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

[Subbiah Arunachalam]

Friends:

Champions of Open Access, in my opinion, should also support the Open Course ware (or Open Educational Resources) movement. Indeed leading scientists and scholars in the developing world, particularly Fellows of the leading Academies, should produce high quality online educational materials at all levels (school, college and unversity) not only in English or French but also in their own languages. 

A few weeks ago I was with two outstanding Indian physicists (both of whom are not only known for their research but also as great teachers and men of high integrity). Both were concerned about the poor quality of school science textbooks produced by a government agency and widely used in the Indian school system. Both have children in school (or college) and they find the books have plenty of mistakes and the teachers are not up to mark, and when they want to intervene the children do not allow them for fear of being failed in the exam by their teachers! I suggest that these professors and others like them should collectively produce good online educational material and make them available via open access portals. Very similar to the MIT course ware, but in our own languages. 

The Indian Academy of Sciences has a programme for improving education at school and college level and they do select a certain number of teachers every year to spend a few months in a good laboratory with Fellows of the Academy. The Academy may come forward to set up an open course ware programme for school and college level science courses. 

About a month ago I spoke to young assistant professors of biology at a premier Indian higher educational institutions, and bioth of them readily agreed to contribute to such a programme. 

A few days ago I was returning from Delhi and a leading Indian condensed matter theorist was on the same flight. He told me that of late he had started writing popular science articles in science in his mother tongue (Tamil) and he gave me an article he had written on Einstein. It was superb. We need many more such articles written by many mre people and all of them should be made available free on open access portals. 

Best wishes.

Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Brendan Barrett 
To: Edu Mailinglist 
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 7:07 AM
Subject: [WSIS Edu] WSIS Parallel Event on Open Educational Resources - 14November 2005


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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