Posts Tagged ‘policy’

Consultative Group meeting held for Pacific region

Tuesday, 14 June 2011 10:42 Written by nick 0 Comments

A repeat session of the first Consultative Group online meeting was held on Tuesday, 7 June for participants from Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America.

The programme was similar in outline to the previous meeting held for Africa, the Arab States and Europe, but with contributions from:

  • Zeynep Varogolu, Programme Specialist, Section for Reform, Innovation and Quality Assurance, Division of Higher Education, UNESCO
  • Wayne Mackintosh, Director of the OER Foundation and Founder of WikiEducator
  • Carl Holmberg, Secretary General, International Council for Open and Distance Education – ICDE

 

The total participation in the OPAL Consultative Group stands at approx. 50 representatives of institutions and high level organizations working with quality, OER and educational policy.

The meetings were convened by UNESCO and the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL), in order to raise awareness of and exchange and define good practices.

Supporting Policies Create Increased Impact for OER

Tuesday, 15 February 2011 11:28 Written by Anthony F. Camilleri 0 Comments

The Open Educational Quality Initiative “Beyond OER” study report is now published. Among its conclusions it finds that OER are more widely used where programmes or inititatives for open resources exist at the institutional level. The lesser the fear, insecurity or discomfort towards Open Educational Resources (OER), the higher the frequency of OER use. The report thus advocates building trust in OER in order to increase their actual usage, and building open learning architectures to transform learning.

Institutional policies for OER are still a long way from impacting on educational institutions according to findings from the Open Educational Quality Initiative (OPAL) quantative survey. The perception by respondents that OER lead to institutional innovation still does not translate into implementation at the organization level. This is further compounded on the one hand by the very modest levels of support to factors that induce or enable the implementation of Open Educational Practices (OEP) in educational institutions, and on the other hand by the level of importance attached by respondents to institutional policy barriers to the use of OER.

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