Slides from a workshop conducted during the "Open Educational Ideas" conference, Berlin, 7th September 2015.

1. dr Alek Tarkowski
Centrum Cyfrowe
Creative Commons
Koalicja Otwartej Edukacji
How
to
develop
Open
Educa1onal
Resources
policies
at
na1onal
and
ins1tu1onal
level:
The
primary
and
secondary
school
sector

3. 1. What is Open?

4. Digital = open
Providing a strong standard for open
licensing should be a key goal of open
educational policy.

5. What is Open?
• The term is often used in a general
sense
• Importance of strong standards of open
• Free licensing as the basic standard

6. Open =
Access to Content +
Use Rights

7. „Open All”
• Free / Open Software
• Open Access … and Open Science
• Open education (HE, K-12,
preschool)
• Open data: Public Sector Information,
Public Data
• Open GLAM: heritage, cultural sector
content

8. grassroots activities and
top-down policies
Grassroots activities:
• We began in Poland with grassroots
activities
• Advantage of personal engagement
• Activists from beyond the educational
system

9. grassroots activities and
top-down policies
O"cial policies
• Policies provide strong leverage for
implementation of open standards
• Public character (funding) of content
a strong argument for openness: the
commons / public infrastructure

10. From education to open education
• Resource policies are typically a blind
spot of educational (also scienti"c,
cultural) policy – not addressed by the
education system
• Stakeholders do not see this as crucial
issue
• But: importance of OER model as an
enabler of change
• Quality and equality of education

11. Education and open education
• Looking from a broader perspective, the
open education argument can be seen as
just a footnote for more important
debates.
• Resource policies are typically a blind
spot of educational (also scienti"c,
cultural) policy
• But: the importance of OER model as an
enabler of change

12. Licensing debate
Providing a strong standard for open
licensing should be a key goal of open
educational policy.

13. Licensing debate
Providing a strong standard for open
licensing should be a key goal of open
educational policy.

14. Licensing debate
• Strong open licensing (free
licensing) for OER and other areas,
where reuse is important
• Public funding – strong argument
for fully open licensing
• Open Knowledge De#nition as a
underlying / uni"ying mechanism for
standards negotiation
• CC BY / CC BY SA / CC0

15. OER de#nition: Cape Town Declaration
2. Open educational resources: Second, we call on
educators, authors, publishers and institutions to
release their resources openly. These open
educational resources should be freely shared
through open licences which facilitate use,
revision, translation, improvement and sharing by
anyone. Resources should be published in formats
that facilitate both use and editing, and that
accommodate a diversity of technical platforms.
Whenever possible, they should also be available in
formats that are accessible to people with
disabilities and people who do not yet have access
to the Internet.

16. OER de#nition: Cape Town Declaration
3. Open education policy: Third, governments,
school boards, colleges and universities should
make open education a high priority. Ideally,
taxpayer-funded educational resources should
be open educational resources. Accreditation
and adoption processes should give preference to
open educational resources. Educational resource
repositories should actively include and highlight
open educational resources within their
collections.

17. OER de#nition: UNESCO
a. Foster awareness and use of OER.
b. Facilitate enabling environments for use of ICT.
c. Reinforce development of OER strategies and policies.
d. Promote understanding and use of open licensing.
e. Support capacity building for the sustainable
development of quality learning materials.
f. Foster strategic alliances for OER.
g. Encourage development and adaptation of OER in a
variety of languages and cultural contexts.
h. Encourage research on OER.
i. Facilitate "nding, retrieving and sharing of OER.
j. Encourage the open licensing of educational
materials produced with public funds.

18. OER de#nition: UNESCO
• UNESCO
„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.”

19. The UNESCO Paris Declaration (2012)
does not provide a strong open
standard (due to the „limited
restrictions” language). Still, it provides
a baseline, used as point of refence in
later policy making e$orts.
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/
open-educational-resources/what-is-the-paris-oer-declaration/

20. OER de#nition: Hewlett
• Hewlett Foundation
„OER are teaching, learning, and
research resources that reside in the
public domain or have been released
under an intellectual property license
that permits their free use and re-
purposing by others.”

21. The Hewlett Foundation de#nition
provides a strong standard of openness
through its de#nition of OER.
http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/open-educational-resources

22. OER de#nition: FASTR (US)
• (4) free online public access to such "nal
peer-reviewed manuscripts or published
versions as soon as practicable, but not later
than 6 months after publication in peer-
reviewed journals;
• (5) providing research papers as described in
paragraph (4) in formats and under terms that
enable productive reuse, including
computational analysis by state-of-the-art
technologies;

23. The language used in the proposal for
the FASTR Bill in the United States
provides a model way of distinguishing
between access and reuse, and securing
both outcomes of openness.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Fair_Access_to_Science_and_Technology_Research_Act_
%28FASTR%29

24. Opening Up Education
• [footnote] “OER are learning
resources that are usable,
adaptable to speci"c learning
needs, and shareable freely”.
• “Ensure that all educational
materials supported by Erasmus+
are available to the public under
open licenses and promote similar
practices under EU programmes”.

25. Opening Up Education
• “Bene"ciaries of Erasmus+ grants
producing any such materials,
documents and media in the scope
of any funded project should make
them available for the public, in
digital form, freely accessible
through the Internet under open
licences”
(Program guide)

26. The „Opening up Education” initiative
and the „Erasmus Plus” program of the
European Union includes an open
licensing requirement. What is missing
is a de#nition of open licensing that
would set a standard of openness for
grantees.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-813_en.htm

27. Poland

28. Poland.
Poland has developed a strong, model
standard of openness for educational
resources, as part of its „Cyfrowa
szkoła” (Digital School) program.
http://centrumcyfrowe.pl/english/digital-school-e-textbooks-program-a-year-and-a-half-
later/

29. Poland: grassroots
• 2008: Coalition for Open Education
(KOED)
• Wolne lektury repository
• Digital libraries, Open Access as related
activities
• Relatively little involvement of educators

30. Poland: policies
• 2010: „Włącz Polskę” – OER for Polish
schools abroad
• Grant programs by Ministries
• 2012-2015: Open e-Textbooks project
• 2014: Open Primer project
Key themes:
• IT and education and provision of IT
equipment
• Availability of digital resources for new
curriculum

31. Poland: Open Textbooks
• Part of the broader „Digital school”
program
• 62 e-books on 14 subjects, 2500 other
educational resources,
• Target: use by 40% of teachers
• Modern, innovative, modular, mobile
platform (HTML5)
• Design of innovative pedagogies
• under a free license (CC-BY)
• Focus on (transforming) textbooks

32. OER de#nition: Poland
• Licensing: all content will be available under
the CC BY license (or comparable) – that allows
use of resources and their derivatives without
fees, in an unlimited, nonexclusive manner;
• Formats: all content will be available in at least
one open format – for example, web content
will be available as HTML5 documents;
• Accessibility: all content that is accessed
online will be made available in accordance
with the current W3C Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
• + open web platform

33. Poland: Policy context
• “What is 100% funded by public money
should be free and accessible”
• Context of the ACTA debate
• Social expectations are egalitarian with
regard to education
• The importance of publishers in public
debate + overlap between education and
culture (i.e. reading policy)

34. Poland: Public debate
„Pros”
• Educational resources shouldn’t be treated
simply as commodities
• Free access does not preclude commercial
exploitation - if true value is added
• Public intervention provides innovation in
a sti&ed, oligopolic market
• Reversed moral hazards!

35. Poland: Public debate
„Cons”
• Free licenses should not be an obligation.
• “Free-license” movement supports revenues
from network tra'c over revenues from
creative work
• Open textbooks will lead to destruction of
Polish creative / educational industries
• Commercial use rights are the fundamental
problem

36. Poland: towards an OER policy
Challenges
• The access-related advantage of OER is obvious –
the (re)use potential has still not be proven
• E-textbook vs. primer
• Textbook: a pivot for change or a ball and chain?
• Is worrying only about textbook market
shortsighted?
• How to build policies and practices that reinforce
each other?
• Who do teachers trust? Publishers
• Business models?

37. OER coalitions in Europe

38. Elements of EU OER:
repositories
Norway: NDLA
Slovakia: e-Aktovka
Belgium: KlasCement
Netherlands: Wikiwijs
Czech Republic: RVP.cz

39. Elements of EU OER:
textbooks
Poland: e-textbooks
Slovenia: Opening
Up Slovenia
France: Sesamath, Livres Ouverts

40. Elements of EU OER:
City policies
Leicester: OER capital of
The World

41. Leicester OER Policy
• Permission for teachers to create and
share OER
• 84 schools across the city school district
• Tightly alligned with digital literacy
agenda

42. Open policy: a template
• Legal / licensing standards
• Author / publisher /
intermediary compliance
• Content type
• Repositories
• Embargo
• Metadata
• Use / reuse practices (by users)

43. point of reference: OA
• Advantages:
• Mature content production and distribution
model (also from an economic perspective)
• 20+ years of experience w/ implementation
• Precise goals / tools / theory of change –
„modest” in a good sense
• Clear institutional policy model
• Challenges:
• (relatively) low attention paid to licensing
• Low content reuse
• Still not there!

44. point of reference: OA
• Legal / licensing standards: CC BY
• Author / publisher / intermediary
compliance: Green and Gold OA model
• Content type : peer reviewed journal
articles, data
• Repositories: standard, open source tools
• Embargo: 6 / 12 months
• Metadata: Dublin Core
• Use / reuse practices (by users): few

45. point of reference: OER
• Advantages:
• Clear arguments about importance of reuse
• Greater potential for grassroots involvement
• Challenges:
• Less mature implementation model
• Tools / standards for OER
• Ongoing licensing debate
• More varied content makes developing a theory
of change di'cult
• Reuse: high potential / still little proof

46. point of reference: OER
• Legal / licensing standards: CC BY / CC BY SA
• Author / publisher / intermediary
compliance: ???
• Content type : textbooks, ???
• Repositories: ???
• Embargo: none
• Metadata: ???
• Use / reuse practices (by users): many (?)

47. Beyond the licensing debate

48. Beyond the licensing debate

49. Beyond the licensing debate

50. Open
Lesson

51. oerpolicy.eu

52. openpolicynetwork.org

53. Thank you!
And please stay in touch:
@atarkowski
alek@creativecommons.pl
http://oerpolicy.eu
All icons and the OER pipe graphic: Piotr Chuchla, CC BY