This session focuses on an example of capacity building opportunities offered by the Learning in a Digital Age 103 course from OER Foundation on “Open education, copyright and open licensing in a digital world”. Developed by Dr. Wayne Mackintosh at a New Zealand UNESCO Open Education Chair for the English-speaking world and Common Law countries, it has been translated into French by UNESCO and adapted to cover Civil Law countries by L’Université Numérique. It is not a law course per se, but it opens the minds of learners and authors to opportunities offered by various dimensions of “openness”, such as open access, OER and enables them to address the legal complexity faced by government bodies, schools and higher education institutions when they implement open education.
Building on this example, the session will demonstrate how cooperation between civil servants of Higher Education ministries, rectors/presidents of traditional universities and leaders of virtual universities can work together to jumpstart a national OER strategy in francophone Africa, extending first to lusophone Africa and Brazil, and on to hispanophone countries.
Its strengths:
- It is a free online capacity development course
- It provides free access to an online test, whereby successful learners have the opportunity to gain a Competency certificate
- It covers both Common Law and Civil Law countries
- It relies on a documented process, that is replicable in other languages, starting with Portuguese and Spanish
- It illustrates how an inclusive national OER strategy can be implemented, provided representatives from ministries of Higher Education, Education, professional training, Justice (licensing) and economics (trade negotiations on IPR) are involved in the process
Caveat: This approach focuses on building trust between governments and governing bodies in higher education for implementing the OER recommendation. While it is fundamental to build an inclusive national strategy that protects and fosters innovation, it is not a substitute for more disruptive approaches at the level of individual educators that is needed in order to mainstream the use of OER, which should come in a second stage.
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Understand the specific challenges for implementing the UNESCO OER recommendation in sub-Saharan francophone countries
- Understand the differences in approach to OER licensing between “common law” countries and “civil law countries”
- Understand how this approach to francophone countries, with a critical mass of OER that is substantially smaller than for English or Mandarin can apply to other audiences such as lusophone or hispanophone countries
