Presentation on the new, significantly innovative Open Educational Resources (OER) Platform being developed by UNESCO

1. UNESCO OER Platform
Abel Caine
ICT in Education, Science and Culture Section
Information Society Division
Communication and Information (CI) Sector

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 allowing
free use and re-use

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-makers at Ministry or
institutional-level looking for model policies,
guides, or best-practices;
Teachers looking for courses, syllabi, and
teaching materials and
Learners also 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;
Customization: the creation of 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. What is an ideal UNESCO OER Product?
A UNESCO original Product that has
been successfully adapted with demand
Where a Network exists actively
discussing and advancing the theme
The Product is within a priority
Programme
Highly editable Source file exists
UNESCO Field Office representation

7. 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

8. 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, 2010
We would like at least 1 OER Product from each Sector:
SC1: Marovo Lagoon Encyclopedia
SC2: Microscience Experiments
SHS: Bioethics Curriculum
WHC: Forum Univeristy Programme
ED: LIFE

9. WALK-THROUGH
OER Platform
Team
Abel Caine
Igor Nuk
Hara Padhy
Maria Liouliou
Jaco Du Toit
Indrajit Banerjee