Introduction

Following the adoption of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER), UNESCO initiated a programme to support governments and educational institutions in implementing the Recommendation.

One such action is the development of a series of five briefing notes or guidelines for governments, one for each Action Area in the OER Recommendation. These briefing notes have been developed through a lengthy consultative process and in cooperation with OER experts worldwide. OER Africa has provided logistical and editorial assistance to UNESCO on this work as part of a formal cooperation agreement with UNESCO to provide support in implementation of the OER Recommendation.

The briefing notes

Each briefing note/guideline has the following structure:

• General explanation of what the action area covers.
• The main issues surrounding the action area.
• A Checklist/Matrix of possible actions.
• In-depth discussion of the main issues surrounding the action line.
• Examples of good practice.

The target audience is governments and educational institutions.

Each draft briefing note can be accessed here:

• OER Recommendation Action Area 1 Guidelines: Building the capacity of stakeholders v4
• OER Recommendation Action Area 2 Guidelines: Developing Supportive Policy v4
• OER Recommendation Action Area 3 Guidelines: Encouraging effective, inclusive and equitable access to quality OER v4
• OER Recommendation Action Area 4 Guidelines: Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER and monitoring progress v4
• OER Recommendation Action Area 5 Guidelines: Promoting and reinforcing international cooperation v4

Request for feedback

We would be grateful for any feedback on these texts. Please direct all feedback to the UNESCO OER Recommendation email address (oerrecommendation@unesco.org) by no later than 28 July 2023.

Background

These briefing notes draw heavily on in-depth background papers prepared by OER experts from around the world in each of the five Action Areas: Prof. Melinda dP. Bandalaria (building the capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER); Dr Javiera Atenas (developing supportive policy); Dr Ahmed Tlili (encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER); Dr Tel Amiel (nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER); and Ms Lisbeth Levey (facilitating international cooperation). We are deeply grateful for their assistance and expert knowledge.

Preparation of the text of the final guides was done with support from Neil Butcher and Alison Zimmerman of OER Africa.

In addition, further to regional consultations held from June 2022 to January 2023, and the responses to the first consultation on the Recommendation on OER by Member States, we have revised these papers to have a uniform format, and included a checklist of actions that had been developed by the Network of Open Orgs (NOO). The tables of possible actions for governments and institutions are adapted from an OER Recommendation Actions Matrix, which outlines practical activities that governments and educational institutions can consider operationalizing under the five action areas of the Recommendation. The Matrix was first developed in November 2019, using inputs from members of the Network of Open Orgs (NOO). The NOO is coordinated by Open Education Global (OEG) and aims to support the implementation of the UNESCO OER Recommendation. Its membership includes OEG, Community College Consortium for OER-Open Education Global, OER Africa, Open Education Policy Hub-Lab, Creative Commons, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, European Network for Catalysing Open Resources in Education (ENCORE+), International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE), ICDE OER Advocacy Committee, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), SPARC Europe, European Institute for Learning, Innovation and Cooperation and the International Community for Open Research and Education, Centrum Cyfrowe, Wikimedia Foundation, Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT)-SkillsCommons, together with representatives from higher education institutions (including University of Barcelona, University of Bonn, and Politecnico di Milano-METID, amongst others) and inter-governmental organizations such as the Commonwealth of Learning and UNESCO.

Image attribution

‘School diversity many hands held together’ by Wonder woman0731 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.