"Defining OER policies for public content, and bringing them to life", presentation given at the OER policy workshop during OER14 conference on 28.04.2014 in Newcastle upon Tyne.

1. dr Alek Tarkowski
Creative Commons
http://oerpolicy.eu
Defining OER policies
for public content,
and bringing them to life.
OER14, Newcastle upon Tyne, 28.04.2014

2. From grassroots activity
to top-down policies
• „Open anything” begins with grassroots
activity and develops into a policy debate
over time
• Open data / PSI an obvious outlier

3. From grassroots activity
to top-down policies.
A shift from one kind of activity to the
other can be seen over time in most
fields of openness.

4. From grassroots activity
to top-down policies
• Policies provide strong leverage for
implementation of open standards
• Public character (funding) of content a
strong argument for openness: the
commons / public infrastructure
• Policies lack the element of personal,
voluntary decision – but are an expression
of a consensus as to the „management” of
common resources

5. Openness: a template.
We can map open policies based on a
template that lists all key areas to
address by policy means. This template
is a work in progress.

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

7. 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 (vs. open science)
• Clear institutional policy model
• Challenges:
• (relatively) low attention paid to licensing
• Low content reuse

8. 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 difficult
• Reuse: high potential / still little proof

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

10. Licensing debate
• Strong open licensing is crucial for
OER and other areas, where reuse is
of key importance (open data)
• Public funding – strong argument for
fully open licensing
• Open Knowledge Definition as a
underlying / unifiying mechanism for
standards negotiation

11. Beyond the licensing debate
• Open Access vs. Text and Data
Mining: the current debate in Europe,
which favours an approach based on
a new exception to copyright (instead
of a free licensing model)
demonstrates limits of open licensing.

12. Examples of policy language and
definitions for OERs and open
education.
At the beginning was the grassroots-
written Cape Town Declaration (2008).
http://capetowndeclaration.org/

13. OER definition: 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.

14. OER definition: 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.

15. 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 efforts.
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-
educational-resources/what-is-the-paris-oer-declaration/

16. OER definition: 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 finding, retrieving and sharing of OER.
j. Encourage the open licensing of educational
materials produced with public funds.

17. OER definition: 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.”

18. OER definition: Scotland
• „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.”
http://declaration.openscot.net/

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

20. OER definition: 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. Poland.
While lacking a general open education
policy, 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/

22. Poland: Open Textbooks
• Context: OER in Poland in last 5 years
• Coalition for Open Education (KOED)
• Public OER projects
• Grassroots activities
• 2012-2015: Open e-Textbooks project
• 2014: Open Primer project
• No policy (yet!) behind the activities

23. OER definition: Poland
• 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;
• all content will be available in at least one open
format – for example, web content will be
available as HTML5 documents;
• all content that is accessed online will be made
available in accordance with the current W3C
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

24. Open Public Resources Act
• General model from the „Open
textbooks” project
• Complimentary to Public Sector
Information rules -> together would
form a general open norm for public
content
• Inspiration drawn from AUSGOAL and
NZGOAL frameworks
• 2013: Bill proposal

25. 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_%28
FASTR%29

26. OER definition: FASTR (US)
• (4) free online public access to such final
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;

27. The MoU on OER between Alberta,
British Columbia and Saskatchewan
provinces of Canada includes an
explicit definition of a strong standard
of openness for OER.
http://www.gov.sk.ca/adx/aspx/adxGetMedia.aspx?mediaId=f3d342c4-ab61-44a4-9f96-
71ceb7810a5d&PN=Shared

28. OER definition: Canada
“Open Education Resources” means “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. Open licensing is built within
the existing framework of intellectual property
rights as defined by relevant international
conventions and respects the authorship of the
work.”

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

30. Opening Up Education
• [footnote] “OER are learning
resources that are usable, adaptable
to specific 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”.

31. Opening Up Education
• “Beneficiaries 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)

32. Opening Up Education
• Pragmatic approach instead of an
ideological one?
• (which OA already knows this very well)
• Educators, students don’t necessarily
care about openness – they care about
affordability, efficiency, ease of use,
quality
• And therefore policymakers care about
this too

33. Policy challenges
• Licensing standards / Risk of
Openwashing
• MOOCs and openness
• Commercial usage as the
controversial provision
• Differences between K-12 / HE /
Vocational / Lifelong / Informal
education

34. Thank you!
And please stay in touch:
@atarkowski
alek@creativecommons.pl
http://oerpolicy.eu