Hi,

FYI

Yann

Subject: [WSIS Edu] WSIS Parallel Event on Open Educational Resources - 14 November 2005 Date: Wednesday 9 November 2005 02:37 From: Brendan Barrett <barrett @ hq . unu . edu> To: Edu Mailinglist <edu @ wsis - cs . org>

World Summit on the Information Society

Tunis, Tunisia, 16-18 November 2005

Parallel Event on Widening Access to Knowledge through Open Sharing:

The Growing OpenCourseWare Movement

14 November 2005

Monday, 14 November 2005, 15.00-19.00

Saint Augustin Conference Room, Kram Expo Centre

Background The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was first coined and adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of OpenCourseWare for Higher Education in Developing Countries. OER champions the sharing of knowledge worldwide to increase human intellectual capacity and can best be understood as the open sharing of educational content, enabled by tools (such as the World Wide Web) and defined by standards (such as Creative Commons), for use and adaptation by the global community of educators and learners.

OpenCourseWare (OCW), a critical component of the OER movement, is defined as a free, publicly accessible, and openly licensed digital resource that offers high quality learning materials structured around courses and presented in a reasonably consistent format. An OCW is a publication of course materials created by faculty to support teaching and learning. For any given course, the published materials should fully convey the parameters of the course’s subject matter and ideally represent a substantially complete set of all the materials used in the course.

For many educators and learners in the developing world, up-to-date material in science and technology is in particularly short supply. The value in openly sharing quality OCW resources is that they foster the process of educational change, as societies seek to bring their educational institutions into the Knowledge Age. The use of external resources for educational improvement is not a new idea — colleges and universities all over the world are accustomed to using publications from many sources, facilitating exchanges involving students and faculty, and seeking information via the Internet. The OCW Movement, however, takes the principle of sharing and cross- institutional exchange to the next level, enabling open access to a vast library of high-quality educational materials in key curricular areas from a wide array of institutions all over the world.

Outcomes

The intended outcomes for the event are that participating institutions and organizations:

· Develop a common understanding of OCW and the broader OER movement;

· Enhance their awareness of the growing international body of OCW resources; and

· Find effective ways to adapt and use OCW materials for teaching and learning, and ultimately raise the general standard of global higher education.

In addition, an intended outcome for the event is to emphasize the importance of open sharing of educational materials as a critical component of the Plan of Action.

World Summit on the Information Society

Tunis, Tunisia, 16-18 November 2005

Parallel Event on Widening Access to Knowledge through Open Sharing:

The Growing OpenCourseWare Movement

14 November 2005

Monday, 14 November 2005, 15.00-19.00

Saint Augustin Conference Room, Kram Expo Centre

Draft Agenda

15.00- 15.30 Keynote address

Speaker: Dr. G. M. (Mike) Reed, Director of the United Nations University

International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST)

15.30- 16.40 Setting the Context: The World of Open Educational Resources

Moderator: Marshall Smith, Education Program Director, William and Flora

Hewlett Foundation

Panelists

o Derek Keats, Executive Director of Information and Communication Services, University of the Western Cape

o Paula Le Dieu, Director of Creative Commons International

o Karen Lynch, Communications Director, Development Gateway Foundation

16.40- 17.50 The Growing International OpenCourseWare Movement

Moderator: Shigeru Miyagawa, Professor and Faculty Advisor, MIT OCW

Panelists

o Yoshimi Fukuhara, Professer, Keio University

o Divina Frau Meigs, Professer, Université Paris 3-Sorbonne

o Mary Lee, Associate Provost, Tufts University, and Dean for Educational Affairs, Tufts University School of Medicine

17.50- 18.45 Benefits and Challenges to Using and Adapting OpenCourseWare Materials

Moderator: Brendan Barrett, Academic Programme Officer, UNU

Panelists

o Kuzvinetsa Peter Dzvimbo, Rector, African Virtual University

o Elizabeth Longworth, Director of the Information Society Division, UNESCO

o Chunyan Wang, Professor at Renmin University of China School of Law, and the China and Project Representative for Creative Commons