[WSIS Edu] WSIS Parallel Event on Open Educational Resources - 14 November 2005

[Brendan Barrett]

World Summit on the Information Society

Tunis, Tunisia, 16-18 November 2005



Parallel Event on Widening Access to Knowledge through Open Sharing:

The Growing OpenCourseWare Movement

14 November 2005



Monday, 14 November 2005, 15.00-19.00

Saint Augustin Conference Room, Kram Expo Centre



Background
The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was first coined and  
adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of OpenCourseWare for  
Higher Education in Developing Countries. OER champions the sharing  
of knowledge worldwide to increase human intellectual capacity and  
can best be understood as the open sharing of educational content,  
enabled by tools (such as the World Wide Web) and defined by  
standards (such as Creative Commons), for use and adaptation by the  
global community of educators and learners.



OpenCourseWare (OCW), a critical component of the OER movement, is  
defined as a free, publicly accessible, and openly licensed digital  
resource that offers high quality learning materials structured  
around courses and presented in a reasonably consistent format. An  
OCW is a publication of course materials created by faculty to  
support teaching and learning. For any given course, the published  
materials should fully convey the parameters of the course’s subject  
matter and ideally represent a substantially complete set of all the  
materials used in the course.



For many educators and learners in the developing world, up-to-date  
material in science and technology is in particularly short supply.  
The value in openly sharing quality OCW resources is that they foster  
the process of educational change, as societies seek to bring their  
educational institutions into the Knowledge Age. The use of external  
resources for educational improvement is not a new idea — colleges  
and universities all over the world are accustomed to using  
publications from many sources, facilitating exchanges involving  
students and faculty, and seeking information via the Internet. The  
OCW Movement, however, takes the principle of sharing and cross- 
institutional exchange to the next level, enabling open access to a  
vast library of high-quality educational materials in key curricular  
areas from a wide array of institutions all over the world.



Outcomes

The intended outcomes for the event are that participating  
institutions and organizations:



·      Develop a common understanding of OCW and the broader OER  
movement;

·      Enhance their awareness of the growing international body of  
OCW resources; and

·      Find effective ways to adapt and use OCW materials for  
teaching and learning, and ultimately raise the general standard of  
global higher education.



In addition, an intended outcome for the event is to emphasize the  
importance of open sharing of educational materials as a critical  
component of the Plan of Action.


World Summit on the Information Society

Tunis, Tunisia, 16-18 November 2005



Parallel Event on Widening Access to Knowledge through Open Sharing:

The Growing OpenCourseWare Movement

14 November 2005



Monday, 14 November 2005, 15.00-19.00

Saint Augustin Conference Room, Kram Expo Centre



Draft Agenda


15.00- 15.30            Keynote address

Speaker:            Dr. G. M. (Mike) Reed, Director of the United  
Nations University

International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST)





15.30- 16.40            Setting the Context: The World of Open  
Educational Resources

Moderator:            Marshall Smith, Education Program Director,  
William and Flora

Hewlett Foundation



Panelists

o      Derek Keats, Executive Director of Information and  
Communication Services, University of the Western Cape

o      Paula Le Dieu, Director of Creative Commons International

o      Karen Lynch, Communications Director, Development Gateway  
Foundation





16.40- 17.50             The Growing International OpenCourseWare  
Movement

Moderator:       Shigeru Miyagawa, Professor and Faculty Advisor, MIT  
OCW



Panelists

o      Yoshimi Fukuhara, Professer, Keio University

o      Divina Frau Meigs, Professer, Université Paris 3-Sorbonne

o      Mary Lee, Associate Provost, Tufts University, and Dean for  
Educational Affairs, Tufts University School of Medicine





17.50- 18.45            Benefits and Challenges to Using and Adapting  
OpenCourseWare Materials

Moderator:       Brendan Barrett, Academic Programme Officer, UNU



Panelists

o      Kuzvinetsa Peter Dzvimbo, Rector, African Virtual University

o      Elizabeth Longworth, Director of the Information Society  
Division, UNESCO

o      Chunyan Wang, Professor at Renmin University of China School  
of Law, and the China and Project Representative for Creative Commons
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