 Now, I'll start again. Welcome back. Today's session is on the accessibility, inclusion, and multilingualism. The session today, we are panelists at PAPO Yucatien from the Organizacion Internacionale de la Francophonie and Dr. Melinda Bandeleria from the Open University of the Philippines. I will just provide you some technical information about how the system works and then we'll start. The objectives of this session and all the sessions are the same. We're going to go through what was given as feedback for the survey, which was on for 10 days, on areas of action, priority action in each working group. The objective here is to drill down what are exactly the areas that we want to focus our energy on in the next year, based on the feedback we got from the survey and the survey which was based on the outcomes of the dynamic coalition launch. The second objective is to identify what are the user needs and the parameters of an electronic tool for information sharing and collaboration that we will be setting up from September, which will assist us in collaborating, providing public information on what we're doing, and also working across the different working groups. The next, can we go to the next slide? I need to show you here the Zoom system. Now, we've been on the system. Sometimes it's very nice. Sometimes it's not as nice as we'd like it to be to us, but this is the system we're on. We have, the way we can ask questions is on the Q&A. You see there's a little box at the bottom with two little speaking balloons. That is the only way that it's possible for us to see your questions and to be able to respond to them. We will be reading the questions out loud so that the interpreters can also interpret the questions, which brings us to the second point. We have interpretation. It's that button there, that little globe. If you press on it, you can have English or French interpretation. If you deactivate it, you get the floor. You get whatever language is being spoken by the person. In terms of the chat, it's not a means for us to receive your questions. It's deactivate, it's not functioning, and what we want you to do is to ask your questions in the Q&A. The reason we have done this is to be able to focus the discussion and be able to identify the questions and issues separately and clearly. If you want to take the floor, please raise your hand. You have a little hand button. Please raise it and we will bring you over and you will give you the floor to speak. You would be very grateful if you could maintain these parameters in place because there are means of maintaining the structure of the conversation. We are very fortunate to have Neil Butcher from Open Education OER Africa and his colleague Mohini Rajnath from OER Africa who are part of the discussion. Neil is the reporter for the session and we will be sending her out. There's another point. You will see as participants, you can't see the other participants, but we will be sharing with you a list of participants after the meeting. And we will also be, but for the moment, it's not possible within the system to see the other participants. I think that's all I have to say, so I give the floor to Melinda. Yes, thank you very much, Zeynep, for that introductory or briefing for our online consultation today. So I greet everyone a good day, wherever you are in the part of the globe. And I greet everyone good afternoon from here in the Philippines. So as introduced with me this afternoon is Papa. And also as introduced by Zeynep, we will be conducting the online consultation for the working group three, inclusive, equitable and accessible quality, open educational resources. So can we have the next slide please? Yes, I think this slide is just a reiteration of what Zeynep mentioned about the objectives of our online consultation. And what is important here is that for us to determine the priority areas that we need to work on based on the results of the online survey that we conducted early this month. And we also need to identify the communication platform so that we can be sharing our activities for everyone to be sharing all our activities and information pertaining to all the poor working groups. So we will also be presenting the results of our online survey. Yes, okay, so this is the result of our online survey. For the survey question for us to rank our priority in terms of priority projects that we need to develop in this area. So we have here inclusive OER, multilingualism, quality assurance, research and some other areas of concern. And can we go to the next slide? Okay, so for the ongoing activities, many responded and said that for their own institution, more activities are pertained to the inclusive open educational resources. And quality assurance also was mentioned in terms of projects and engagements from those institutions who responded to the online survey. So what we will do for the discussion and this will be led by my co-chair, Papa. We will be dividing the discussion into these areas that were mentioned in the online survey. So we will be devoting something like 15 to 20 minutes for each area so that everyone can participate and share. Peace or her insights in terms of priority projects that we can pursue so that we can ensure that we will have this inclusive open educational resources. So can we have the next slide please? Okay, so for the first point of discussion, it will all be about inclusive open educational resources. So some of the comments that were mentioned in the survey were assistive technologies and accessible format, support communities of practice made up of OER experts, instructional designers, and gender equality was also mentioned. So I now turn over the discussion to my co-chair, Papa, so that we can invite participants to share their views about inclusive open educational resources. So, yeah, take it away. Merci Melinda, j'espère qu'on m'entendait, vous m'entendez. Did you hear me? Thank you Melinda, I hope you hear me. Can you hear the interpreter? Yes. I'll take off my headset, says Papa. I believe that you can hear me better now. And do you hear the interpretation? Can someone confirm that you can hear the interpretation? Yeah, I can hear the interpretation. Okay, thank you Melinda. Okay, perfect. So following what Melinda has said, I would like to thank you Nesco and all the participants. I'm Papa Yuga Jiang, I'm coordinator of the francophone initiative of IAGM and in the international organization of Francophonia, and we're very committed to OER. We've been working with you Nesco on that for many years, notably on the development of tools. So the first point is very important for us as well at OER because it concerns inclusion. As we know, OERs do not cover all languages and a lot of languages have gaps such as French. We have mentioned inclusion in assistive technology and support to communities of practice. The question of gender equality between gender is also very important. We speak about a tool here, but in the drafting of OERs, the question of gender equality is mentioned. And we in our association have set up a program for the integration of gender in education in this program of OIF. Everything that's published is verified in order not to pass on the cliches based of inequality. This is what I wanted to say in my introduction. So the purpose of this exercise is to complete the information on that point. That is to say inclusion for OERs. And if you would like the floor, we will give you the floor to discuss those questions. Thank you. I see no hand raised. Please click the button raise hand if you want to take the floor. Probably I can start sharing and looking at what I think can be a priority area that we can work on while we're waiting for our other colleagues to share or share with us and discuss with us what they think are also some priority areas. So like for instance in the Philippines, we are also working on the inclusion of the universal design for learning on open educational resources so that it will make together with the assistive technologies some of the features of the universal design for learning will make open educational resources not just the learning objects but the OERs which are also massive open online courses to be really more inclusive and accessible especially to those who are physically challenged. So like for the past year a year or two we have started working on the inclusion even if they are just basic features of the universal design for learning on our open educational resources. So for us, especially in my university, that's one of the priority areas that we have identified to make open educational resources more inclusive. So that's a sharing from my end. So I hope others I can also see some familiar names in our list of participants. Probably they can also share what they think are priority areas to make our open educational resources more inclusive. And of course, quality is also assured. Melinda, I would like to add another example that of an experience we had in Senegal with an institution which is in charge of training all the people who have difficulty seeing. A lot of the OER content. Yes, I think there's a comment here. Yeah, there's a comment. It costs with accessing. Often it is a choice. This is buying food in different formats that are less data heavy. So comment on the Egor Lesko, the education global. So it's a comment by Egor Lesko on OER, which mentions accessibility. And he says that a lot of free OERs are available in video. Many people around the world are excluded from fully benefiting OER because they do not have access to the network. And this is a mention, a problem which he mentions. He speaks about accessibility. And in general, it is a choice between data and video. We must sometimes choose between content and video because of the weakness of the broadband. So he says that we must make sure that the content should be available in different formats, texts easy to download and video for those that have a wider band. He also says that contents and educational OER should be implemented with open source software in order to reach equal access to the data. So it's an important contribution by Egor who mentions a very important point, which is accessibility and diversification of the different formats, the technological formats when you share OERs. And I wanted to give you an example which I started to mention before Neil intervened. The problem is to train visually impaired students. OERs existed in text format. And we have set up an internet website on which the content is accessible in audio format. And students, visually impaired students, could have access to the same content as the other pupils who can see and read. So you have to take into account the specific constraints of each group. So we have another message from Jacob Olivier who says I'm trying to translate says Papa. He says we have to concentrate on affordable OER costs in terms of decolonization and curriculum. If I've understood the question says Papa, we have to concentrate on resources that are adapted at lower cost and that take into account the cultural specificities. So the internal specificities, he is suggesting sorry to put things into their own context and to concentrate on minority languages. He says that OERs should also be used to promote minority languages. So those are the two comments we have received in our question and answer section. I don't know whether there are other comments. Melinda, please. Yes, thank you very much for those two comments and suggestions. So we acknowledge the need for us to really consider the different formats. And I agree that if the OERs will be in different formats like the text, podcast, then the video, then we can really attend to the different needs of our various learners. I also agree with that comment on the language, although we will be discussing more of that in our second point of discussion. So may we invite others to also share what they think are the priority areas to make open educational resources more inclusive? So I have noted in our list of attendees, there are also from other organizations who are working on open educational resources. So can we hear from them as well? So I have noted Professor Rory is with us in this session. Maybe also hear from Professor Rory McGrill, who is UNESCO chair on OER. Professor, what other priority areas do you think we can work on for the coming years so that we can make our open educational resources more inclusive? I hope Rory can hear me. If not, there are two spectators who wish to take the floor, maybe we can turn to them. Okay. Okay, yeah, I saw that. Talking for a minute. Yes, go. One of the challenges that we found with OER is devices. We may have all this content in videos, in audios, in text, but most students, most learners from poor backgrounds do not have devices to access this content. And most of the time is very heavy. So we need to think of ways of accessing or facilitating access to this content by providing devices that may not necessarily have to use the internet, because internet in most countries is very expensive. And so that's one of the things that we are trying to, as learning for humanity in Africa, in Kenya, in Zambia, in Zimbabwe, in Ethiopia, we are trying, that question has come in heavily with poor children saying, well, even if you give us all this content, how do we access that? Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So you are looking at devices as well as the connectivity. So the individuals or learners can access the OERs, right? Yes. As far as, when we think about OER, we are thinking that we can't integrate it. It's also about specific devices such as boxes with a local server. Yeah. So that even if you don't have internet access, you can still access the content locally. What I would add to that is hard copies, paper-based. Some also don't have access to paper. But this is one solution that we can turn to. Many children don't have access to digital and have access to paper. So could have access to paper. We have Mr. Christian Strzak now asking for the floor. Mr. Strzak, you have the floor. Mr. Strzak, so micro and Fermi. Yes, go ahead. Thank you very much. Merci beaucoup. This is Christian Strzak from Germany, director of the ERC, European Research Institute for Learning Innovation and Corporation. And I was working in international standardization for many years. And what we have developed and focused in standardization is international standard to exchange common frameworks related to accessibility issues. That was or is still called accessibility for all or access for all precisely, access for all. And the idea was that even if you develop some content independently, which format or media, you have to describe it in a formal way that you can transfer it automatically into any other media format, meaning that you will also allow, for example, different color changes automatically or different content presentations the size of the fonts and different media channels that means transversing audio into text files and vice versa. Now this is already done and some agreement were already achieved as international standards or published as ISO standards from international standardization organization. Now the next step is currently the discussion in the field of artificial intelligence, how we can also move from the question how to present something on devices to global services. That means that designers or learners do not have to think about the device or any means how to access something, but that you develop international services like robots who are automatically translating everything that is out in the world into your own preferred format. Meaning that you will define your own personal profile, what are your preferences, how do you want to see and to receive any type of open education resources and then you will get it and it is depending on your choice on your device and on your way. That could also include very low technical approaches including also paper-based solutions. My question is what do you think about that? Is that a way for the future? I wouldn't have a specific answer to that. Just if you look at the trends it's true that artificial intelligence is trending. If you look at the studies that are available on the internet you'll see that there are systematic translation, AI trends. When you're surfing on the internet you have certain possibilities of automatic translations of the pages. The rise of AI will be useful having automatic translation and generating an automatic format based on your features in an automatic manner. Yes, that's interesting. That's what I have to say. That's what I have to answer to that. I don't know if that answers your question. Other than that I think we have covered this question quite significantly. We have the idea of format diversification, access to technology, the use of AI. These are the priority areas on this first item. Our list is quite rich and should allow us to move on to the next item. This is agreeable to everyone. Yes, Melinda go ahead. Yeah, I think there was also one comment here from Mariam Aishuruki. Would you like to make the comment yourself or do I read your comment before we proceed to the next area of discussion? We also have Rory McGrill raising his hand. I think we should give him the floor as well. Okay, Rory, yes. Thank you. Yes, can you hear me okay? Yes. Yes, I'd just like to make it. It's a simple point but it's very important is that people should avoid using a non-commercial and no derivatives as a restriction because of the different countries have different rules on how they approach these things and it makes it very difficult for people to use. We're finding that quite a few of the OER that we're seeing are adding on that NC non-commercial or no derivatives. So I think it's important that we should make a very strong recommendation to people creating OER to use the open CC by or CC by SA. Absolutely Rory. That's really important indeed. Yes, in order for people to be able to use it then we need to to have open resources absolutely. Melinda, you wanted to give someone else the floor? Yeah, but there's a comment here from Mariam. I think I will just read the comment. I think OER should be provided in open platforms. So the suggestion was for us to be working on making available the open educational resources in open platforms or in one place and they should also be categorized. So that was a suggestion also. Are there additional points to be made for this topic? I think we still have one more from Dr. Gattubu. Are there still comments that you want to make? No, I think we already gave him the floor. I just think he didn't lower his hand. Okay, okay. So let's proceed to the next point for discussion is on multilingualism and some of the comments that were given in the online survey are as follows. Create a multilingual and accessible federated OER discoveries based on agreed upon common metadata. Leverage the artificial intelligence for translation of open educational resources. Although later we will also be discussing more about artificial intelligence together with the other areas that cut across all the working groups. The other comments are the use of open formats. I think it was also mentioned earlier and standards to promote ease in translation and contextualization and to create a platform. It was also mentioned earlier that calls for easy translations to other languages. So Papa, can you lead the discussion on this? We also had a message from Cable Green. Remember Cable Green had a message for us. I don't know if you have it here. Could you maybe read it out because it's in English Melinda? I'm looking for it. So if you have it here, maybe you could read it out for us. I'm also looking for it. Yes. Right, well then back on multilingualism. It's a very important topic. The idea of OER language is absolutely essential for many. And so we should do our utmost to be able to translate the content into various languages. As it says here on the slide, having platforms with resources that allow us to choose the categories that are priorities and then translate those categories into many languages. We also have the competence of the skill reference on OER developed by UNESCO and other partners, which is now available in five languages, including non-English languages. This means that we have common tools that we should use and we should systematically translate a certain number of documents. We also have the documents that have been translated into French. The OER supports the development of national languages as well, in schools, in curricula, and in addition to English, the design resources are to be established as open educational resources. And the question that was raised here in our first point of discussion is that supporting minority languages as well, how can we support them? Melinda, maybe you found Cable Green's message in the meantime. Yes, and I think it was also shared by Neil in the chat box. So if I may read, so this is the message from Cable Green. So Creative Commons is working with its global network to translate the CC 4.0 licenses and the CC zero into more languages. So she is sharing already what they are doing at the Creative Commons. And the second point that she wants to make is that translating open licenses is called for in the OER recommendation. So we are just calling our attention to the OER recommendation, like posting the FAPL linguistic translation of open licenses as defined in this recommendation to ensure their proper implementation. So we just need to go back to the OER recommendation and remind ourselves on what we need to do and what we should be working on when it comes to this aspect of multilingualism. So that's from Cable Green, who cannot join us in this online consultation because of some power outpage something. Yeah. So power is out in our neighborhood. So that's why she sent the comments and suggestions through email earlier. So any other points that our participants would like to make when it comes to multilingualism of the open educational resources? Igor seems to be asking for the floor. Igor, let's go please. You have the floor. Thank you very much. Merci beaucoup. Bonjour à tous. I hope that you can hear me well. This is just a very quick comment related to open educational resources being available in different languages. I think that increasing the number of multilingual and contextually relevant OER is very important. We should definitely try to focus on developing a strategy of sorts to surface and to prominently promote such initiatives as well as encourage new ones in this regard. And I could give you a couple of examples, more recent examples from a program that I have been involved in and many others as well, which is called Open Education for a Better World program, where two project leaders, one in Nigeria, was developing open educational resources on climate change in Yoruba language for local language speakers. And another one in South Africa is developing a glossary of multilingual legal terminology in different languages. And I think that these kinds of initiatives are or can be really impactful. I can make a real difference in the lives of people. And then just a general note on the translation, I think artificial intelligence definitely can be helpful, but I think it's also a bit more nuanced than that. So if you are looking at translating content, it's important to actually think about it in terms of contextual relevance here. So certain terminology that is available in English doesn't exist in other languages. So then it becomes an issue of how to find appropriate terminology in local languages. So that's just another comment too that I would like to make that is important to focus on. Thank you for the floor. Merci Igor. Thank you Igor. I have one more hand, so I'll allow that person to talk if that's okay. Okay. Now the hand has gone down. So go ahead. Go ahead. Scander, Scander Tunisie. Scander Tunisie. Good morning everybody. Thank you for this opportunity to have this fruitful discussion about developing open digital resources. Well, digital issues are of concern for us in Arab countries. For instance, we have difficulties in exchanging important content. So there are some avenues to explore in some countries. Let me give an example. In education, we do have a lot of data, digital resource in many countries, but there is a problem of the language. So if we have some focal points in some countries through some institutions, like in education research of higher education, we can have units, units which serve as focal points. And they can do the work for us. It is true that artificial intelligence is a solution, but it needs to be placed in a proper context. Sometimes you don't have the perfect a translation for some words and notions, more particularly in the area of education. But if we do have some focal points, institutions which will take care of the translation of the content, for instance, educational, pedagogical content that will enable us to really ensure quality education. So this idea of having focal points in member countries can help us to build up a network while we're waiting for technologies to be more developed and to have real-time translation while maintaining the educational quality which is required. Thank you. So let us retain the idea of having a national structure, taking care of language issues, and having the international level and networking. Now we have Christina Ismail who asked a question. She is wondering if teachers produce resource on closed platforms. What can be done? What she means is that many teachers develop open resource and they are under an open patent license, but they are on closed platforms, which means that they cannot be accessed by the community. So she is wondering what can be done. Now maybe I can try to provide a first answer. Maybe we can start with the awareness raising, raising awareness about making resource available and publishing on open platforms. This is the comment that I will make as an initial response to that question. Okay, we have one more hand, so I'm going to allow Suspeter Gatobu to speak. You're able to talk now. Suspeter, would you like to unmute? Okay, he's not unmuting. I can't unmute him from my side, so until he unmutes, I suggest we move on Melinda. Okay, so let's proceed to the next topic. So for our next discussion point, it's all about quality assurance and some of the comments that were given during our online survey are as follows. Development of a QA criteria and descriptive tag development, QA and recognition bodies that need to be integrated in the review and accreditation processes at the course, institutional and government level. So for this particular discussion point, we are looking at the priority areas that we could work on for the next months or so so that we can also ensure that what we will be having, reducing and sharing our quality open educational resources. And I think everyone will agree with me that it is really a major concern now, especially with this massive shift to online learning and our advocacy for our educators to be using open educational resources. And of course, the question that they will always be asking is how can we assure that the open educational resources are of quality and can really contribute to the quality education that we are all aspiring for? So we now open the discussion on quality assurance for open educational resources and Papa will be leading the discussion. Thank you, Melinda. Let me add something to the priorities. There are two issues which are raised here, making sure that shared content are quality content. So there is also an administrative aspect but organizational aspect describing resources, identifying the authors that can also help to ensure quality. I can see that somebody is asking for the floor. Let me give the floor to Christian first and then I'll go back to what I was saying about quality assurance. Christian, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Merci beaucoup. I think this topic is highly important and for that reason, I'm also working on it for more than 15 years now as I also believe this is also the basis to ensure inclusiveness and equity access to open educational resources in general because access for all and equity should also be one of the quality criteria for open educational resources. And we have already worked on frameworks to not only measure the quality of open educational resources but also to support designers of open educational resources to improve the quality of existing open educational resources or to start with the design of their first open educational resources if they have not done it before. That's why I'm very happy to tell you that next to the international standard that we have published already in the year 2005 and that was updated in the year 2017, the very first quality standard for technology enhanced learning and online media. I will write it in the chat afterwards that this standard was also not only published as an ISO standard but also as national standard in more than 60 countries right now and we could see also a lot of applications in the different regions of the world but this is just a formal aspect and my belief we have to go beyond such a formal frameworks but we have to focus that it is taken into practice, that people are also really working with it, that teachers in schools as well as lecturers in universities and trainers in lifelong learning are taking the floor and designing high quality open educational resources. That's why I believe it's extremely important really beneficial that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number four is also highlighting quality education with a specific focus on the quality of any type of education and that is also true for open educational resources of course. That's why here we can also connect to that strategy from the United Nations and telling also the member states out in the world that open educational resources are both a means to facilitate the Sustainable Development Goal number four as well as a topic how to improve current education systems, current learning and training in all regions and countries all over the world. That's why we have started with developing tools for beginners as well as for experts of online learning and I will happy to share links to the websites here in the chat. We have a very simple checklist for designers as well as for learners who are starting with online learning and of course including open educational resources and we have also a very detailed list of quality criteria for designers as well as learners and yeah we hope that we can join forces with everybody around the world also to facilitate more quality improvement to lead to continuous improvement cycles for open educational resources. Thank you. Thank you Christian. So beyond standards and quality checklist I wanted to also look at the process of creating for instance in the Francophone initiatives on OER licenses we have a set up a process of development in order to guarantee the quality of the resources. Selecting authors specialized in this area and there is also a validation process which includes the ministerial departments in charge of accreditation because OER will depend on informal content also content produced by teachers for their own purpose for their own courses that they can share with the community. I think this is a real area an area where we don't have a lot of formalism because too much formalism will kill creativity but we want to have a system which will make it possible to ensure quality of such informal resource because it's not only about formal resource created by institutions NGOs governmental bodies but we there we can create quality but we have teachers teachers creating their own resources sharing it with the community. So by experience we know that teachers posting their content while asking people to give their comment to give some feedback well improve the quality of their content so we should also think about quality insurance for such informally produced resource it's important for OERs because OERs will be credible if there are quality OERs advocating advocating for OER means stressing the quality of the resources Melinda this is the comment that I wanted to make I don't know if there are other people asking for the floor there is no comment no hand raised there is a comment yeah there is an additional comment here also from Christian although there are other comments which I hope we can also read before we end the session I have a couple of hands yeah okay okay can we first read what Christian has contributed through the Q&A box it's about the international quality standard for technology enhanced and online learning education so that's ISO EC440180 and he also shared a link on the quality checklist for beginners and online learning education which we can I think refer to even after the session so thank you very much Christian so for those who want to speak can we also give them the floor so that they can contribute their ideas now okay please go ahead Lisa the last point there is a wonderful point that we have been thinking about where we get the teachers either the teachers who are current or the retired teachers we recognize that teachers carry a lot of knowledge that has been accumulated over many many years some of them retired some of them were excellent teachers they are awarded in respective fields in their countries and these teachers retired with all that information and they have it at home in notebooks and all that and I like the comment about not making it formal because then it is very concerning the main question that I would like us to ask and I don't know who in the panel can help us answer that question is how do we navigate the formal structures that the governments have set in place that sometimes actually held by by the cartels so that when a teacher produces this content it is imperative for them to submit it to government approval and they don't have very objective ways of approving this content so at the end of the day it's not going to be used because it's not approved it and yet we know it's very quality the students or the learners who used it past exams or they learned a lot and these people are decorated in their countries as wonderful teachers how can we have that content in the OER that is can be used globally thank you Lisa over to you yes I just wanted to make a quick comment that when we're working with teachers on professional learning we've worked with many state departments of education here in the US and they are bringing groups of teachers often with a curriculum specialist together to curate collections of content together for a particular grade band area for example and they're doing a lot of training with the teachers to look at quality and learning standards so it's really doing professional development with the teachers who are beginning to understand more of the content alignment issues themselves and those collections of content are now some of the most used and requested sets of content from one state to another so I want just to not underestimate I know the importance of the official bodies and the accreditation bodies but what in practice with training we're finding that when the teachers themselves have been trained in these areas working at a group often in in kind of a maybe even a hackathon type style that really excellent quality sets of content are created and curated for then others to use. Right we also have Rory McGrill so over to you Rory. Yes my comment on this is that we need to be inclusive of a wide range of different types of content and I find that it's very difficult to get three or four teachers together to agree on what is good quality and what isn't. Sometimes they have different views, different approaches, different techniques and so I think that it is important that we accept diversity and inclusiveness in content and allow a lot of different content to be used and to not be overly restrictive of still taking staking into account different quality measures that we do have. Thank you Rory. We have a lot of comments. People have spoken about what was said so I'll give you time to read the comments later on there aren't really questions those are essentially comments. I have one more. There's one more yeah there's one more hand raised here from yeah yes yeah. Ozzy you're open. Yeah hello everyone this is Fauzi from Beirut, Lebanon. You're very faint. Yeah can you hear me well? Yes that's better. Yeah good. Just I wanted to share my experience from Beirut, Lebanon. I've been working with the Center of Education, Research and Development and curating OER especially you know with the Center who's in charge of the Lebanese National Curriculum. So one of the issues that we face here with the instructor and the people in charge is you know finding you know the quality issue and the OER quality. So I adopted you know a small guide for our instructors at the Center a very brief one so that you know for people who want to create OER just to evaluate their OER or if they're looking for OER what to look for and I divided the and it will be translated to the Arabic language of course. So the four rubrics you know you know the first I thought you know the compliance issue if the resource is it has an open license second accessibility standard and then I moved to the content and within the contents you know talking about currency relevance credibility of the contents and then the inclusivity issue and of course the last part is you know like the technical factor you know from a user point experience. So this is something you know I'm working on this small guide for our instructor and of course you know later on I would love to share it with the whole community and I will do some training for those faculty members later on on how to use this quality guide for OER. Thank you. Thank you Fauzi. Thank you Fauzi. So are there other suggestions on our priority areas for quality of OER? If none then probably we can move to our next topic or area of concern and if I may share my slide again. So research was also mentioned in the areas for consideration when it comes to quality and inclusive open educational resources and one comment that came about from our respondents was encourage research with communities of practice in the area of accessibility inclusiveness quality assurance and multilingualism to inform the development of OER by diverse communities. So we now open the discussion suggestion on priority areas that we can undertake when it comes to research on OER quality accessibility or inclusiveness and multilingualism. So your suggestions recommendations on the priority areas please we welcome them now. Thank you. So Papa can you lead the discussion on this? So the question of research is also a central question when we speak about OER. It's also necessary to have research to develop new OERs. The research is there to boost the development of those resources and it also allows to create stronger basis to OERs. So in terms of research the floor is yours please do not hesitate to raise your hand. I see no comments on research yet neither do I see a raised hand. Okay can I start the sharing on research? I think I can share one research that we conducted together with the SEMIO secretariat and this is on the impact of the use of OER in Southeast Asian countries and in that research it was really emphasized on the need for OERs to be contextualized and of course one of the barriers mentioned by the respondents of that research was that the available OERs are all but majority of them are in English and that they cannot really use it in their own teaching. One group of our respondents then where the teachers from the Southeast Asian countries. So language really was identified as a barrier to the use of open educational resources and thus preventing it to really make an impact when it comes to using OERs to improve the quality of education in this country. And in the same research it was also found out that the students think that their teachers should be the one to lead on the use and the awareness about what OERs are where they can find them etc and really push for the use of the open educational resources. Of course when it comes to research on policy on OERs national policies we also that research also showed that there was not many countries have national policies on the use of open educational resources. So the importance of doing research when it comes to really looking at OERs is really important and it can really provide us with some focus on what areas on OER we should be working on to really create an impact when it comes to the use of open educational resources. So that's how we the kind of research that we did for open educational resources and which really helped us in identifying priority areas when it comes to the OER development and use and sharing. Okay so there are at the Q&A. Papa can you yes take this over. On questions Christian Stark speaks about definitions I will translate says Papa definitions and types of OERs in a research paper in relation with OERs and MOOCs and he wrote that document was Stephen Downs and other researchers. So he's sharing information on one of his publications about the links between OERs and MOOCs. This is one of the topics of research on OERs. No other comments no raised hands on this question of research. So my suggestion is to move to the next point as we have covered everything pertaining to research no requests for the floor. So there are there are no more sharing or suggestions on the priority areas for research no raised hands no more on the comments. It was just one question in the Q&A asking you to clarify what you mean by priority areas. When we say its priority areas we mean here what are the things that we should be working on when it comes to research for instance on OERs. So in the previous discussions we identified some priority areas on the quality multilingualism inclusiveness or inclusion. So when it comes to research on OER what do you think should be our priority areas which we should be researching on or should be the topic subject of our inquiries when it comes to open educational resources especially when it comes to inclusion or inaccessibility are there other areas of research which you think we should be working on. I think just like what Chris Chan has shared in this Q&A box something like he shared a publication as a result of the research that he did together with the other experts on OERs. So probably this is already the result of the research but what other areas of inquiry or study we could focus on so that we can really look at inclusion we can really look at the quality and also on the something like on the translation the aspect of the language of our OERs something that we could look into in the next few months or so. Are there other suggestions on this? I have one hand so I'm going to open up the floor for Ethel. Ethel you're open but you just need to unmute your microphone. Hi this is Ethel from the senior secretariat in Bangkok, Thailand. Yes we did the Southeast Asian open educational resources study as partially shared by Dr. Bandilaya. So we have already seen from our member countries Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timur, and Vietnam that you know OER is actually being utilized in higher education institutions rather than in K to 12 education providers. What we have seen as the recommendations for the way forward in terms of the current reality on the use of OERs that we need first to you know develop policies that require publicly funded educational resources to be openly licensed that's number one and how to do it maybe an action research on that. We should also work on sustainable financing models. Right now we are currently doing with assistance of UNESCO Bangkok you know developing OERs for children with disabilities and we are still developing the modules and to be translated into open educational resources. That's also something that is very important in terms of COVID-19 response and in in terms of inclusivity. However in terms of having good quality products on OER we need to tap experts to provide incentives. How do we provide incentives to teaching staff who publish editable and readily accessible OERs in public repositories maybe a study on that regional study on that. Of course we have to look at disseminating research finding or best practices focusing on cost effective sustainable and effective OERs. In the recent COVID-19 response you know during the ministerial meeting I would like to share that the ministers of education in Southeast Asia have really lauded the effort of Simeo in sharing our open educational resources not only from from the secretariat but almost all the 26 Simeo centers and they've been very useful during the lockdown during the academic lockdown but we still need to work with our open university partners in the in the production and development of more OER especially that we have different languages. We should continue to you know create national platforms for MOOCs and OERs for our member countries and yes I support you know our study on quality assurance framework for MOOCs and OERs and we also should should consider other issues related to infrastructure and bandwidth infrastructure for example and mobile learning materials that can be used in rural and remote settings. Some of our OERs that we tested in Indonesia for example using Sierra or you know you can make use of OERs even without the bandwidth connection or connectivity it can be used in remote learning areas but we still have to improve on that a continuing research on how we perfect that model of using OERs in a remote areas and making it more effective. So I think this is my only sharing to the working group and I would be sharing this policy paper with you in a while thank you so much. Yeah thank you thank you very much Director Ethel for that sharing and I guess that use of that machine which will enable learners to access the OERs even with limited internet connectivity is really very critical at this point especially with our advocacy on the use of OERs so with that I think we can move on to the next discussion yeah. Melinda just quickly read out an input on the Q&A from Christian who also calls for quality criteria and indicators for different contexts and in different regions and countries worldwide. Oh yeah yes that's another contribution from Christian so it's a quality criterion indicators for different contexts yes thank you very much for that Neil and also a link to the material that he shared about the results of the research that was published in the open praxis journal so thank you very much for that sharing we can refer to that material even after the session so thank you. So with that I think our last topic for discussion is on the overarching areas across all the working groups and that is these are communication monitoring and of course artificial intelligence earlier there was already a mention on the use of artificial intelligence for the translation of OER and we already have some comments on this and there were also suggestions on how we can be more effective in terms of translating the open educational resources and I think if I recall correctly there was also one sharing from Rory which says that contextualizing OER is not simply a translation we just don't translate if we want to contextualize and there are many suggestions on this so if we can also get suggestions on how we can work on communication strategies platforms so that we can connect our initiatives to the other organizations and other working groups who are also working on open educational resources monitoring our initiatives also on gender concerns and additional inputs about artificial intelligence so the floor is now open for suggestions and recommendations on this areas and of course Papa will again lead a discussion on this. The first item brought forward by Melinda which has already been discussed being AI and translation so translation is indeed about also integrating context cultural background and translation should be adapted to the curricula content as well now can AI be developed sufficiently to take into consideration all of these issues minimum of these issues well that's a good question another question is that of communication I'd say that for the OER movement we are not the best at communication let's put it that way in terms of knowledge of or how the general public knows about OER contribution to OER development I believe the information is not very widespread but maybe our priority could be developing our communication with the education community to share more knowledge about our initiatives these are the questions that we need to look at it's very important that we in our world global movement take these issues into consideration for the development of OER how can we better communicate on OER so you have the floor I don't see any comments for now are there any comments yeah I think there is one comment here from Nakalunga she says that without checking the quality as such the research could be on how so it's all still about the research how courses are translated to see the trends and what we can learn from them going forward we can use it to come up with ways even modules on what to consider to translate accurately so she's still making suggestions on the translation and also another comment from yeah from Suspitor Dr. Gatubu each of these areas is distinct and connected identifying key components for each and drivers like the experts could be a starting point in the context of OER so when it comes to communication monitoring artificial intelligence and even making sure that there will be the gender inclusion is something that experts could really lead and so that we could push this forward are there other suggestions here is there someone here who can also share our platform for the dynamic coalition OER our colleagues and how we are making the platform that we are using in sharing what we are doing when it comes to activities about OER in our respective countries yeah sure sure Zeynep I think you're referring to the platform that we want to do to develop so the idea is that we will have to have means for communication there are a lot of if you think of it as a multidimensional product we have to have a means to communicate amongst ourselves as a community on the same projects and across projects we have to have a means to provide public information on what's happening and to people who will then be sensitized that there's a lot of activity going on in terms of resource open educational resources and at the same time we have to have a means to actually collaborate and create together common area common projects so this is going to have to be a tool that's going to be very functional and what would be interesting is from this group to have some idea of what are some we use we need what would be some areas I think in our discussion on accessibility we touched upon a lot of points that can be transferred to this discussion we talked about connectivity issues we talked about the they need to also be able to go from from a digital to analogs with the paper and that we can't make it too complicated there was a discussion earlier in this in the chat about a need I think it was Lisa who brought it up that the sort of a means to have some sort of addressing multilingualism how to work with translation inside and out so what I would be interested in knowing is how the participants would see specific if there's examples of specific tools they would say actually work very well also in this area that we could perhaps look at as an example or any other sort of means basically if you look at what what the dynamic coalition is it's a means for collaboration around the four areas of the recognition the OER recommendation if you look at where we are today july 2021 there are 14 000 I think how do you know how many there's the coronavirus and it's touching everywhere and it's made the whole world digital so this is pushing us to go more digital and faster than we were before but this is a good thing too the fact that we're going digital is a good thing because it's going to make it more effective we're able to have all of you here today having this discussion from all parts of the world and we're having this until friday and it's done easily without anyone traveling and we're still able to exchange in the community how can we harness this to make this focused and useful for us to actually bring forward the objectives of the dynamic coalition that's the question yeah okay I think thank you very much for that Zainab and there's one comment here suggestion at the q&a box it's from Igor in terms of the platform that is being set up by UNESCO for the working groups and other related matters the functionality should be available in different languages it could serve as a space to surface and promote OER initiatives in different languages share lessons practices regarding contextualization mobilize different volunteer communities and she was also referring to the comment made by Lisa earlier about creating volunteer structures so that's one suggestion with regard to the communication platform so are there any other suggestions on this that I guess Zainab already explained what we need and what we can get from the earlier discussions as well so that we can also inform others of what we are doing across working groups so from our end that's the last slide for discussion and if there are other points that our participants would like to make suggest also additional comment suggestions we can probably devote a few more minutes on that we have recorded all the comments and suggestions of the q&a box so those who want to make additional suggestions at this point so I don't see raise hands here none okay so if there are no more comments I would like to thank everyone for this very fruitful discussion we really learned a lot we got so much from all your suggestions and we hope that you will continue being actively involved in this initiative so if I may turn it over again to papa and then to Zainab after papa you would like would you like to give your last minute the summary and highlights and some other things that you would like to mention at this point I should also like to thank the participants as you did yourself Melinda our our discussions were extremely lively and interesting and they show the importance of who we are and the importance of having a structured global action for oer in order to better maximize the potential of oer now a few questions very specific questions are raised the resources of sharing contextualization issues pertaining to teachers training they are the true the true drivers of this initiative this UNESCO initiative in any way and this initiative of UNESCO and other partners is extremely important it should be supported we will be present no matter what in in this endeavor with UNESCO and other partners for the development and the better use of oer and for the development of education and namely open education this is what I basically had to say to sum it up and again many things specifically to UNESCO for allowing us to get together today thank you okay thank you thank you very much and I may just before I turn this over to Zaynep there's one additional comment here from Gemma Santos Hermosa and just adding to Lisa's comment before the libraries because we really want to emphasize here the important role of libraries in terms of supporting the teachers and other stakeholders when it comes to the implementation of our initiatives on quality oer and the call also emphasizing that they should also be trained about this so thank you very much for that comment so again thank you very much to all of you and Zaynep I am turning the floor to you for your final comments and message okay I'm going to use another microphone but when I use it I can't hear you so if there is a problem please write it in the in the text can you hear me now I hope that this is better please send me a message if you can okay so I assume you can so thank you very much for for everybody's input and for the wonderful chairing by Hatha Niveden in Van Malinga-Vandeleria we greatly appreciate the inputs this discussion has been very rich and we're very happy that in fact we have the inputs from a large number of stakeholders and we see that we've really found over many important points that have a lot of importance in the in the follow-up one thing that I think comes out from all of this is that in fact the work that's being done here on accessibility also is transversal to the sense that we have to also rather advocating for open educational resources we have to advocate for the same thing for our own communications and for our own activities within the S&M community so I would particularly like to thank you for the very important points that came up but I think are actually transversal so also thank you Neil for all of your support and to Nagini and the interpreters of course for everything you've done and for the technical support this is this we have a message that all the recordings for the sessions are being posted on the following page and we will send this out also by email if you would like to share this page and come back and listen to it on your time you're quite welcome to and we will also be asking for those that have not been able to participate to to go into the into the to the page and to send their inputs up to 48 hours after the event so thank you very much and we look forward to seeing you this afternoon at 4.30 P.E.T. for the following session on policy which will be moderated and chaired by Jane Oaken from the Open University of Nigeria and by Maria from Mexico and also the S&M. Thanks very much we have some messages from Neil in the chat saying that you can send inputs to Neil for comments for the sessions you could not attend and they will be included in the report and the videos from yesterday will also be thank you very much to all of you and good afternoon and good morning