 I have four sessions in this in this period. I'm going to turn it over to Catherine and Sarah I'm going to let them introduce themselves We have four authors, but only two of us are here. My name is Daniel Villarón Rubia And I'm Sarah Kate Mary Thank you. So yes, we are coming from Coventry University from the disruptive media learning lab And we are going to be presenting today open met which is it's an international cooperation project co-funded by the Rasmus plus capacity building in higher education Which is a problem as you know from the European Commission and we started this project in 2015 and it will be running until October 2018 so this is Sorry, I have too many devices With me. So this is a picture of our last meeting in Amman in Jordan With thank you with With some of our most of our partners. So this is a large project and is coordinated by Unimed Unimed is an is a consortium of universities in the Mediterranean region and in the case of Open met We are working with Universities in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Italy, Spain and the UK And we are working together to raise awareness of open educational practices Working at an institutional level, but also as a more bottom-up and Approach working with educators Okay, okay here you have the partners so Unimed we have also the association of our at our up universities and From Egypt. We are working with Cairo University and Alexandria University from Jordan We have the German Jordanian University and Princess Umayya University for technology from Morocco We have caveat University and if so University from Palestine, we have the USA University and and a jet National University from Italy. We have the polytechnic of the Torino From Spain the university that the International University of La Rioja and we have Fabio here with us Representing Unir and also the University of Seville and we Coventry University are the only University In the UK represented in the project and apart from these we also have Eden is a is an associate partner in this project as well So The main goals of the projects are to raise awareness on why the engagement We are also planning or we are already in the process of defining an OER agenda for the region and We will be also developing road maps for that option of open educational practices at an institutional level Well, not we we as a collective that each institution will have the responsibility of Developing their own road maps depending on their own needs and their own Characteristics as an institution and another important pillar is a to develop and to offer academic development opportunities and Providing guidance for the creation and also the reuse of an OER And this is a yes. Yes, some of the key milestones in the project. We have started Trying to build some Body of knowledge reviewing some good practices and that's what we're gonna be presenting mostly today because it was work package one and then we are gonna be Developing different in the subsequent work packages. We're gonna be delivering training Which is gonna be informed based on the research that we have already done as part of work package and one So I will now leave to my colleague Sarah to talk in more detail about work package one So as Daniel said, we are focusing in this presentation on work package one Which is was led by the team at Coventry University in the disruptive media learning lab With contributions from all of the partners the work package involved reviewing Relevant open education initiatives within the countries that we're working in partnership with and their experiences of working in open education With the aim of gaining insight into the state of the art of open education in the South Mediterranean region and also identifying examples of OE Which could help our partners to Expand and evolve their their use of open education and also to inform the subsequent stages of the project So we had two main deliverables As a result of the work package a report which is called the open med compendium Which is available online free obviously and We also created a series of videos with Experts in the field which are also available online on the project website, which we'll have the link for later on Who they provided us with insights and tips and the use of open education and they also commented on the Feedback that we'd had from our partners on their use of open education so the compendium starts with a discussion of the Concepts and definitions of open education, which has already been discussed already today And we also had an essay on the opportunities and challenges of OER in the MENA region the Middle East and North Africa which was written by Professor Sana El-Habi Who's the UNESCO chair in OER at the University of Sus in Tunisia? We also included country reports for each of the four partner countries Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Morocco They discussed the current situation in regard to higher education more generally and also the use of open education as well as relevant governmental and legal perspectives and information The information that we collected and collated as Daniel said formed a basis and will form a basis for the rest of The work packages in open med We collected data in a variety of ways So that we could bring together a review of OEP internationally, but obviously with a focus on the South Mediterranean So after we conducted a review of what's fairly limited literature on OEP in the region We conducted a webometric analysis on the websites of 200 and something 220 Universities in the partner countries not just the universities that we were working with but all partner universe all the universities in those countries that we could Get access to We used the Google scraper tool and we used terms such as MOOC open educational resources OER and Creative Commons and it gave us a rough idea of the kind of Use and the level of awareness in the region We also Used an online questionnaire to ask our partners to tell us About the current level of use of open educational resources and practices within each of their universities We collected this data in early 2016 Just over a year ago and the results are summarized in the compendium again They are a snapshot of the current practice at that time and also of the future aims of the institutions We then asked our partners to nominate initiatives to be used as case studies We asked for them to be helpful for inspiring Future work and advancing the use of OEP in the region they were reviewed by the team at Coventry and by two external reviewers and They were when case studies were selected They were then completed by the partners who had selected them and they were reviewed and commented and critiqued by another partner So as part of this whole process, we hoped that This this section this element of the compendium helped to foster a sense of the Cohesion of the community that we were working with As I said earlier, we also had a community of experts and they were asked to share advice and thoughts on open education and With a view to also commenting on the cases and the feedback that we've had from our partners So these are available on the open education on the open med website, and they are It's an ongoing process. So we're going to be gathering them on a continuing basis The when the compendium was completed it was reviewed not only by the partners, but again by an external reviewer So it has had full approval from everybody. Hopefully Altogether we collected 11 case studies These are probably not very legible from the back of the room, but there are examples from Most of our partner countries and also from other Countries around the world. So they were representative not only of the South Mediterranean, but also broader examples that were chosen because of their Perhaps their level of inspiration and the fact that they could inform developments in the region so they're all detailed in the compendium and They the discussion includes an overview of the whole initiative the organization behind it any funding technology that's used and Tools with a way that the site is navigated and so on so it's anything that we think that we thought might be useful to people who might want to use it as any kind of inspiration for future work So it provided us the work on the compendium provided us with an insight into institutional processes and Also into the technological options that were available But it isn't in any way a comprehensive review of open education practice in the region and it also isn't a Guide to how to do it It's not a model. It provides a snapshot and it does It illustrates quite clearly that there is no one way of doing things in order to guarantee success in OE but we did find that the recommendations which arose from the case studies fell within five categories five themes and These are the five themes top down and bottom up at implementation Supporting staff in using and integrating OE collaborative creation Enhancing the quality of student learning and releasing content under open licenses So I'll talk about each of these really briefly because I haven't got much time left Top-down implementation is obviously really important, especially when it comes to investment in infrastructure We there needs to be clear Justification for the provision of high quality OEP and OER in higher education one issue which arose as part of our research was That of national authorities that don't recognize open education. They want to credit it So it can be useful and I think for some in some places has been useful to run pilots it can improve the reputation of open and online education and we have to think also about the bottom-up Approach we need to consider the local needs and respond to them When it comes to supporting staff, we had some discussion about incentives To engage staff to help them to integrate OER with their official more traditional academic learning resources And that teachers learn that openness has to go Beyond just making content publicly available Obviously regular staff training and development is very important as part of this and And collaboration in the creation of OER can also have a significant impact This could be either within your own one institution or within institutions nationally or internationally and there's also examples of collaboration outside of the higher education sector Costs are always a consideration But it is possible to develop non-commercial OER and still use high quality content Accessibility was something that came up very often in all of our cases We have a place in meeting the needs of students who aren't able to access Education in more traditional ways not only students with disabilities and also people who aren't able to meet the costs It also links to the communication to the development of new communication models building trust within networks and understanding how to encourage effective online and intercultural communication and exchange It can also be useful to engage students peer-to-peer learning Engaging students in the creation of materials. We have at least one example in the compendium of peer-to-peer teaching within online resources and finally the Releasing content under open licensing Providing OER and reviewing licensing approaches working with institutions and Possibly also with other institutions to formulate guidelines The compendium is free to download from the project website as are the videos. So we encourage you to Access and share these resources and on the project website I think Daniel will talk about this in a moment. There is also a regional OER agenda Which is open for comments for and from anybody. So I'll pass it on to Daniel to finish off Thank you Yes, so we just wanted to emphasize that we did this series of interviews with experts And I'm sure you will recognize many of the names if you can read them from where you are sitting so we approach these These experts and then we asked them three very basic questions We asked them to introduce themselves and talk about their own practice. We asked them also To identify some initiative that for some reason they thought that was relevant And we asked them also to to give some tips tips Aimed at the people who are the target population for this project. So when they are thinking of Type of practices or approaches or how to embed open educational practices in their own work What they would recognize? So this is something that we did before the compendium, but this is an open series So if you would like to contribute We are more than welcome to receive suggestions and hopefully this is a resource that we'll keep growing During the project and beyond And just to mention we are We are holding regional forums. We have so far We had our first meeting in Egypt, then we have another one in Morocco before Christmas We had the one in Jordan just a few weeks ago and The the next one is going to be taking place in April in Palestine And these are opportunities to engage with the local communities and The network of universities in each of the countries not just our partners But to try and to connect and we are realizing that there is there are things happening more than we were expecting at the beginning But probably what we need now is to to push the cohesion and the collaboration between the different universities who are already doing interesting things and In terms of next steps We are gonna as part of the project we are gonna be And Supporting the partners to develop to create innovation centers for open education And we are leaving to them to decide so we have some funding allocated as part of the project that they will be able to use for Getting equipment that will help them Develop open educational practice and we had some debate at the beginning about how we could use this because it's always difficult when you want to To put money for buying Technical equipment and we decided that it should be for universities to decide what they want or how they want to use this depending on their own needs and Now well Fabius Working on the leading the work package for the opening educational training course Yeah, I think that we are about to finish and we would like to take some questions So if you have any questions More than a question something okay something that is coming out from this project specifically interesting for this conference in terms of policies During the Morocco National strategy forum the the community decided the local community decided to Write down and to to agree on what is now called open education Morocco Declaration which is something which builds on the open Scotland declaration. So most probably Morocco will be the first I Might say the first African country or at least the first country in the region to get approved by the government by this E-commission they have a Minister of Development a national document on on open education, which will be Launched or announced at the OER work Congress by UNESCO in September So thanks for the inspiration to Lorna we used a lot the open Scotland the piece of work and this is I think a Showing in practice the richness that we are finding in the region. So it's Was there a question well He's part of the team so it was more fire Great so any any other questions in the meantime I'd like to invite our next speakers to come up and set up their slides any other Questions or comments in the meantime if not, I just wanted to emphasize how one of the challenges When we started was agreeing on the terminology because we had so many different understandings of what open education means in some of the countries in some day of the universities Open education was equal to online distance education. So it required spending some time Debating and negotiating about the meaning of what we wanted to understand about the open education Of course leave also freedom to each institution to see how we could get an an umbrella But not being very restrictive about how we understand open educational practices and indeed in many cases is some universities They are not maybe ready to start releasing content on their OER, but they are ready to start releasing content Which is copyrighted through YouTube channels and we thought that it was an interesting a step So we didn't want to neglect any any practices that even though Do not feed perhaps the standard definition of OER we still consider they are valuable Yes steps towards this openness Let's give them a hand. Hi. Hello. Shall we just start talking Nicole? Cool My name is Lisa Kallsovan. I work at Kennesland's a Amsterdam based think tank But in Brussels, they know me as that community lady Because I advocate for copyright reform there. The EU is right now in the process of reforming copyright. Yes But it needs to be better and that's what we're gonna talk to you about today I'm here, of course with Alec Tarkovsky who've you've already been introduced to this morning And we're gonna share about our project called copyright reform for education because we need it probably understand as the British classic says now it is time for something completely different. Yes. No OER's no open licensing So, please pay attention. This is slightly different, but in the end you realize very much the same. Yes, exactly So I'm gonna have the honor of starting So What's this project trying to achieve? Very basically we want to have teachers to have the freedom to teach however they see fits So copyright in a way restricts what materials you can and cannot use under which circumstances in Principle copyright is a very good idea But when it comes to education you need a different system you need a freedom for educators to educate for teachers to teach so that's what we're trying to achieve through this project and as a general mission in life besides a project structure as well And how are we doing this? So Even though I Fundamentally believe that educators should have to freedom to teach Some people might not agree with me and some people might not agree with me that copyright right now is a mess So before we started yelling that Copyright should change for the benefit of education. We wanted to do research We wanted to be really sure that we knew what we were talking about And those are two pieces of research that we're gonna share with you today one is legal research and one is Research on actual modern educational practices and of course you see how those interrelates So if we have modern educational practices, but copyright law does not match Give that freedom that educators need then maybe we should change the law Can I just add one thing here? Yes, the reason we're doing this research that evidence is very important policy process Everyone the baseline level is just repeat your arguments. Yes, it's needed. Yes, it's needed freedom for teachers Okay, but the moment you can come and point to any source of data or analysis you're improving your Situation several times. Yeah, very much so and so we're using that research and we're using ourselves to Influence the policy debate and right now the policy debate is in Brussels That's where the European Parliament is as we speak discussing Law proposal by the European Commission and this is really where you actually talk physically to people you convince them of your arguments You convince them that education is more important and then they change things for you. So this is really a possibility and The third prong of our approach is public campaigning and you by you've seen our fancy super fancy jiff by now Let's make copyright right now for education We're running a public campaign We're gathering signatories to show that this is not just me yelling it in Brussels or just yelling it in Brussels That this is really something that people need from the educational sector So we're also hoping to convince to sign a petition and share the petition today full disclosure Can I just add one more thing? So again, the reason is that currently this policy debate is a debate on copyright reform and most people who are in it Believe they're dealing with copyright who might not like their views But we should respect them that they represent certain interests that are fair But they say we care about copyright So our goal is to introduce education into this equation Which is you know both hard because these people from the start are not educational people So one of the methods is through the campaign is sort of show the educators, you know guys look There's something important in Brussels. You probably don't pay too much attention to the copyright reform on the other hand Please come and have a look exactly So what is actually the problem with the proposal that we have on the table right now? So as I mentioned the European Commission, which writes laws in the EU made a proposal text and The European Parliament who are the people that we elect and the UK will still sort of do for the coming two years Now get to say yes or no to certain points and introduce new things So what's in the text right now and what do we want to change? So there's three things that are not good that we really aim to change it But we need to change in order to make up our work for education The first thing is is that there's a preference for licenses over exceptions and While licenses in the general way that we speak about them as creative comments licenses are very much a good thing These licenses restrict Because licenses make sure that you have to pay for things They make sure that you can only use a certain set of materials That's included in the license and it says you can only use it for certain purposes in certain contexts That's too much of a restriction for schools So we want that preferences for licenses removed We want to have an exception which means that you can do it as long as the purpose is education The second thing that we really want to change is that by introducing some new text the Commission kind of creates this Weird world where digital and non-digital education are two completely separate things So they've introduced new text for an for online Education and we still have an old education exception that I'm sure most of you are familiar with which now is then offline education of course from a copyright standpoint that might theoretically make sense But if you're a teacher and it's Sunday night and you have to the thing about oh Do I beam my slides does that follow the exception or if I print them and hand them to this to my students It has a different exception look Can we please agree that that's just not a good way of having to do have Educators deal with copyright. It's just not a very practical approach So we want that very much removed one exception for all of education, please and the third thing is the limited list of beneficiaries so the beneficiaries really mean who gets to use it right now it says a very limited list of educational establishments Most of you should are probably aligned with an official educational establishment, but that's not the entirety of education We also have non-formal education. We have lifelong learning with vocational training We have to roll that museums and libraries and archives play in education All those people will be excluded from the exception and therefore are Left, you know out to dry. So those are just three things that we really want to change Also good to point out that the current law that we have is not very good either So there is a really positive opportunity that we have to change a lot We just have to make sure that it's done in the right way So in order to prove that the law right now is also not good and where we should change it to we did That research which Alec is gonna tell you a little bit more about so I should know from the start that these are Pretty small and quick pieces of research. We don't have a large funded research project. These are more like Quick scans, yes Good metaphor. Thank you. You know just like like quick agile things that can basically I think also prove that there's more work to be done But they already provide some interesting results The first study we did is a study we call of modern educational practices and I think from the start It's interesting that it's a copyright projects that looks at practices because this is our core argument We want to stop talking with teachers about copyright. Do you know copyright how do you understand it part of the challenges? It's very hard to talk with them about that. So we're rather interested in checking how our Assumption is that the people have contact with copyright are the ones who are more innovative who use a wider range of new Technologies or attempt to be more valid in the resources they use They're probably aware of copyright and that seems to be true But we also want to make an argument that these people we wanted to check at least whether we can make this argument I should say are sort of limited by copyright. Do they see it as a challenge, but Basically, we didn't want to limit this study just to copyright. So we So so we also try to look at practices of teachers so very briefly and you can read the whole study online we identified four types of Teachers and we hope that this move often done for instance in marketing that you name Categories of people will be exciting and bring your attention to this project. So we call them guardian creator Rebel and unsuspecting user. I will highlight just my favorite one rebel is a teacher Who believes education is so important that potentially she can break the law in order to provide students with resources? And we can find that good or bad, but that's what some teachers think Interestingly enough, they're actually not always breaking the law even if they think they are doing it because the issue of copyright The one awareness comes into play. We're not checking their knowledge. You know, we're not testing them. We're looking at their Perception of things and so I think this is for us sort of the strongest category where someone makes a stand and says You know, I'm putting educational value over these copyright issues But there's also the opposite category where a guardian just basically pays attention that copyright is respected identifying these Doesn't necessarily lead us to copyright reform, but we hope it gives some evidence and shows how all this works They'll be appreciated by different stakeholders And then another thing it gives us is some sense of practices that these teachers make This is a qualitative study So we cannot provide any, you know Numbers saying this many teachers use robots in class and this many publish their own resources We wish we had the funding and this would really be useful to have quantitative data on this But even by identifying these practices, we could make the next step which is to do legal research And in the legal research, Teresa Nabra, a lawyer from Portugal, from Creative Commons, Portugal, who works with us at Comunia, basically check to whether these practices are either legal or illegal or rather allowed under the educational exception or not We weren't able to look at all member states for which we apologize You might not find your state in this diagram But we did it for 15 which we think is still a pretty good number and for each state We looked at three options. It's either allowed under the exception allowed But with a fee or not allowed and based on that we built this sort of comprehensive what we call a barometer This looks more like a speedometer. Is that the word? Of law and we try to show that while in some countries this law is pretty good And the reform will not really improve their situation. We're rather pointing these countries You should go in that direction. Just go back for a second For some the law is so-so and in some we believe is really bad and from the perspective of education The copyright really is a burden for educators Again, there's a lot of research packed into what we hope are pretty clear infographics They're all available online. You can take your time, especially if your country is there if it's not that apologize again We'll hope to probably get the other 13 right Well, maybe Say done next year, but this is what we try to do. We try to show very simple example We also hope this can have some educational value You know, this is also there was a big trick in this work to Find ways of communicating copyrights a very simply teacher wants students to play music piece in class Is this legal and you can have a look that in Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg and France Unfortunately not without making some extra steps like getting a license So that's the research you can all find this online and it's all available under a CC zero license. So CC zero dedication, I should say so please go out with it adapt it into your own Materials if you want to reuse it, please feel free to that's why we created it So lastly, I'm going to share a little bit about that campaign Who had already seen the campaign before you came to this talk online? Please raise your hand one in the back to my couple in Mac So a good third of the group, which is not bad. So I'm happy. I got two thirds to convert yet So we really wanted to do a public campaign and that's not something you usually do when you talk about copyright before me Because copyright is boring and people don't give it. Sorry shit But it's very important for the people. So we took on the challenge We thought okay, we can get people interested in this copyright before because it really really is really important So what we wanted to highlight in this campaign is that Contrary to the most copyright talks you would have to go through in your life that it that it's very negative and boring and like The answer you always get is no For this campaign wanted positivity. We wanted to be like, yes, we can change this. Yes We can be a positive influence in education. Yes, we have the opportunity and that's also very true So that's something we wanted to emulate. We also wanted to give it very practical examples To not just be like yeah copyright bad boogeyman in the back But really be like okay, no, this is how it influence your daily practice as an educator And this is how we want to change it to make it very practical. We also wanted to make it grounded in research which we already discussed and We also wanted to be something broader than traditional formal education because you think Education is more than that. So we also wanted to showcase that in the in the campaign and so what we came up with it was the write copyright.eu campaign and we worked with a Dutch design firm called van de Jong who made the fancy Design for us, which I'm very happy with And we really hope that you are willing to support us in this campaign. So I would like to invite you Does everybody have a smartphone or a laptop in your hands? Probably I usually do it things like this. Yes I'm gonna really make you do it. So please get your phone Yes, Camille has it in the back. Excellent. Excellent And I Want you to go to the write copyright.eu website Because we want to make copyright rights for education. You see the pun in there The semi-english speaking audience for the first time people can actually get the joke. I Would love you to sign the petition So what we want to achieve with this petition is a better copyright for education and education that can use digital materials and Education that doesn't have to worry on whether printing the image or beaming the image is a different thing Education that is more than formal school But that is something that a museum can do something that an archive can do That's something that we really like you to share and if you trust us utterly you can sign it right now immediately if you want to make your own judgment spend some time and you can see the examples Or if you have even more time in the why now section You can really go into the PDFs and we'll be very happy to see your clicks that someone reads these detailed documents Yes, exactly, but most importantly please Sign sign and if and if you want to please share it Because we know that you guys are very active on Twitter. I've been following the OER 17 hashtag That's on fire. It really is so please if you if you want to share it on the Facebook Share it on the Twitter if you go to the share now page We have gyps and infographics and stuff ready. So not just like there's some text But there's images and proof that this is really a good idea. So please make use of that and If you agree with with what we're trying to say or if you do not agree also very interesting Please come up to us during the coming one or two days because we really want to hear it Because somewhere in the background there's a fundamental discussion there whether open education people should be involved in copyright Reform we mainly hear positive things and we're happy to have Quite a few of you in this room already engaged and telling us it makes sense But to be honest in the last months I also heard people having arguments against it. It's too political usually so we're also happy to have this Conversation that we hope in the end you'll decide it's all two faces of the same coin sort of exactly We're happy to take a couple of questions now if Nicole will allow us Yeah, yeah some two minutes somebody have a question or comment who signed a petition in the last two minutes. Yes I just want to ask is European Union copyright law at the moment country by country and not so covered by your opinion So it is covered by you like a slation, but it is on a country by country basis So how works is the European Union comes up with a directive as they call it so it's like a guideline and That all the member states have to implement, but they do it in their own way So right now for example, we have a list of exceptions that Member states are allowed to implement, but some countries choose not to or choose to do it very Restrictively so that's why we have one directive from the EU one copyright That's most recent from 2001 called the info sock directive But we still have such big differences in EU copyright law in a country by country basis So if you're in Estonia, you're good in terms of education if you're in Spain, you're screwed and that's something we would like to change Make everybody have like a good system not be screwed like in Spain All right, we can take one more question or comment while the next presenter is setting up her slides Any more questions or comments Everybody's a fan now. Awesome. Okay. Thank you. Cool. It's good in the hand Not sure how to turn this off. I'm just gonna put it there God you need a million hands to speak here I mean if you had to choose a country outside the European Union that you think that we should be following which one would be Interest in terms of some example of how they copyright legislation is a good for educators There's one very practical quick example that I can give Canada Canada has a bit of a more of a Fair dealing type approach Which means that as long as it's fair you get to use it for education and the most interesting Part is it that it was implemented only a couple of years ago This this system of a little more flexible copyright for education, which we were very happy about All the publishers started screaming murder and fire and said that they were going bankrupt because of this It has been needed a lot of myth-busting to prove that it's simply not the case And you now have former Han shows of educational publishers going like yeah No, the copyright wasn't really the problem that we were losing money It was because we you know weren't really adapting to the digital world But the kicker is is that later this year Canada is refuting its copyright as well So what we really fear now if we mess up in Europe because of CEDA and other types of agreements in Canada They're going to revert back. They're very positive change of a couple of years back So that's a very interesting dynamic to keep an eye on All right Lauren I take it away Thanks and cool My name is Lorna Campbell. I work as a way our liaison in the information services directorate at the University of Edinburgh Where I'm based with the learning teaching and web services division and today I'm going to be reflecting on Developments in open education policy in Scotland and the UK more widely since Cape Town declaration So how many of you are aware that this is the year of open? Have you heard of the year of open? That's good I would have expected that here and The website explains that the year of open is a global focus On open processes systems and tools created through collaborative approaches that enhance our education businesses governments and organizations The initiative is backed by many of the major international players in the field of open education Including creative commons the open education consortium. We are Africa etc. And you know why this is the year of open? Anyone Alec Yes, this is we've got all the anniversaries this year It's a 15th anniversary of the Budapest open access initiative And it's also the 15th anniversary of the release of the first creative commons license It's the 10th anniversary of the Cape Town declaration which laid the foundations of the emerging open education movement and Advocated the development of open education policy to ensure that taxpayer funded educational resources are openly licensed And if you haven't read the Cape Town declaration recently, I can highly recommend going back and looking at it again It's still a really inspiring document And it's also the fifth anniversary of the UNESCO Paris OER declaration Which five years after Cape Town strengthened this call by encouraging governments and authorities to open license Educational materials produced with public funds in order to realize substantial benefits for their citizens and maximize the impact of investment The Paris declaration was an output of the world OER Congress held at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in June 2012 And to market's anniversary UNESCO in collaboration with the government of Slovenia and the Commonwealth of Learning Will host the second OER World Congress in Ljubljana in September this year This event will bring together government ministers, policy makers and open education practitioners in order to examine solutions to meet the challenges of mainstreaming OER In advance of this event the Commonwealth for Learning are undertaking a series of regional consultations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific And in addition to these consultations, CALL have circulated a questionnaire to government education ministries and stakeholders Focusing on OER for inclusive and equitable quality education Both the consultations and survey are ongoing so I don't have figures for the number of governments and organizations that have participated yet But I want to come back to this initiative later There's no denying that there have been significant advances in open education in the ten years since the Cape Town declaration And you'll have to look at the program of this conference to get an idea of the diverse range of open education initiatives going on worldwide Even the International Open Science Conference had a special focus on OER this year During this conference, Dirk von Dam of OECD gave a great talk on how OER can be a catalyst for innovation Much of Dirk's presentation was based on this OECD report which I can highly recommend One of the figures Dirk quoted was this one Out of 33 countries that responded to a 2012 survey undertaken by OECD, 76% of them had policies to support OER production and use Now 76% is a pretty impressive figure, particularly if it's representative Wouldn't it be amazing if 76% of governments worldwide had OER policies? But if you look at this map, you'll notice that one of the countries highlighted is the UK The UK doesn't actually have an open education policy And neither do the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales In fact, government support for open education has arguably declined since this survey was undertaken Now to be fair to OECD, I suspect the UK was originally included in these figures as a result of the UK OER programme Which came to an end in 2012 UK OER did not result in the creation of government policy That was never its aim, though it did result in the creation of institutional OER policies And again, I want to come back to that in a few minutes Funding for UK OER did come through government channels But I don't really think that's quite the same as actually having government OER or open education policy To my knowledge, the Westminster government has not invested any direct funding in open education since the end of the UK OER programme And in the intervening years, central support for open education has diminished JISC, the organisation that coordinated and supported UK OER And once led the field in technology innovation for open education, is no longer active in this space And as I'm sure many of you are aware, last year they closed JORUM, the UK's central OER repository Selected resources from JORUM have been migrated to a new JISC store Which has intended to host both licensed and paid for content A move that resulted in some discussion and concerns about open washing when the prototype was launched last year As at least some of you will be aware, Scotland didn't participate directly in the UK OER programme As funding came from the Higher Education Funding Council for England And therefore, quite rightly, only English institutions were eligible to bid It's my understanding that the Scottish Funding Council were actually invited to contribute to this pot of funding and to the programme But for reasons that remain obscure, they chose not to Some of us who were involved in supporting the UK OER programme and happened to be based in Scotland Thought this was rather short-sighted, so we launched the Open Scotland initiative as a result Now I'm not going to say too much about Open Scotland as I suspect some of you will have heard me talk about it before But just briefly, Open Scotland is a voluntary cross sector initiative that aims to raise awareness of open education Encourage the sharing of open educational resources and explore the potential of open policy and practice To benefit all sectors of Scottish education Open Scotland has been supported by a number of organisations over the years Including, most recently, the Old Scotland Special Interest Group and the University of Edinburgh One of the main outputs of the Open Scotland initiative is the Scottish Open Education Declaration Which is based on the Paris OER declaration of 2012 But which broadens the scope of the original to include all aspects of open education And I'm sure that again some of you will have heard about me speak about the declaration before Open Scotland has been lobbying the Scottish Government since 2013 To encourage them to endorse the principles of the declaration And recommend the use of open licences for educational resources produced with Scottish public funding I've been personally involved in leading this initiative And after four years, I can stand here with my hand on my heart And say that despite our best efforts, we have had next to no influence on the Scottish Government at all We've contacted three consecutive ministers for education And though two made vaguely encouraging noises about the declaration They showed no inclination to support the principles of open licensing for publicly funded educational resources Now I should add at this point that the Scottish Government isn't completely blind to the concept of open education In 2014, the then Cabinet Secretary for Education, Mike Russell, allocated £1.3 million to the Open University To launch the major opening educational practices in Scotland project That project, which has had considerable success in engaging the third sector in open education Is coming to an end in July And some of the team are here at the conference today So if you want to find out more about this initiative, I'm sure they'd be very happy to talk to you The Scottish Government's lack of interest in open education can be seen at policy level too In September last year, Scott Gove launched their new digital learning and teaching strategy for schools Key themes are closing the attainment gap, developing digital skills, embedding technology across the curriculum And while it's encouraging that the strategy acknowledges the potential of digital technology To enhance learning and teaching and equip learners with digital skills It's disappointing that it doesn't acknowledge the significant role that open education can play in achieving these objectives Similarly, the Government's refreshed digital strategy makes no mention of open education at all Though it does talk about open data and digital learning And remember the Commonwealth for Learning's regional OER consultation and survey that I mentioned earlier Open Scotland liaised closely with the Commonwealth of Learning to facilitate Scott Gove's participation in this initiative Again, we had absolutely no response The Government did not send a representative to the consultation And to my knowledge, they've not participated in the survey either Open Scotland did actually send a representative to the consultation And Joe Wilson attended on our behalf And in fact, Joe was the only person there representing the UK And you can see Joe there in the middle in his quilt Now to be fair, both the UK and the Scottish Government have had other things on their mind recently But this lack of engagement with international open education initiatives strikes me as being both short-sighted and really rather depressing So why is this? Why is it that open education generates barely a flicker of interest at Government level? In Scotland at least there is a perception that open education is peripheral to Government priorities Primarily because there is a lack of statistical evidence base supporting the impact of open education on learners And I think this chimes very well with what our previous speakers were saying You need that evidence to enforce policy through This is not a new issue Many open education practitioners and scholars have highlighted the need for more evidence-based research into the impact of open education In a challenging talk at the recent Open Science Conference, Marco Calz, the UNESCO Chair of Open Education at the UNL Acknowledged that reuse and adaptation are notoriously hard to track and measure As are direct and indirect effects of OER And he pointed out that no studies show a direct correlation between OER and innovation Quoting Sean Bain and Jeremy Knox's research at the University of Edinburgh Marco agreed that discussions of OER too often tend to optimism and lack of critique And he argued that open education must be driven by, must move from being advocacy driven to being more research driven Now that's not to say there's no high quality research into the impact of open education I've already mentioned the work of the digital education team at the University of Edinburgh And of course there's also the OER research hub at the Open University who does sterling work There's also a lot of good research being undertaken in the US However much of that focuses on the significant cost savings associated with the adoption of open textbooks However, these figures don't easily translate across the Atlantic And it's proved much harder to quantify the benefits of open education in sectors that are less reliant on textbooks Impressive though these figures are Knowing for example that the Maricopa Community College District saved students five million over five years Isn't going to cut the ice with education ministers if learners aren't expected to buy costly textbooks in the first place So it's not so much that there's no research It's that we need more of it We need more diverse research And we need research that directly addresses strategic government priorities One of the most frustrating things about all this Is that we actually have an excellent evidence base for research on the long-term impact of open education here in the UK The UK OER programme ended in 2012 But very little in-depth research or evaluation has been undertaken on its impact and outputs This is primarily because the end of the programme coincided with JISC's transition from government quango to not-for-profit company And its subsequent shift in emphasis Of course the political and education landscapes have changed radically since the end of the UK OER programme as well But I still believe there is useful research to be done here After all, you don't have to look far to see the continued impact of the programme Many people predicted the demise of the OER conference when the Hefke funding came to an end And yet here we all are Participating in the biggest and most diverse OER conference ever And despite all the funding cuts, despite all the political doom and gloom, we are making progress We may not have had significant impact on government policy yet But there's a wealth of open education and OER initiatives going on all over the UK Several higher education institutions including the University of Edinburgh have formally adopted OER policies Policies I should add that actually have their roots in the UK OER programme And there have been notable successes in the public sector with charities such as the Welcome Trust And public institutions such as the National Library of Scotland and the British Library Taking positive steps to make their collections more open and to support openness at scale Other organisations such as Wikimedia UK and ALT Have also stepped in to play an important role in supporting open education policy and practice across the UK And it's been really encouraging to see ALT placing openness right at the heart of their digital strategy Ten years ago the Cape Town Declaration identified a number of barriers to realising the vision of open education Clearly some of these barriers remain to be overcome And in the evidence of our experience in the UK I would argue that there is still much to be done to convince governments of the benefits of open education Some governments really are starting to get it though Most notably the Government of Slovenia And I was also really delighted to hear the news from the Open Med project That Morocco will be adopting an adapted version of the Scottish Open Education Declaration Now that might not be the kind of impact that we envisaged when we set up the Open Scotland initiative But I think it's a really brilliant example of the unexpected and serendipitous aspect of openness And I really hope that where Morocco leads the UK will eventually follow Thank you very much We have a couple of minutes for questions I apologise for speaking far too fast there Go on Jo I've got a question and it's actually for people south of the border So excuse me if you come from other bits of the world I know all the effort that we've done trying to chase down Scott Gove Is anybody doing the same with English UK Gove? Because I think you need that down here I think there's a real danger in England with students paying fees and all of that The universities really go back into the silo They start trying to differentiate themselves on their content I think really somebody should be doing a lobbying job in England That's maybe being a bit cheeky but I think that's what's happening Is anything happening? I think maybe you should try tweeting that question See if anyone answers that Can I actually ask you a question Nicole? I know you've done a fair bit of lobbying in terms of having a spark In terms of influencing government policy What would your recommendations be? I think the biggest thing that we have in the US That has allowed us to be successful as a coalition Of organisations that are working on OER The Creative Commons affiliate in the US Education organisations that work at the K-12 level and higher ed level And bringing together different voices to coordinate I think is really important to show stakeholder support That's useful too Part of my swithers and things Maybe we should stop pushing at government Because we are making such significant advances at the institutional level But at the same time I do still feel that there is a model issue About open licensing, publicly funded education resources And ultimately it's got to be government that does that It can't be just one institution or one organisation or one library That has got to come from government So I think that's what just keeps us pushing at that door Thank you very much Thank you One announcement We started five minutes late and are going to run five minutes late I'll finish five minutes early I'm going that way There can be plenty of Q&A My name is George Abdelmour I'm coming with a slightly different accent And I wanted to thank everybody for this very enlightening And very interesting full day of discussions about OER And the problems about OER And the issues related to licences etc So I come from a university in Lebanon in the Middle East Notre Dame University Which is an English language, American style Private university outside the capital This is the OER team So I'm their interlocutor today The presentation you're about to see is actually the work of everybody on that team That does include me who runs the English department at the university As well as Dr. Kamala Bush did I call him the resident statistician Because he's the one that crunches the numbers And knows what to do with the numbers Sandra and Anna are colleagues Have been responsible for a lot of the curriculum development Of the presentation you're going to see here And Fauzi Badroud who's the assistant vice president for information technology And what I want to talk to you today What I want to talk to you about today is Something that maybe is taking us a little bit Back to the grassroots level And that means adopting open educational resources in our curriculum A few years back, Dr. Badroud, thanks to the support of the American Embassy in Lebanon Went on a trip to the United States When the whole hype about open educational resources was beginning to permeate the Middle East And came back with certain ideas about how we could achieve innovation in our curriculum Through the use of OER It goes without saying that this was met with a lot of resistance among the faculty And there were many questions about what exactly OER was And there were many issues regarding open licenses As well I would say that this presentation is about Some of the theoretical questions that we were confronted with Meaning, specifically about the issue of quality of OER There was a lot of resistance from the faculty about Is this content as good as the traditional printed textbooks Then I want to talk a little bit about the three phases I would say that we're currently in phase two of the adoption and implementation of OER And then I want to talk to you a little bit about what students are saying about The adoption of OER and specifically their study of English The usual parameters, the usual reasons why we decided to pilot OER It's nothing new to you, the issue of cost in the Middle East And Lebanon specifically, the issue of the availability of learning resources Often a problem The issue of the content Very often students were being exposed to content that was culturally specifically And thus not speaking to their own concerns And then some institutional issues regarding OER In other words, the institutional decision to move in the direction of the adoption And implementation of open educational resources in selected spaces Of the university curriculum So the issue of quality This was the biggest concern for many faculty members How do we know that open educational resources are actually as good As the traditional textbooks that students are asked to buy And to that end, our colleague Dr. Anna Hotzik The significant amounts of research into the theory behind open educational resources And what other researchers were saying And we decided that we were going to test this issue of quality By getting students to react to the resources that they were actually going to be using And so we looked at the quality dimensions of OER as the utility Or the effectiveness of the resources for students Whether students felt that those resources were allowing them to meet the objectives of the course We wanted to look at satisfaction levels of students With regards to the OER that they were using We wanted to see the issue of perception of the various OERs That students were being exposed to And lastly, this was my own contribution The idea that quality depended on whether students perceived That they were actually meeting the outcomes of a particular course That included OER As you can see, this is somewhat of a paradigm shift In terms of quality and quality assessment In other words, we're taking the issue of quality away from the object Away from the OER and putting it in the perception Of the object and the perception of OER From the perspective of students So phase one We decided in my department to adopt OER In the context of a general education requirement course And that's English 213 That's a classic, if you are familiar with American institutions of higher education The classic composition course for all students at the university It's a course in which they have to write They have to research They have to produce certain tasks That would prepare them for more advanced work in their major In our context This is a requirement of all students It covers about If I'm not mistaken It's about 500 Anywhere between 570 to 600 students per semester Across three campuses So it's a very general course And the course has very clear student learning outcomes On this particular slide Nothing that's unfamiliar to a seasoned educator In the classroom They have to be able to persuade Whether orally or in writing An audience about their claims They have to be able to apply critical thinking skills Identify arguments and fallacies In the writings and readings of others They need to be able to construct a research essay A documented essay And they need to develop information literacy skills So it's a very basic course But it is a wide course And I have to say not a very popular one In our context So we decided to Using Blackboard Develop an English 213 OER pilot course It has the same syllabus essentially In terms of a week by week structure Of organization The student learning outcomes As you just saw are the same We use Blackboard And the only difference Is the material, the materials new We incorporate videos We incorporate chapters from books All of it openly licensed Under creative comments And the assignments Because we're using Blackboard Very somewhat in that Students can now do things Like open electronic forums etc So as I said All of the materials Creative comments licensed Why did we do this We decided then After the first phase Which was last spring I would say phase two right now And I'll speak a little bit more about that in a second To get student feedback By way of a survey And we did a traditional quantitative survey Of all students Of us approximately 25% response rate Phase two which we're Just in now So any data I give you for phase two I have to say is not full data I'm not even sure We can call it reliable data But I'm interested in the much bigger picture And I want to compare phase one to phase two In fact I just started getting this data Two days ago because the survey Is still ongoing So you'll have to bear with me This is what our survey looks like It includes 72 items And 21 questions The most important part Of the survey includes the five dimensions Which I'll explain in a second There are questions About textbook purchasing habits There are questions related to Talking about the politics Of issues related to connectivity Whether students have difficulty connecting To the resources they need And we have some demographic information These are the main dimensions To go back to the issue of quality That we started speaking about Whether quality should be measured As a function of the perception Of students And not as something that's inherent In the object of the OER We were interested in this General attitudes towards practices And the resources themselves Students satisfaction levels Students perception about the effectiveness Of the open educational resources Students ratings on the quality Of each type of open educational resource And students self assessment As to whether they were actually meeting The outcomes of the course Through the use of OER So the issue of whether evidence Whether this type of evidence constitutes A measure of the success Or lack of success And the integration of OER Is that we decided to move on to phase two This is what part of our survey looks like So you can see for example That related to the question Of general attitudes We have a host of questions That students ask to ask Issues related to satisfaction levels We give them all of the different types Of OER that they actually were asked To use in the classroom And to rate it We move down to issues related to the effectiveness Of the open educational resources That they were asked to use Again, this is just a sample And the quality Of the open educational resources From my perspective as chair Of the department Most importantly is this How were students self assessing And the degree to which they were meeting The outcomes of the course Because data or research tells us That type of self assessment Is actually valid data It's important data tells us a lot About students rate of success So during phase one We had out of 607 Approximately 25% answered I would be very careful with the data I'm not a statistician But I know enough to know that A random sample That is not random Is not necessarily representative Of the whole population But it's very interesting to see How the 25% actually responded And it's also very interesting to see How during phase two Respondents are answering The same survey And phase two again is the face That we're in now Just some facts and figures Most of the respondents were men 62% Regarding GPA You have some data Regarding the faculty to which they belong Whether it's art and architecture For example, humanities or engineering So we have them from all over The university which is good But we had 12 repeaters And we wanted to track the responses To see whether they did better The second time around Than originally done And we started to get some data These are some sample results If you can read them with me I'll give you an example of one item That they were asked to answer I enjoy learning English 213 That's the name of the course Because it incorporates OER Can you see some results here So all of the items The likelihood scale were always Going from negative to positive I'll give you the brief summary Overwhelmingly Almost by a ratio of two to one Students answered In terms of the perception Of OER That they were more engaged That the quality was better And that they were able to meet The outcomes When using OER And this was seen Throughout most of the responses Now, doing phase two Obviously not reliable data Data is still coming in One of the things I'm beginning to see Is a very similar response rates From students And a different question Whether OER makes English 213 A more interesting course We're still at the general attitudes Type of phase of the study You can see that Almost half of the students Almost half of the students agreed If you combine that with the strongly agrees It's an overwhelming Again, two to one margin Of interest from students There's two We'll have to see But the data that's beginning to come in And this is only with a 7% response rate Doing phase two We're still at the 7% response rate As we speak I'm still waiting for more results The pattern seems to be the same Printed textbooks So many of our educators say Oh no, it's better to go back To the printed textbook It's more professional It's more obvious This is what students said And notice And this is one of the few questions In which the answers Would seem to be counterintuitive So a printed textbook Would help me understand topics better Than OER in English 213 The disagreement level Was significantly higher Than the agreement level So they were not just automatically Answering the questions In a positive way I feel I'm a better writer As a result of the scores If you look at the response rates Again, close to more than Two-thirds of students responded That they felt they were better writers Now as an educator And as educators We all know that direct assessment Might yield us different types of result But if we believe that Student perception is important here We have to pay attention to some of these responses And you would see that the 7% response rate That we're currently in for phase two Is beginning to give us similar types Of results as well Satisfaction levels With some sample OERs I haven't included all of the items here We will take us forever to go through each item But if you look at the theoretical background Reading some websites for example Satisfaction levels Overwhelmingly positive Chapters from books I include some With a not applicable category To see whether some instructors Are actually skipping out On particular OERs In terms of information literacy Same types of results They love videos One of the big differences Between the way that composition Is now being taught within the scheme As opposed to before Is that we incorporate Some students definitely React to that very positively We looked at effectiveness Issues of effectiveness And students again Found high levels of effectiveness Of the OER And so you get the picture These are the student Perceptions Of the dynamic that is born In the OER classroom Again it's very difficult To generalize to the entire Student body And I think that the data results That are coming in now Will help us see whether there's Some sort of bigger picture That we can accept But the students are sending us A message and the message seems Pretty clear about at least The level of engagement With open educational resources In this new context Issues of quality of the resources Again by more than 50% Of students rate the quality Of the open educational resources Used in a positive fashion Three minutes Okay Chapters from books Theoretical background It's a very ambitious course As you can tell Outcomes Your ability to identify The claim warrants and evidence And written arguments So students were asked a series Of questions about whether The particular question The response seems to suggest That students have met the outcomes And have exceeded the outcomes in fact Your ability to write an argumentative Essay from the perspective Of the English department Probably the most important outcome Of all in the university Having such a stake In students communication skills This is how the students responded 70% of the data That's coming in right now In terms of a great deal of progress Having been made In terms of becoming better writers I attribute that to I think to student engagement We know as instructors of writing That student motivation Is an important factor In getting them to be more engaged With their writing Ability to document sources And some internal consistency Calculations to see whether the data During phase one is actually reliable And valid Issues on instructor role This is interesting We live in a country in which The price of connectivity is very high We live in a country And students study in an environment In which there are many issues Related to connectivity on campus And at home So we actually ask students Whether they have difficulties connecting To the resources that they need And these are some of the results That they got at home In the past 50 Doesn't seem to be a big issue Institutionally And this is a problem for all of Lebanon There are issues related to connectivity And they're coming in In phase two also As an issue that we need to be aware of Obviously this is an infrastructural Constrain when it comes to using OER In the case of higher education In Lebanon Phase three involves moving Towards open educational practices So now that we have consolidated During phase two The use of OER What we're going to be doing now Is expanding to other courses And other elements in the curriculum And we're going to ask students To begin to identify the resources That they actually want to use And they're going to be doing things Like as in the public speaking Course that's moving towards OER Right now Attaping themselves off from each Other assessment And that's where we are right now And I'll end and take some questions If you have now Round of applause We have five minutes Until the next round of presentations Begin I want to turn the room Over to the moderator Of the next round of sessions But in the meantime If there are any questions We can feel free to ask and take them Thanks that's a really interesting talk And it is really good to be able To see some statistical evidence Of students What was the perception of staff? Did you Do any of the staff perception of students? Excellent question Because we actually ran a survey Of faculty members during phase one We did not do it during phase two For a whole host of reasons Part of it is that Given that this is a general education Resources A general education course That's using OER The same instructors Moving from one semester to the next So there are issues of The respondents are different But we found a discrepancy Between what instructors say Regarding quality Regarding effectiveness And regarding the outcomes Of the students And what students said Very, very interesting I think that as we continue To collect research And institute that survey And begin to compare the results Because some of the questions are the same They're just Posed from different perspectives In other words, how do you perceive Your students have the particular Outcomes of the course But there is a discrepancy there That's fascinating Very, very interesting Any very quick last questions Or comments? Hi there, Joe Wilson From Scotland again And they're open materials And are they available outside In a repository somewhere? Not yet And this issue actually came up Earlier in the day today Which is that how do you reconcile The openness of the resources With the closed learning management system Which is blackboard And we discuss this on a regular basis In fact, Dr. Baroud One of the presenters Of this presentation And I have been thinking About this experiment To become open to the broader community We're actually working on something That's sort of extra university right now OER Lebanon So that it can become Function as a repository For a lot of this material For the broader good This is part of the long term strategy Of the core group of activists Who are working on this But there are these issues What does it mean to go open If you're not granting credit To have access to the material In a different way anyway What's the difference Is it the way it's organized Is it the way it's presented Is it the repurposing of it I think even at that level It's that intra institutional Repurposing and supporting colleagues And other institutions And things probably in the first instance Yeah, I agree