Reflections from the ICDE OERAC Mandate Period 2020
The ICDE OER Advocacy Committee (OERAC) completed its second term in 2020. Throughout the year, the committee had a particular focus on supporting the implementation of the 2019 UNESCO OER recommendation. A full report has been submitted to the ICDE Board.
The UNESCO Recommendation on OER supports the creation, use and adaptation of inclusive and high-quality OER and facilitates international collaboration in this area. The recommendation outlines five action areas, namely:
Building the capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER
Developing supportive policy for OER
Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER
Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER, and
Promoting and reinforcing international cooperation in OER
In addition to impressive and extensive individual advocacy, contributions, consultations, publications, keynotes at national, regional and international levels, the ICDE OERAC carried out two joint activities in particular during the period:
A joint article entitled “From Open Educational Resources to Open Educational Practices. For resilient sustainable education” was carried out on demand and published in DKC-DMK. The abstract was translated to French and Spanish. Read the full article here.
A global piloting survey on the implementations of the UNESCO OER Recommendation was jointly conducted. The abstract was translated to Chinese, French, Hindi, Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish. You can find the survey here.
During the year, it was confirmed by all ICDE OER ambassadors that due to COVID-19, the increase and extent of the use and development of OER was obvious – as well as the awareness of OER. However, as reported from all regions in the OERAC survey on the implementation of the UNESCO OER recommendation, the spring of 2020 was probably too early for the recommendation to be implemented, especially at policy level. This is natural, as the survey was conducted only seven months after the launch of the OER recommendation.
The pilot survey was both acknowledged by the UNESCO OER Dynamic Coalition and announced in its newsletter, the Network of Open Organizations, and the OER Policy Forum also highlighted and acknowledged the survey.
The OERAC has worked closely with ICDE with the UNESCO OER Dynamic Coalition, the Network of Open Organisations, the OER Policy Forum and the OE4BW initiative. For OE4BW, two of the ambassadors served as mentors and one of the ambassadors served as Hub Coordinator. The mentoring program will continue in 2021.
Recommendations from the ICDE OERAC
The OERAC proposed several recommendations, both general and specific to ICDE, based on work during the 2020 mandate period and the pilot survey. The specific recommendations include:
Increasing visibility in Open Education and OER, trying to develop closer and stronger partnership with member states of UNESCO via mainstream universities in the complementation of the OER recommendation with more practical guidance/policy.
Establish regional consortiums or alliances among the member universities to promote and share OER.
Reinforcing communication around existing OER efforts, and how they further develop in the coming years will (1) give countries recognition for (direct and indirect) work implementing the UNESCO OER Recommendation and (2) strengthen the framework the Recommendation provides for everyone.
Developing a stronger network and practices around information sharing. When more policy makers and institutions become aware of existing (1) capacity building initiatives, (2) supportive policies, (3) examples of incentive structures and initiatives building more equitable access to quality OER, (4) sustainability models, and (5) examples of monitoring and evaluation efforts, in other countries, it will be easier to adapt these efforts to local needs.
The Committee also made some recommendations concerning ICDE actions:
On a regional/national level, ICDE should promote the progress of implementation of the UNESCO OER recommendation, and its implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
ICDE should promote translations of the UNESCO OER Recommendation, and its implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
ICDE should promote micro, meso and macro level implementation, monitoring and evaluation efforts of the UNESCO OER Recommendation.
ICDE should promote the work being performed at the UNESCO offices and at governmental levels for policies and strategies.
ICDE should continue to promote the achieved experiences with OER, the opening up of education, and the digital transformation during the pandemic and work for sustainability.
ICDE should promote working partnership for implementation of OER, and build local, regional, national and international partnerships with stakeholders to secure implementation and impact.
ICDE website can be used to promote the linking portals into diverse OER courses offered by the member universities, and if possible, by the mainstream universities.
Future efforts
Given the paucity of research and evaluation activities reported in the pilot survey, ICDE could add value to the UNESCO Dynamic Coalition efforts by focusing on research and evaluation findings in the near future. Conducting research and evaluation activities related to OER activities developed in response to the UNESCO OER recommendation would fill a current gap. ICDE could explore large-scale impact evaluation of existing interventions to support the use, reuse and sharing of OER in local countries. However, impact evaluations are time- and resource-intensive, so this may not be feasible.
Another suggestion could be for ICDE to begin measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of the OER policies through additional surveys and research over time. Nonetheless, the most important recommendation related to actions is associated with ICDE's Strategic Plan 2021-2024. Several of the strategic goals are related to OER and its implementation.
First, many of the strategies relate to advocacy, the importance of which was also emphasised by the presidents during the ICDE Presidents’ Forum 2020 on November 25, 2020. Second, several of the strategic goals in the strategies relate specifically to OER. For the new OERAC with the mandate period 2021-2024, it is therefore recommended that their mandate include further work and actions to achieve the ICDE strategic objectives and related actions.
In this spirit, as Chair of the ICDE OERAC, I would like to thank all OERAC Ambassadors in 2020 and welcome the newly appointed OERAC Ambassadors for the next close mandate period 2021-2022. It will be a great honour and exciting to work with the newly appointed OERAC. I would also like to thank ICDE for relying on and continuing the work of OERAC.
Contributed by:
Prof. Dr. Ebba Ossiannilsson
ICDE Board
Chair of ICDE OERAC
ICDE Ambassador for the global advocacy of OER