Technology and Education:The emergency of Openness

26 and 27 de February de 2010

ISEG - UTLisboa

Carolina Rossini

Coordinator of the Open Educational Resources:

Brazilian Challenges and Perspectives

Funded by the Open Society Institute

and

Fellow – Berkman Center

Harvard University

Implementation Resources

Learning Content Tools

Source: Ahrash Bissel - ccLeran

Implementation Resources

Learning Content Tools

Full courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, journals

Text on OER slides are licensed GNU FDL v1.2http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html

Implementation Resources

Learning Content Tools

Software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities.

Implementation Resources

Learning Content Tools

Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.

Text on OER slides are licensed GNU FDL v1.2http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html

Implementation Resources

Learning Content Tools

Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.

Full courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, journals

Software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities.

Text on OER slides are licensed GNU FDL v1.2http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html

“…The open provision of educational resources

enabled by information and education technologies, for

consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users…” (UNESCO, 2002)

• Reference materials

• Open textbooks/learning materials

• Platforms

• Open courses

• Tools

http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/

http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/

OSI-Cape Town Open Education Declaration

“A revolution of sorts is sweeping education...In another promising development, a coalition of

educators, foundations and Internet pioneers in January signed a declaration urging governments and

publishers to make publicly funded educational material available free over the Internet. The

Cape Town Open Education Declaration has so far been signed by more than 140 organizations and nearly

1,500 individuals.”

Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2008

Strategies for OE

• Open education policy: Governments, school boards, colleges and universities should make taxpayer-funded educational resources OER.

• Open content licenses: OER should be freely shared through open licenses which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing.

• Collaborative production: Educators and students can participate in creating, using, adapting and improving OER.

Past and Current Projects

• UNESCO-OER (2005 - )

• Cadernos Abertos (“open notebooks”) – FGV Law School Brazil (2006-2007)

• Copyright for Librarians (2007-2008)

• OSI-OER-Br: Challenges and Perspectives (2008 - )

Lessons learned

• Implementation needs to be relevant nation-to-nation;

• Implementation needs to be relevant to different institutional cultures;

• We need to build capacity inside the institutions;

Why Invest in Open?

Reasons to adopt OER:

1. If you are publicly funded;

2. Digital technology will surpass current teaching and learning structures;

3. Cost implications on continuing to rely on Statutory License schemes and only very restrictive uses permitted (down size transaction costs);

4. OER are easier to manage (down size transaction costs):• No complex copying limits;• No restrictions on audience ie. Parents, community

members and lifelong learners;• Allows teachers and students to modify and share

resources.

Why Invest in Open?

5. Public Access - Educational institutions (particularly those publicly funded) should leverage taxpayers money by allowing free sharing and reuse of resources.

6. Quality can be improved and costs of content development reduced by sharing and reusing.

7. Open sharing will speed up development of learning resources.

8. New opportunities for non-mainstream authors/content.

Why Invest in Open?

Wide dissemination of education contributes to more inclusive and cohesive societies, fosters equal opportunities and innovation in line with

the priorities of a renewed social agenda focused on the knowledge society. In this sense, this study brings a series of recommendations

to foster this dialogue.

Goals

• Think digital and not digitized;

• Generate “appropriate models” to address the educational gap;

• Respect for Constitutional and Human Rights;

• Absorb the Knowledge Society culture;

• Institutional marketing is a by-product not a meaningful purpose for OER;

Barriers to OER

1. Legal > Copyright Licenses, Copyright Law, Public Purchase Contracts

2. Economic > Sustainability

3. Social > Fear and System of Incentives

Public Policy

b

CC Licenses Support Interoperability

bn

bd ba

bnd

bna

OER wants education to be here:

“All rights reserved”

Public Domain

Attribution Only

bCC BY

are clear, comprehensible and compatible

The case of

BRAZIL

OSI-OER-Br: Challenges and Perspectives

a) Contributions for the OER blog (Open Education News);

b) A Green Paper;

c) OER collateral materials in Portuguese;  

d) A regional conference on OER with results from Brazil, USA, others OSI-OER-funded projects in the second semester of 2009;

e) Awareness raising and community building = spin-off projects

f) Work with policy makers = hearings in the Brazilian Congress + UNESC

g) Network: connect Brazilian efforts with foreign efforts

The Green Paper*

There are four axes of structure to the OER context in Brazil, echoing internal structures of traditional education as well as the new opportunities afforded by the move to digital networks for dissemination and use of educational materials:

• public access to educational materials in general, as an open education strategy to include the individual, the family, the community and the whole society in the process of learning and of collaborative knowledge production;

• the economic cycle of educational materials production and its impact on the “right of citizens to learn”;

• the possible benefits OER may bring to learning strategies, the production of educational resources more sensitive to issues driven regional diversity and regional standards of quality;

• the impact of digital, online, open resources on teachers’ continuous professional development.

*Available at: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/access/articles_publications/publications/oer-brazil-20100101

Case Studies

• Analysis of more that 13 Brazilian Projects which missions are to provide (open) educational recourses.

• The analysis was done on its legal and technical interoperability, and in regard to who owns the rights over the content.

• Conclusions and recommendations were built.

Public Domain Portal

Projeto Folhas

Debate around Textbooks

• The right to copy books;• Value Chain of books

Production;• Taxpayer funding;• Government funding

and buying.

Scielo Books

Cape Town Declaration and Brazil

Encourage educators and learners to actively participate in the emerging open education movement. Creating and using open resources should be considered integral to education and should be supported and rewarded accordingly;

Open educational resources should be freely shared through open licenses which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources should be published in formats that facilitate both use and editing, and that accommodate a diversity of technical platforms. Governments, school boards, colleges and universities should make open education a high priority. Ideally, taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources. Accreditation and adoption processes should give preference to open educational resources.

Recommendations II. Recommendation on the intersection of Content and Intellectual Property Rights:

Without clear exceptions and limitations for educational purposes and a uniform governmental policy managing the intellectual property rights that affect the educational resources paid by the diversity of governmental entities, the Brazilian society will face great legal insecurity when accessing and trying to use educational resources. Public money will be not efficiently spent, projects will not legally interoperate due to the myriad of intellectual property owners and licenses, and the goals of education democratization and inclusion will not be fully realized. Thus, we recommend:

1) Reform of Copyright Law: Amend copyright law to expand and formalize exceptions and limitations related to education (such as private copying), libraries (such as archive and preservation rights), and access to and use of resources for education without direct commercial gain;

2) Taxpayer money and public access: Establish a federal law/policy mandating “open” and cost-free licenses and, thus, access to books, theses and articles necessary for higher-education when these are produced by professors working full-time in public universities; or students receiving full-time scholarships from the government; or when publications are the output of public-funded projects.

3) Taxpayer money and public access: Establish a federal law/policy mandating “open” and cost-free licenses and, thus, access to books and other educational resources, such as digital or analog learning objects, developed by and/or paid by the federal government, state governments, local governments and its sub-contractors;

4) Better design to guarantee access: Unify copyright policy, specifically through the establishment of a unified protocol and open licensing approach regarding projects, which aim to provide educational resources to all levels of education, when these are developed by and/or paid by the federal government, state governments, local governments and its sub-contractors

Recommendations II

II. Recommendation on the intersection of Content and Price

The lack of transparency in regard to market information of the real cost of educational materials generates an artificial market power to publishers in regard to the government and the society. Thus, we recommend:

1) Market transparency: Require publishers to disclose information on textbooks’ wholesale prices and revision histories;

2) Market transparency: Commission studies and reports to investigate high prices of textbooks and profit margins of companies operating with substantial revenues based on public purchase of textbooks.

Recommendations III

III. Recommendation on the intersection of Content and Pedagogy policy

Analysis of the Brazilian education environment and the capabilities of absorption of ICTs, or even the level of media literacy, shows that Brazilian students lack the skills to be fully integrated into the knowledge society, contribute to it and access its benefits. Thus, a focus on better qualifications for our teachers is crucial, since this will have an increasing important role in providing guidance and assistance in the education process in the knowledge society. Thus, we recommend:

1) Train the trainers: Create online courses to train teachers in the use of online educational resources and media and TIC literacy;

2) Train society: Create specific pedagogical resources for the use of OER open, free and available to all;

3) Incentives and metrics: Create metrics to reward teachers who not only use OER but recontribute new OER, and use those metrics in the tenure and career promotion decisions;

Recommendations IVIV. Recommendation on the intersection of Content and Technology policy

Develop a standardized set of open protocols of legal and technical open standards required to make digital educational repositories interoperable. The policy must cover all forms of creative content, from e-theses to learning objects and courseware to software essential for digital education. Thus, we recommend:

1) Standardize thesis policies: Develop a unified technology policy for access and re-use of Theses, spanning from data to software to creative works to know-how and rights to practice, connected to existing technology standards like the Open Archives Initiative, to develop a single meta-index of Brazilian e-Theses.

2) Standardize courseware policies: Develop a unified technology policy for access and re-use of Open University courseware, spanning from data to software to creative works to know-how and rights to practice, connected to existing technology standards like the Open Archives Initiative, to develop a single meta-index of Brazilian Open Courseware.

3) Standardize software policy: Develop a standard set of funding mandates for software development to result in Free / Libre Open Source Software.

1. Open systems and open networks can create new modes of innovation

2. New modes of innovation can be helped, or hurt, by institutional and government policies and design

3. Brazil is experimenting with openness, but it is just in the beginning

“Thus, this book speaks. It has a voice

that allows you to read yourself and you

are invited to contribute to its

writing.”

Pierre LévyThank you!!!!

crossini@cyber.law.harvard.edu

carolina.rossini@gmail.com