UNESCO instrument that gives national governments a specific list of recommendations to support open education in their countries and to collaborate with other nations.
Recognizing the importance of the UNESCO OER Recommendations, a coalition of organizations committed to promoting open education worldwide has joined forces to support its implementation.
ICDE is one of the partners, other coalition partners (in alphabetical order) are:
International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE)
Open Education Global (formerly Open Education Consortium)
The coalition, now coordinated by Open Education Global will share its strengths and expertise and will pool and coordinate efforts to create and provide comprehensive resources and services to support the implementation of the OER recommendations in all Member States. Implementation support will focus on assistance to the OER recommendations. The Coalitions work are two-fold:
To work on strategies, and implementation of the five areas of action:
Building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, use, adapt and redistribute OER
Developing supportive policy
Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER
Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER
Facilitating international co-operation
2. Monitoring and reporting:
1. Deploying appropriate research programmes, tools and indicators to measure effectiveness
2. Collecting, presenting, and disseminating progress, good practices innovations and research reports
3. Strategies for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness and long-term financial efficiency of OER.
The coalition will meet in early 2020 to develop a list of services, materials, activities and communication plans that will be used to support national governments. Implementation support will focus on supporting the five recommendations and on monitoring and reporting.
The ICDE is grateful that Open Education Global has brought this group of coalition members together. Fostering open education and OER have always been core activities for ICDE. Together the objectives of the UNESCO OER Recommendations can be met, and to build open educational capacity and effectiveness with stakeholders around the world, in order to achieve the SDG4, and that significant progress in access to quality education for all.
Professor, Dr. Ebba Ossiannilsson ICDE EC, ICDE OER Advocacy Committee, Chair