Promoting the UNESCO OER Programme within the 1st Africa Workshop of the OpenupEd Project Sat 7th June, 2014 within the 2014 ACDE Annual Conference, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

1. ICT in Education, Science and Culture Section
Knowledge Societies Division
Communication and Information (CI) Sector
UNESCO, Paris, France
www.unesco.org/webworld/en/oer
www.unesco.org/webworld/fr/oer

2. UNESCO defines Open Educational Resources as:
• Any type of learning materials (especially eLearning resources
and tools)
• Released under an open intellectual property licence or in the
public domain, allowing free-of-cost and legal
– Reuse
– Revision
– Remixing
– Redistribution
• Increase the quality of and access to education

3. Since 2002 UNESCO and OER are providing
Governments and Institutions with a range of services
including the development of:
• Policy Guidelines for higher education.
• Online Platforms and tools for sharing OERs.
• Online Communities of Practice for teachers,
learners, and experts.
• OER Research Chairs/publications
• Large projects – Hewlett OER Project
• Large events – World OER Congress
• Partnerships

4. • The WSIS OER Community encourage practitioners,
researchers, decision- and policy-makers, teachers, and
learners worldwideto freely share their knowledge
• 3,300+ members – Global List of OER Initiatives
• 7 languages, FOSS (ELGG)

5. • UNESCO and Open Educational Resources
relationship began in 2002 during a UNESCO
Global Forum of experts
• In 2012 UNESCO and the Commonwealth of
Learning organized the World OER Congress at the
UNESCO HQ in Paris from 20 – 22 June
• It was preceded by 6 worldwide Regional Forums
to gather contributions from all Education
stakeholders
• More than 400 delegates unanimously approved
the 2012 Paris OER Declaration

6. 1. Foster awareness and use of OER
2. Facilitate enabling environments for use of Information and
Communications Technologies (ICT)
3. Reinforce the development of strategies and policies on OER
4. Promote the understanding and use of open licensing frameworks
5. Support capacity building for the sustainable development of
quality learning materials
6. Foster strategic alliances for OER
7. Encourage the development and adaptation of
OER in a variety of languages/cultural contexts
8. Encourage research on OER
9. Facilitate finding, retrieving and sharing of OER
10.Encourage the open licensing of educational
materials produced with public funds

7. Globalizing
• 2 Project Locations:
• Africa – African Council for Distance Education
• Asia – Asian Association of Open Universities
1. 100% local ownership, adaptation
2. Capacity-building of the Secretariat, Professors,
Learners
3. Strict monitoring, evaluation, fund-raising,
promotion

8. Mr. Abel CAINE
a.caine@unesco.org
Programme Specialist for Open Solutions
Knowledge Societies Division
Communication and Information Sector
7, Place de Fontenoy
Paris, France
Mb : +33 (0)6 47 96 53 12