Greetings Open Education Friends,

 

UNESCO is drafting an Open Educational Resources (OER) Recommendation. This is an official UNESCO instrument that will both advise national governments on how to support open education in their countries and report on those efforts.


The draft Recommendation text has been prepared by a group of open education experts from UNESCO, researchers and practitioners from all world regions. The OER Recommendation builds on the Ljubljana OER Action Plan, a product of the 2nd World OER Congress.

 

The online consultation process is now open. This is an invitation to contribute to the draft. In addition to providing your own comments, please share this opportunity through your networks.


The text is available in English and French:


The deadline for submission of contributions is: 1 June, 2018. 

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Note: Some of us have discussed taking this opportunity to update the UNESCO OER definition. If you agree with this recommended edit, please include it in your comments. I have included detailed* rationale for the edits below.

  • Existing UNESCO OER definition:
    • Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

  • Proposed updated UNESCO OER definition:
    • Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others.

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With gratitude,


Cable



Cable Green, PhD
Director of Open Education
Creative Commons

@cgreen
Join: CC Open Education Platform
Join the CC Global Network. Get involved today.


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* Details re: suggested changes to the UNESCO OER definition:


(1) Change (OERs) to (OER)

  • reason: OER is both singular and plural.

(2) remove: "– digital or otherwise –"

  • reason: "digital or otherwise" is redundant with “in any medium”.  "Any medium" means: text, digital or other formats.

(3) remove: "with no or limited restrictions"

  • reasons:
    • Because all open licenses come with some kind of restriction (e.g., the requirement to provide attribution); "limited restrictions" is redundant with "open license." 
    • OER in the public domain has no restrictions. Because the definition says "public domain" - it is redundant to say "no restrictions."
    • In addition to being redundant, the phrase "limited restrictions" implies an author might add additional, custom license restrictions on her/his OER. This is not helpful messaging when the education community is best served by using standard, interoperable (not custom) open licenses.