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THE IDEA OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES IN THE CONTINUING EDUCATION
M. Babiarz
S. Koziej
One of the basic tasks of XXI century education is the implementation of the new information and communication technologies to serve the purpose of knowledge and competence dissemination. This necessity was pointed by
F. Mayor, a former UNESCO director general, in the international rapport The World Ahead: Our Future in the Making published at the turn of the century and entitled The World Ahead. The author wrote: “These technologies [information and communication technologies] make the delocalisation of knowledge possible thanks to its website location. This way in the future knowledge will not be concentred in privileged and inaccessible places. Abolishing of material barriers in the access to knowledge should lead to reduction of all symbolic distances and barriers which have been raised on the grounds of the social structures and diverse “initiation” processes which guard the access to knowledge. It is all about distance education, materially possible, to become an educational tool at hand, democratic education accustomed to the needs of every individual, education available everywhere and for all” [4, p. 377]. In the face of these challenge UNESCO highlights the significance of universal access to information in the framework of international open education system which is the basis for borderless, universal, human and ethical education without discrimination. Schools, libraries, distant educational facilities coming closer may result in creation of a decisive chance for less developed countries and in turn these countries will break away from pedagogical isolation, will improve education level and will provide it to a greater number of people at the lowest possible cost [4, p. 377]. According to the author of World Ahead new technologies should contribute to keeping up the progress and knowledge dissemination, to free flow of ideas and news and lifelong education for everybody. These challenges have broader dimension than just legal or commercial but also ethical and political dimension. Recognising the need of making knowledge public F. Mayor refers to Thomas Jefferson, the propagator of the public library idea and fair use doctrine which allows to use protected texts for educational purposes and to quote them in academic works [4, p. 324]. Jefferson wrote: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me” [4, p. 325].
These premises turned into the arguments of the initiatives to create the Internet based access to free educational materials. The term OER - Open Educational Resource was used for used for the first time in 2002 in the final report of UNESCO forum Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Educational Developing Countries and was defined as “open access to educational resources owing to information and communication technology. These resources may be used for consultation and used and adapted for non-commercial purposes” [5, p.30] ORE’s are most often defined as “didactic and scientific materials as digitized materials
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offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research [5, p.30]. It is necessary to notice the definition in Wikipedia, which itself is a typical example of OER - “OER is a common name for all educational resources freely accessed as they have been released under an intellectual property license or transferred to a public domain and released to be used in any information and communication technology.”[2] A social movement to create Open Educational Resources associates numerous creators, publishers, a few scientists and scientific organizations whose support for the idea of easy access is demonstrated in signing declarations. Such declarations of crucial importance for OER development were the Berlin and Cape Town declarations.
Berlin declaration on open access to the knowledge in sciences and humanities was the result of the conference proceedings of Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, which took place in Berlin in October 2003. The declaration cosignatories expressed their opinion that the Internet should be promoted as the instrument of globally understood knowledge and human reflection and it should support the new possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only in a traditional form but on free web access principle in particular. They assumed that the creation of ideal procedures of free access requires the participation of all parties, both each particular knowledge creator and also the centres for cultural heritage storage. They outlined the basic conditions to meet when creating these open resources.
1. The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving” [1].
The Berlin Declaration cosignatories provided the guidance for numerous activities which aim at free access model promotion in order to gain the greatest possible benefit for science and society. This can be done by: (a) encouraging our researchers/grant recipients to publish their work according to the principles of the open access paradigm; (b) encouraging the holders of cultural heritage to support open access by providing their resources on the Internet; (c) developing means and ways to evaluate open access contributions and online journals in order to maintain the standards of quality assurance and good scientific practice; (d) advocating that open access publication be recognized in promotion and tenure evaluation; (e) advocating the intrinsic merit of contributions to an open access
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infrastructure by software tool development, content provision, metadata creation, or the publication of individual articles [1].
In September 2007 Cape Town Open Education Declaration - Unlocking the promise of open educational resources was announced as the result of the meeting of thirty leaders of open education organized by Open Society Institute and Shuttleworth Foundation in Cape Town. The conference participants defined the key strategies for education development. They also encouraged learners, teachers, trainers, authors, schools, secondary schools, universities, publishers, trade unions, decision makers, government, foundations and all those who share the vision of open education to support the following three strategies to increase the reach and impact of open educational resources:
1. Educators and learners: First, we encourage educators and learners to actively participate in the emerging open education movement. Participating includes: creating, using, adapting and improving open educational resources; embracing educational practices built around collaboration, discovery and the creation of knowledge; and inviting peers and colleagues to get involved. Creating and using open resources should be considered integral to education and should be supported and rewarded accordingly.
2. Open educational resources: Second, we call on educators, authors, publishers and institutions to release their resources openly. These open educational resources should be freely shared through open licences 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. Whenever possible, they should also be available in formats that are accessible to people with disabilities and people who do not yet have access to the Internet.
3. Open education policy: Third, 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. Educational resource repositories should actively include and highlight open educational resources within their collections [3].
References
1. Deklaracja Berlinska w sprawie otwartego dost^pu do wiedzy w naukach scislych i
humanistyce, [w:]: Biuletyn EBIB (red. naczelny Bozena Bednarek-Michalska). Czasopismo elektroniczne. Stowarzyszenie Bibliotekarzy Polskich KWE, nr 2/2005 (63),
http://ebib.oss.wroc.pl/2005/63/deklaracja.php [5.08.2010]
2. http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Otwarte_Zasoby_Edukacyjne [5.08.2010]
3. http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/translations/polish-translation [5.08.2010]
4. Mayor F., Przyszlosc swiata, Fundacja Studiow i Badan Edukacyjnych, Warszawa, 2001.
5. OECD, Giving Knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources, OECD, Paris, 2007.
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