 and then pull her off. Okay, welcome everybody. Welcome to this session and to the last day and the last morning of this online consultation. Thank you very much for being here. Today's session is focusing on the Working Group One, which is capacity building. And I see from the list that some of you are awake in the middle of the night. So I thank you for your dedication also. Today I'm going to go through the objectives and some logistics. If you've heard this once, twice, maybe three, four times, maybe five already, please bear with us. And then I will be giving the mic to Jihan Osman, who is our chair for capacity building. We are unfortunately today, our colleague Skander Egenia has an engagement with his ministry, which he was not able to, and for this reason he was not able to be with us right now, but he will be following this and the results online and will be available if you have any questions also. So the objectives of this session as all the other sessions are the same. And I think as we get through it and we're getting more and more clear, it's to clarify the priority areas of action per working group. So the idea is to drill down into seeing what would be some areas to start activities in terms of what has been identified by the dynamic coalition in its launch. So we've had three consultations to date. So we've had invited people to send in their inputs. This is the third time since March, so March, April, May, June, July in five months that we have asked people to send their inputs on the actions of the dynamic coalition. And during this time, the last consultation we had is a survey and it was open for 10 days and participants were invited to identify what they felt were the most important areas of action within the areas that had already been identified. And we have sent you the results of this and the objective today is to drill down further to get a better idea of where it would be a good topic to focus. The second objective is to identify user needs and parameters of an electronic tool for information about sharing information within and about the dynamic coalition activities. In this regard, we have asked this question in every single working group and we are consolidating the inputs that we have from each working group on this question. Now, the technical points I need to outline, I've already outlined them, if you've been through a couple of these sessions, you know what it looks like, but basically we're using Zoom, there is interpretation, you see the interpretation button, if you click on French, you will hear it in French, if you click on English, you'll hear it in English, if you click on disable, you will have it in the language that is being spoken. There will be no interpretation. The chat is not functioning for questions and answers because we want to focus the discussion in the question and answer box, which looks like those two bubbles, the ones I have in yellow here. And we would like you to put your questions and comments and links, if you want to share something in this box, we will read what you say out loud so that it will be interpreted into the other language. If you want to take the floor, please raise your hand and we will open the mic and we'll give you the floor. So with that, I give the floor to Jihan Osman, who is our chair for capacity building. And Jihan, the mic's yours. Thank you, Zeynep. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for those who are upsetting their midnight sleep to be with us on behalf of Skander. I would like to apologize for him not coming, but we've been working together over the past few days in preparing for this. This is a very big day in Tunisia, the day of when they disclose the high school diploma grades and so it's a very critical day for the Ministry of Education in which Dr. Skander works. So today, we'll be talking about workgroup one, capacity building. And there is a lot of interest in capacity building for OER. We saw that from the survey results. If we look at slide three, we'll be noticing that several items are high on the next slide, please. That there are several items that are high on the priority list. And from looking at the detailed results of everything, there seems to be a general attitude that let's really look at what we have before we start moving forward. There is a lot of emphasis on collaboration, in terms of building and sifting through materials that we already have, including for capacity building specifically, but also OERs. Let's go through what we have and before we move forward, identify the gaps. There's also a lot of emphasis on research and knowledge creation that it's time to share things like best practices, to come up with models that work better and to localize and contextualize these models. There is a lot of emphasis on collaborative research. And so we'll go through all of these items one by one. So these seem to be the general trends, the general concerns, the general needs, a need to focus on what we already have before we move forward, a need to collaborate, localize, and a need to share the best practices and models that we already have right now. During the survey, there were a lot of different sites shared and we'll be sifting through them, not right now, but later on and there seems to be a lot of material that already exists throughout there that we can make use of. I will now move on to slide number six, which is the first item. The one, please move next. Next. Existing capacity building materials. As I've mentioned, there is a strong emphasis and acknowledgement that we already have a lot of distinct projects and existing building, capacity building materials that are around the world, but that somehow we are, might be able to move forward somehow we are, might be reinventing the wheel by not collaborating together and synthesizing what we have before we move forward. And so this is a very important item. So number one, we have identify generic specific locally contextualized OER content and this identifies mainly three objectives like what generically do we have that can work across different localities, what is specific to particular groups and what is locally contextualized, thereby also like tapping on the points of inclusiveness that we talked about over the past few days. So just starting with this point, are there any comments or questions or clarifications that we need to make here before we move forward? Okay, so I'm monitoring the participant list. If anyone would like to make inputs at this stage, please do raise your hands and I'll open up the microphones for you to be able to speak. Alternatively, if you prefer to put a response into the Q&A, I will read that out. Right, I have two hands, I have various hands coming up. I'm going to start with a voice we haven't heard yet, I think, so we have Wayne McIntosh. Wayne, you are open, so you should be able to talk now. Hi, Milt, thanks very much. I just want to confirm that you're hearing me. Yes, we are. Thank you, Kandy, and it's wonderful to be able to participate here from New Zealand, it's getting late at night, but thank you for the opportunity to be able to contribute. I think the focus on multilingualism is particularly important in terms of how we can create opportunities for translating existing resources and capitalizing on open source infrastructures to be able to deliver open courses in building capacity in OER. I should mention that we are collaborating with UNESCO. Zainab and her colleagues are working on translating a French iteration of one of the open courses that was open online courses that was originally funded by UNESCO. Next week I'm working on a consultation with colleagues in India for a Hindi translation, but it would be great if we could open up these initiatives for collaborative community translation efforts across multiple languages. So I just want to put that on the table that there are opportunities for us to be collaborating with each other on multilingual translation. So, you know, an open invitation in the spirit of the OER movement. Yes, I mean, thank you very much for this comment. I think part of the question is that what already exists in languages that we're seeking but we're not aware of? So, but this idea of having a common hub where you can already like discover what is already there is indeed very useful. We have personally at in Egypt made use of that of the OER hub and use the materials of Kenya that we adapted to our local context. We did have to translate it, but at least we had a good place to start and that definitely helped us move faster with our project. We're trying now through this OER hub which is kind of sponsored by UNESCO that we identify what exists there in a variety of languages and so we can already see that there is a lot there. And so the idea behind the spirit of this first group of commons is really working together and seeing what we already have because there seems to be a lot, not just within under the sponsorship of UNESCO but many other organizations as well. So thank you for your comment and good luck with that promising initiative on New Zealand. Okay, we have next on the list of raised hands. So Spetta, you're open to talk. If you can maybe just introduce yourself and say where you're from as you get going and it's the same to all people you'll speak on as well, please. Pleasure to join this collection and it's wonderful. I'm calling from Kenya for a group called Learning Humanity based in Canada. It was caught up in Kenya because of COVID the airways were closed and not brought back so I'm working from Kenya. Is there anything as I think about the community? Hello? Yeah. You're breaking up a bit unfortunately. Yeah, you're breaking up, yes. Oh, clear enough. Let's try again. Otherwise maybe you can type your comments and I'll read it out. Okay, let's try again. I'm saying my name is Jagatoh. I work for Learning Humanity based in Canada. I'm in Kenya because of some of them and then COVID happened and it didn't fly back. Okay, enough. I'm afraid you're still breaking. Unfortunately, you're still breaking up. Type your comments in. I'll read them out. Thank you, I'll do that, thank you. Sorry about that. Thank you. So next we have a comment from Christopher Mayarchy in the Q&A who says, good morning all and thanks for this opportunity. We have residual issues to do with capacity building in order to fulfill the urgent need for our already approved policy. We have an understanding with Zenit for a workshop to take place. We would be happy to escalate this and proceed with capacity building and sensitization. Congratulations to Dihang. Christopher also notes that he unfortunately wasn't able to join the policy session yesterday. Thank you for the update, Christopher. As you may have seen from the emails, fortunately at least, even if you couldn't join the session, I'm sorry about that, but there's a recording online that is available. So next I'm going to move across to Cable Green. Cable, you're open. Great, thanks, Neil. Just building on what Wayne was saying, I think this is an incredible opportunity. There's just a very large amount of resources that are out there that as we are able to organize them for the purposes of helping governments understand and implement the OER recommendation, I think it's a fabulous opportunity. I wanted to highlight just very quickly since you asked about different languages, two areas where creative commons can provide some assistance. The first is we have a CC certificate program, which is an online course about learning details about open licensing, the commons, copyright, public domain, et cetera. All of that content is available as OER under CC by licenses, but specific to this question, the content is currently available in English, Arabic, and Italian. We're working on new translations now in Bengali, Spanish, and Yoruba, and we'll be translating into additional languages. The content was just translated into a red over audio. We put it in book format. All of these works will be under a CC by license, a Creative Commons attribution license. Second thing I would say just in general is that Creative Commons, to the extent that materials about open licenses and public domain tools may be useful as resources. We have, as you can imagine, over 20 years, handouts, graphics, websites, FAQs, templates, et cetera, that we've created at Creative Commons, mostly that others around the world have created amazing works and we tend to collect those. Those are also all openly licensed and available. And so as we dive even deeper and UNESCO starts to help us get organized and call out for very specific works, be them infographics or works in various languages, we look forward to contributing to that in multiple languages. Thank you. Thank you, Cable. This is a tremendous success to have this important content in the varieties of modalities that you mentioned and the variety of languages. And I think this is something that we noticed a lot is that people, even those who are aware of OERs, so we do know Creative Commons, some of us do, but the majority do not. So having these hubs where people know that this is where I can find what I need and I think this lack of awareness is something that we notice all the time when we work with teachers, I mean in Egypt, for example, is missing those hubs where I can find the most important information or knowing where to go next. So OER for people who are new to that idea is overwhelming and they don't know where to go to get trusted materials, they don't know and hence not only capacity building in them, knowing how to create them and how to find them, but also how to navigate this new world and outlook. That is something that is very important and that we increasingly feel needs to happen. So I'm very glad that UNESCO is pushing for this organization and us coming together and synthesizing what we have and kind of creating that hub or those different hubs where people can come and find information on OERs. Thank you. That's great. Thank you. As you might expect, Cable, Wayne has asked, posed the question about whether or not the CC certificate course, what the cost to participate in the CC certificate courses so maybe if you could just clarify that. Sure, so there's different options. What I was referring to is all of the content of the, well, all the content, frankly, of everything that Creative Commons creates is licensed either under CC0 where we dedicate works directly to the public domain or CCBuy. Everything that we create around the certificate, the translations, et cetera, are all under a CCBuy license, which of course means that anybody may take that content for free, you do anything they want with it. In fact, many entities around the world have taken that content and rather than put together a 10-week class, like that's one of the offerings that we provide, but they've decided they wanted a two-hour session or maybe a one-day session. And so, of course, it's open and licensed, it's all free to take, and people are free to do with it what they like. What Wayne is referring to is we also have an online 10-week course that's facilitated where we pay facilitators to run that. There is a cost to take that course in that format facilitated and then to get a certificate at the end of it. There's a fee for that. There's also scholarships that we provide to defer that fee, but that's not specifically what I was talking about here. Merely that these resources are all available. They're under a CCBuy license and people may use them however they see fit. So, Cable, I have a question regarding the last point that you mentioned regarding the certificate. Is that certificate offered in the 10-week course and the certificate? Is that offered in multiple languages or only English? And so, that's my first question and then I have a couple more questions about that. Sure. So, one of the, because the course is facilitated by trained instructors, one of our goals is as individuals take the certificate. We're always looking for graduates that actually speak languages other than English and we inquire about whether or not they would like to be trained as instructors and then offer the course in languages other than English. And so, what we have today are the languages that I laid out. The Italian, Arabic and English. Exactly. And so, we currently have not offered them in those languages yet, but we do have instructors that are trained. That's the next step. We also have, as I mentioned, we're moving into other languages. It's been an organic process as individuals have taken the certificate course and they've said, yes, I would like to work on it again. So, we've had somebody recently from Nigeria who said, I would like to translate this into Yoruba and then start to teach it in that language. So, that's great. Those are options. And as I pointed out before, there's nothing that stops anybody. We've contributed all these resources to the commons. If somebody would like to translate them and teach them in different languages, that's great. We're all for that and we're happy to facilitate and support those processes. That is excellent. Now, kind of answered several other questions that I had. So, something that often arises in Egypt and probably most of Arab countries is the idea of that teachers are interested in that they often want a certificate. A certificate that would be accepted by their ministries for promotion or licensure or whatever, depending on the country they belong to. But this is a very important point for teachers in the Arab region is that there is an acknowledged certificate that is accepted by their ministries towards points, licensure, whatever it is. And so, that is a huge barrier in our region regarding existing materials. So, for example, Egypt, we have existing materials but that have not been approved by the government yet. And so, teachers are more hesitant to partake in those capacity-building opportunities. So, that is one element that might be unique to our region or maybe is relevant to other regions as well. But some of the details that we found in the survey is this push for advocacy, that we start talking to governments and as we are synthesizing what we have that part of what we do is that we get the acknowledgement of ministries and governments of those materials and of those capacity-building opportunities. So, that is a point that I raise and I'm wondering whether other regions of the world would have similar concerns. Yeah, just a quick comment from me and then I should probably get off the mic and let others jump in. We've encountered that as well. Some people are happy just to get a certificate and I should, I would be remiss if I didn't point out, Creative Commons is not the only NGO that is running professional development opportunities and providing certificates. Wayne is on, OER University is running a course doing this, which is great. The open textbook network, now it's called the Open Education Network. They run a certificate, Spark runs a certificate program as do others. And so I think what's important for this conversation is that wherever possible, and it's all those entities that I named are openly licensing their content to your point about whether or not the credential that's offered is going to be accepted by governments or by formal education institutions. I think, you know, in many cases, Creative Commons, for example, is, we're not a degree granting institution. Our certificate doesn't mean much in an academic, a formal academic system, and yet a formal academic system could take the OER that we're all producing around these professional development opportunities and use it and reuse it and revise and remix it and put it into a format under the umbrella of an organization that actually does have authority for educators. And I think that's a gift that all of the NGOs and are providing to the comments so that we can make sure that not only is awareness raised, that we're building capacity and expertise with high quality materials in this space, but then the educators themselves are also able to get the credential or the continuing education credits that they need. Thanks. Thanks, Cable. We've got just two comments in terms of translation of all of that, which I won't, I don't think require a response, but just to observe. So Christopher Mayarchy says, did I hear that you're translating in Yoruba? Which I think you did hear. That's a good development, but it might also be useful to, in addition, to consider translating in Hauser language, which is the only language that is spoken by no less than 75 million people in the West African subregion. In Nigeria, Ghana, Chad, Niger, Benin, et cetera. I think as we heard there, Christopher, the Yoruba translation is being driven by someone who's actually volunteered to do the translation. So maybe if we can find a Hauser volunteer, we can get that process moving. So Spefio makes the same comment, except does anyone know how much is happening with regard to resources in Kiswahili spoken by over 150 million people in Africa? So I think, again, that's a very good point. Suspeta, it would be really useful if we can find volunteers who might be willing to help with translation for both of those languages and others, of course. I have two additional comments, one from Suspeta, which I'll read out now. On the generic issue, we should identify already existing resources and also realize that there are many more resources that are not documented and residing in teachers, both current and retired. These resources can be aggregated, curated, developed, translated and deployed for use globally. The means of getting these experts to participate in this initiative is also a means of building knowledge societies per subject and learning areas globally. I think that's an important point that we all agree with. Christian Stacker makes the observation, which I think is connected. My key interest would be to develop free learning materials for teachers as well as learners, how to use OER and how to create and publish OER. And he suggests, could we start collecting all existing learning materials about such introductions for capacity building? I think that is definitely something that we can do. And so just quickly back to the issue of volunteers and translations. Okay, but we're hearing from Christopher that he could find House of Volunteers. So maybe we can connect those up. And Rania Idris Mohamed also indicates that translation to Arabic in general is also needed. So, let me pause there. Go ahead, Gihana. So I think before we jump into translations, I mean we should see if there is existing materials. So I kind of don't remember the exact details, but I did hear about materials in Swahili. And it was some discussion that I had at a conference with some colleagues. And I did not, you know, kind of concentrate because Swahili is of my radar and Arabic is the thing that I talk more about. So we are moving. So our university, for example, is moving very fast in terms of providing more and more materials in Arabic. Even though we are an English only instruction university, but for most of our teachers in Egypt and in the Arab world, English is not the language to reach them. And so I'd be happy to talk with anybody who's interested in developing or curating more materials in Arabic. There's a lot out there. And as some of you mentioned, teachers have a lot to give in that area as well and have their materials. They just don't know how to share them in a way that they consider safe and that gives them the recognition for it. So these are some areas where teachers are also concerned with the safety of sharing and the recognition for it. So that is another area of working with teachers to curate but also to create content and learners, of course. So I think these are some very important points. I'm wondering at this point, whether we want to move on to the next one, which is creating new materials, which kind of overlaps with what we talked about here. So Neil, are there any more comments before we move forward? I have one raised hand from Fabio. Fabio, if you could introduce yourself and then make your comment briefly before we move on. Yeah, quickly. Fabio Nascimbeni from the International University of La Rioja and the Open Education Policy Hub. And actually, well, I would like to suggest a few courses. I will then put the links in the chat. One is the OpenMed course available in English, French, and Arabic co-developed by some universities from Europe and the South Med. I think it was Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, and Morocco. And that's for university educators on the use of OER and OIP. And then one is from a project called OER app that's on use of OER for adult educators in the field of adult learning. And that's, I think, available in English, German, and Italian if I remember well. And so this is, let's say, a few ideas. And then I think we should flag somehow those courses that are, first of all, still updated because a number of courses, as we know, have been developed a few years ago and might not be the most updated ones and also the ones that have a community behind them. So for example, the OpenMed course is living not only on its own, but also on its own web in multiple formats and with open licenses, but is also being used and supported by a community within the Unimed network. It's a subnetwork on e-learning and open education. So I think it's important to tag those courses that are not only updatable, but as all of them, but updated and which one have a sort of a community underneath so that both for translation and languages could be, I mean, it could be much easier. Thank you, Fabio. These are some excellent points. So again, like from the few examples that you gave, there seems to be a lot that already exists out there that needs to be saved in terms of how updated they are in terms of the communities they support them and so on and so forth. So thank you very much. Just one more comment, one more hand, which I'll take quickly if that's all right. Sure. This is Chavira Tennis. I'll ask you Chavira to also just outline what you said in the Q&A, then you don't have to listen to me reading it out. Yes. You can go ahead now. Hi, I'm Chavira from the OE Policy Hub 2. And just to let you know that at the OER world map, because we're part of the OER world map, we have plenty of materials already that might need updated, but also if someone wants to join, start working and helping us doing curation, in curate particular collections, that'll be great. If you have courses, materials, guides, anything in any language that can help the community, please put them in the map because that might help communities. For example, the Spanish speaking community, if you map things in South America, they know where to get the things for Africa. So if you have materials, it's easier that haven't centralized in the map because the map is open and present for everyone. So, and then if anyone wants to do research or wants to update or translate materials, they can just refer to one central point. So, yeah, that's our invitation for this community. So, regarding that map, so would that be open to anybody in the world to add things to the map or is that restricted to certain parts of the world? No, no, no, of course, it's open for everyone. It's been open for quite a while. We're working on it, on trying to spread the word. But yeah, anyone can join. It can be also a student from a course that's been producing OER. Anyone, everyone is welcome. And if they have any questions, they can contact me, Yannoyman, Leo Haverman, or Fabio Nashimbeni. So, we are here to support the development of capacity building across open education and open educational practices and policies too. So, getting in touch with us. So, yeah, that sounds like a good place to start maybe curating just where we could find things. So, thank you, Faviera. You're welcome. Just, there was a request from Christopher just to clarify all of these suggestions will be recorded in the meeting notes. I think definitely, Yannoyman, we should move on now. If people have more links and so on, please do just put them in the Q&A. We'll capture them all, and then we'll take it from there. So, I'll advance the slide now. Sure. So, the next point talks really about development of new capacity building materials. And I think we've covered a lot in our first part about identifying where are some of the gaps. So, we've identified gaps in terms of the languages available, in terms of knowing where to get them, in terms of updating materials, identifying communities, and getting working on credentials. I'm wondering whether there are any other points that you'd like to talk about in terms of new building materials. In the comments we have, we have an emphasis on localization and collaborative solutions. So, Neil, do you have any questions or raised hands regarding point number two? Nothing coming through yet, but let's give it a couple of options. We're still getting a few comments related to existing materials, which I won't get back to because, as I said, I'll just report all of those in the record of the meeting. So, as I mentioned before, the general field seems to be that we have a lot out there. Before we reinvent the wheel and create more materials, let's identify where are the gaps, where are their communities or languages that are not addressed, where do we need localization, rather than build more materials from scratch, again, as if there is not such a huge body and richness of materials available. So that has been the general spirit or sense I got from the surveys and the comments we got. And I guess the wonderful thing about OERs is the potential to localize and adapt materials to the local context, and that is one of the strongest additions to it. So, Neil, are there any questions? Nothing on this at this stage. I think what this is suggesting to me is that in terms of steps, really we should start with that catalog of existing resources and then have a map of the needs against which we could then do a sort of audit or a view of what exists compared to what we're looking for. And obviously, as we heard from Wayne earlier, we should integrate the issue of multilingualism into that to make sure that we're not just looking at materials in one or two languages, but in a number of key languages along the lines that have been suggested here. And then we can take it from there. I do have one hand now, Dr. Lange and Glovu, who I happen to know, is from University of the Bitwara Strait just down the road from me. So Dr. Lange, I'm opening up your mic now to be able to talk. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you, Neil, and Tai, Kihan. Thank you for facilitating this session. What I wanted to say is I understand that you, we are saying let's look at what we already have. But in most cases, what we already have is not in a digital form. And therefore, I would recommend that we capacitate young talent from universities, for instance, who are very good with working with digital resources. And once we capacitate them, then they can take the responsibility of converting what we have to digital form. Now, in my university, we actually have a course for designing and developing materials. And what I've noticed is that these young students excel beyond imagination where developing materials is concerned, much as they might be developing new materials. But I'm thinking those are the students we can use later on as we collaborate to convert what we have to digital form. Thank you. Thank you, Nukolonga. I think this is a very important point and something that we also notice is not just the degree of talent, but also the enthusiasm that many of our students and who will be teachers exhibit towards creating materials that empower teachers in the future. So that is an excellent point and an important resource as we move ahead. So thank you for that. So I think, Neil, if there are no more questions, let's move to the next point, which was also very high, which is the point of collaboration. So again here, the idea that we got is that there are a lot of organizations that are out there, whether they are universities and GOs or individuals that work in the area of open education and OERs. But they do not, to varying degrees, they do not collaborate or work enough together, which in a sense diminishes the impact they could have. And so there is a lot, the prioritization given to collaboration across institutions, across countries, across different stakeholders has been a very important point in the results of this survey. And so here in the comments we have, we have collaboration to contextualize collaborations by region, collaboration by language and across languages. There was also some of the comments we had was like, when will people in OERs start working more, not only with governments, but also with teacher organizations. So there seems to be the comment that organizations work all over the universities, but work much less with organizations that directly deal with in-service teachers like teacher training centers in countries. And as Nkolunga mentioned, like centers that produce materials for teachers and that there should be a lot more collaboration with entities like that. And so there are different kinds of ideas for collaboration, but again, it's the same idea of synthesizing our efforts in a sense rather than working in silos. And I now am open to questions and comments that would help us dig deeper through these points. Thank you, Gihanna. Just quick update on a few of the issues coming through the Q&A. Fauzi Baroud has mentioned that OER Lebanon is devoted to raising awareness and promoting use of OER in Lebanon and the MENA region in Arabic and English. We've also had an input from Marcella Morales saying we, OER Global, the Spanish-speaking community, to join our OERatom regional network node. There's a URL there created with the purpose of promoting and fostering collaboration, adding not only current resources, but creating new ones that address localised needs of the region in content and language. So we are getting quite a lot of inputs on additional locations where this is all happening. Again, we'll record all of that in the notes. I'll then read out an input from Igor Lesko about supporting collaboration. He's also from OER Global. So I think that this is really important. To provide an example, many governmental or institutional OER slash open education policy advancements in different countries can be attributed to the work of individual champions or national open education coalitions. Examples can be found in countries like Canada, NLS, humans in the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, US, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and others. However, advancements made in this regard will be reversed if individual champions or national networks lack adequate support or resources. I think that the same can be said about champions and practitioners who are trying to advance open education in their respective institutions or countries. There are examples of support structures in different parts of or across the world that serve as forums for networking, sharing of best practices, capacity building activities, collaborations across different languages and so on. He goes on to give some examples. The LATAM initiative that I've just mentioned is one Creative Commons Network Community College Consortium for OER in the US and a couple of others. So questions he has for consideration, maybe for inputs from others. How can we support the work of existing champions or national networks in different countries who often feel isolated and or lack adequate support or resources? How can we help identify, create and then support local champions and networks in different countries to advance open education? Perhaps there is an opportunity here to connect this initiative with national commissions for UNESCO to strengthen efforts in different countries. So there's a question there that people might like to answer. I think the idea of connecting to national commissions for UNESCO is also an interesting one, so thank you for sharing that. Igor, I then have a comment from Robert Shua. Shua, excuse me, bad pronunciation. My experience is that organizing this around knowledge fields, for example, nursing, is really working because then you can connect awareness for OER to the specific needs of that community. So Robert's suggestion there is that we should look at those knowledge fields being organized by some kind of, or the collaboration organized by knowledge fields is a good idea, so thank you, we'll incorporate that. Zeneb, over to you. Thank you very much. This is Zeneb from UNESCO. Thank you very much. This is Zeneb from UNESCO. I'll speak English. We're from UNESCO. I would like to respond to the question of Igor Lesko. At least one of his points. The point concerning the national commissions, one, I think the Dynamic OER Coalition is the way to have a link to the national commissions. The UNESCO National Commissions, and we have worked on this. This is one of the objectives of the OER National Commission, so I think it will be very important that we include a gastro in the follow-up, but that is one of the missions of the OER Dynamic Coalition, so thanks. Thank you, Zeneb. I'd like to comment on the two previous comments, so I think I agree, I forgot the name, I'm sorry, I think it was Igor, about the support. So the question would be, indeed this is an issue, indeed people who work with these, especially in parts of the world where OER and the idea of open education is new, that they need support. The question would be what kind of support would be most impactful in sustaining their efforts and expanding the network of people working in that. So that is a question that I would agree with that, the idea of what kind of support would be most impactful and make a difference, and it's not a matter that would be different from one locality to the other, depending on which country we're working in and with. So that might be very important. In many parts of the country where education is also centralized, working with governments through official avenues is extremely important. And it is an important form of support, but it's not easily obtained. And so how can we do that? The dynamic coalition is definitely a wonderful place to start, but what else can we do? The other point is definitely the other point that I think Robert made regarding that knowledge domains that is definitely important, especially with skeptics. And as you were saying that nurses want to hear from nurses and want to work with nurses or nursing professionals and engineering and whatever. And so it really depends on the knowledge domain, but also that we might want to consider working with organizations that are working in that domain in respect of parts of the world. And that as we have conferences that deal with education within those domains that we need to have a presence there and collaborate with those entities to move things forward in terms of awareness and adoption of all your and open education and capacity building. Neil, are there any more comments or questions? I have a couple of quick inputs from Lisa for treaties. Just a reminder to encourage everyone to feel free to actually speak their comments. I'm sure the attendees are getting sick of hearing my voice by now. But Lisa mentions just two additional resources that we can draw on. One is a reminder that UNESCO has a hub curated by partner countries aligned to its ICT competency framework for teachers, which is intended to inform educational policymakers, providers of professional learning and working teachers on the role of ICT in educational reform, as well as to assist member states in developing national ICT competency standards for teachers with an ICT and education master plan approach. So that is a resource that's available. And she also mentions that in the public library, OER Commons, the Alexa OER hub promotes the use development and sharing of OERs in the Arab region. So again, we'll capture all of those. While I'm on those items, we have an input from Ethel Valenzuela from Siamio, which has developed and established the CSEA MOOCs network where online learning resources can be shared and OERs can be uploaded for certificates or for capacity building. This is a partnership between and among Siamio centres and open universities in Southeast Asia, as well as ministries of education. Is there any similar type of network in other regions that we can link to or collaborate with for OER? So that's really helpful inputs from all of you. We will capture them in the notes. And I think what's coming from this, plus the inputs we got from the survey, Kihan, is we really have a good base already of a kind of catalog of resources that we can draw. Yes, yes. I think that we'll make sure that that's all nicely captured in the meeting notes. But back to you. Listen, please encourage people to put their hands up and speak. As I said, I'm sure you're all sick of me by now. So the previous comments, I think it was by Lisa, no, no, or Sila. I'm not sure anymore, but it was the comment of that the existence of a hub or the existence of a hub does not necessarily mean that it is active and functioning. And so that is another area where we might want to think and work is the idea of how does a hub or repository become dynamic, active and alive. And I think that is partially, you know, this is an important area. So as we move along, it's not enough to have those, those hubs, but also to make them a dynamic growing organic. And so that is something I've noticed from there. And I thought about when I heard her comment. So thank you for that. Yeah, I think we have an excellent base of, of organizations, of communities that work together and we'll go through these and see what we can, can make of that. With some of them we can learn from their lessons of how they work across countries and how they interact with governments. And maybe we create other organizations similar to the last one mentioned in other regions if they do not exist. And again, learn from their best practices on how to make these useful and effective in enriching our goals. That's great. So I just got one more. And then I suggest we move on. Yeah. This is from Tenao Yamada who is from Open University of Japan who says, in Japan we have no repository specialized in OER environments. The information must be extracted from general purpose repositories, example, inter-university federated search system. But he believes that we can, we can contribute also meaning the Japanese education system, I'm assuming, which is great news. So we'll note that. And I think with that, maybe Kehan we can move on to the next slide. Absolutely. Yes, definitely. So the next slide is on research. And I added to the idea of knowledge creation. The details of a lot of input that we got on the survey implies that we do not only need research, but we need sharing of best practices, the creation of new models for collaboration, for exchange, for even business models. And so there's a lot of emphasis from the input we got on knowledge creation and on collaborative research. So there is a push for research that, where grants favor research that is cross-national and cross-regional and cross-institutional. There seems to be a push for that. And providing opportunities to engage in research and knowledge creation. There was also an input from, that was I think quite, that adds an idea for capacity building that is slightly different. Is that in some parts of the world we also need capacity building in terms of research and knowledge creation. So in some regions of the world there might be OER, but the idea of making or disseminating best practices, the skills involved in that might be missing and that this is an area of capacity building that we need to focus on as well. Great, thank you. Just some quick updates from the Q&A section in the meantime also for the benefit of translation purposes. Melinda, who is one of our chairs from yesterday is noting that in the Philippines we also have capacity building on the use development and sharing of OERs, especially for blended teaching and learning and in online learning. She supplies a link. Then we have Gemma Santos-Hamosa who notes, as some of you already know from the National Network of University Libraries we're working in a translation into Spanish of the Ontario OER Toolkit, which will be available soon and published a report about the situation of OER and the institutional repositories of higher education and some recommendations to improve them. Again, these inputs really highlighting what a wealth of knowledge there is in the community. And then I think we have a comment. I think if I've understood correctly from Christian Strucker, where he says already mentioned yesterday, is a resource he spoke about, which is for beginners in open online learning. So that's another resource. I think we'll be able to get the launching space from unresponsible for the communication strategy of the working groups for developing a plan. I'm very excited because it looks like we have a ton of resources to put into a portal as a starting point. Are there any specific comments that people would like to add to section D that Kihan has just introduced for us? So this section emerged as a very high priority on our survey. And so the idea is that we do not only want to build capacity regarding usage of OER or the creation or the curation of OERs, but the time has come where we need to disseminate a lot of what we have learned and the models that we've used. And to go in our research beyond what is the value of OER in simple terms, of course there could be a lot more done in that area as well. And that all these efforts, these research efforts and knowledge creation efforts should ideally be collaborative. I have a hand now again from Nakulanga just down the road for me. So Nakulanga, you're unmuted again. Well, you're able to talk, let's say. Okay, thank you, Neil. I've just heard Melinda say in the, in Philippine they have students who are engaged in open education resources. In our case, we are just starting and it would be great if we are linked with them and we can collaborate. And the good thing with the students I'm referring to is that they are postgraduate students who are also doing research. And therefore it would be good that we learn from each other so that at least we can start engaging them in, much as we engage them in the development of the resources, but we also engage them in research activities where they can investigate what they are developing and what is happening in other countries as well. Thank you. Thank you, Nakulanga. I have a, I'm sorry about this, Gihan, but it's my voice again. I don't mind. But I'm going back to first a quick comment from Lisa Petridis on the collaboration issue. She says, it's important to note here that collaboration, as Gihan says, needs to be supported. Building active communities takes time, resources and opportunities to actually work together. Too often collaboration is an afterthought and not a central part of the, of strategies, policies and implementation. And I think Lisa's in a good position to comment on that. Having run OER Commons, which focuses really heavily on collaboration. So they've got lots of experience. We then have a comment from Rania Idris Mohamed again. From the point of equity to education, currently the focus on using online materials. So it's how to reach and cover remote areas where they still have internet challenges. So she's talking there about the need for support printed materials that will raise awareness and using OER materials. I think they're highlighting the importance of making sure that this is not all just happening online, but also actually that we're making sure that we consider the access and needs for people who don't have internet access on a reliable basis. Ethel also points out that if applicable, it would be good to have an OER research agenda and some research grants that OER champions can access. I think I agree with that totally. We also did discuss in a separate working session. So I think that will be coming through very strongly. And then I have a hand from Vanessa Pradman. So Vanessa, I have opened you up to be able to talk. Thanks very much, Vanessa from Spark Europe. So I'm just wondering, I had to pop out during the session. So hopefully this hasn't already been brought up. But when you're gathering the resources for capacity building and also want to carry out more research, I'm wondering whether we could also try to bring together all of our rich resources and then also to monitor that over time to be able to show the impact of our work and also the policies that we are implementing and so that we can really follow the growth and show the strength of OER over time. Thanks. Thank you, Vanessa. I think you're pointing to something that we've heard multiple times during the past few days, the idea of monitoring the growth across different areas in OER. I also want to acknowledge what Rania Idris said about equity. And it is often the case that if online is going on very well, that we forget those that are less privileged. We've witnessed that on a personal level in Egypt during the COVID crisis, where our university having the infrastructure had a fantastic time moving online and using the different resources we had. And so we had a very successful experience, but we often forget that the majority in our parts of the world are less privileged. And for some people, for some teachers and learners who could not go online, the educational process completely stopped. And so that is a very important point. It's an added challenge, but it's an important one because inclusiveness should be high on our agenda. And it is one of the great things about OER is reaching the less privileged and reaching everyone actually. And so I think that is an added challenge, not only finding these materials, but making them available again to those who lack the infrastructure. And not only the infrastructure, but again, here is an area of capacity building is how people, that people not only lack the technological infrastructure, but there is so much that needs to be done in terms of capacity building things that we do not really think about. So thank you, Rania, for that very important point that we do not focus on that. So in terms of research, we kind of have a whole area here where we need to grow in terms of having a research agenda that was mentioned over the past few days, building capacity so that people can engage in that agenda and empowering those who might lack the skills of writing the best proposal or lack the skills of doing that research or creating that knowledge. But so having enough support, whether it's financial or other forms of support for different members of the OER community to engage in research, monitoring what this research is doing in terms of establishing OERs and scaling the impact. So there seems to be a lot that can be done in that area and from the comments we got, it is a high priority for everyone. So we then have a further input just building on that Gihan and everyone from Suspeta Gattobu again in Kenya. What would communities of practice include? Do we need a mechanism to identify communities of practice and encourage their creation? Very good questions. Robert replies, for me these are communities of teachers and learners around the knowledge domain where they can discuss about their profession. That includes OER with the O in brackets. I think he's saying not just OER, but other resources as well, but he's not solely about OER. So I think his key point there is that communities of practice wouldn't necessarily focus only on OER issues, but a much wider range of teaching and learning issues of which OER would be one. And I think certainly if we're taking the knowledge domain approach, it would be probably restrictive if we try to limit it to just discussions about OER. I think that's a good point. I do have also a couple of other inputs. Robert gave a shame. There's a plug for a lot of resources he's collected on his website. We'll share that link. And Christian has shared a couple more resources which we'll put in the meeting notes. And then Ethel has added, we hope that UNESCO can come up with a directory of experts or providers of OER, the developing countries and many interested in OERs can access or consult with. So that's another consideration I think for the communications aspect of the dynamic coalition and how some kind of online facility can help to network and collect information on who's doing what. And obviously connects to the OER world map that we heard about earlier today and in previous sessions as well which already seeks to do quite a lot of that. So I think we don't have to reinvent that wheel but rather draw on resources that are already out there that we can connect you through the dynamic coalition. So that's it from my side, Gihan. In the absence of anything else should I move on to the next slide? I think the next slide is more about resources. So I think if there are no more comments or questions we might wrap up by saying that we are blessed with the dilemma of our times of having too many resources and too many possibilities and learning how we can make sense of all that and put it in a format that allows others to make full use of it. So I think we have a lot to start with. We definitely do not have a problem with that concern but it is the idea of maybe not the existence of one community of practice but the existence of multiple networks that overlap at certain points where they can help each other and have their own communities in areas where they need to focus on their uniqueness. I think if there are no more questions or comments I'll wrap it up and I don't know if Zena or Neil or anybody has additional comments or areas that they would like to explore. I leave it up to them at this point. So just from my side I think maybe before we head back to Zenit that's all the comments from my side. I think today we've had a very active Q&A session compared to previous sessions so that's been really rich and beneficial. We've captured all of those inputs and then I've been through everything else so Zenit maybe I'll hand back to you to close things up. Thank you. Thank you very much Neil and Jihan. Thank you for your presentation Jihan it was very instructive. I just like to bring into the conversation that as Neil said we had a very rich conversation and just looking at the questions responses we had over 54 55 responses to the issues raised now it's getting more and more so we have really gone through many issues one thing I want to bring up is that we seem to be doing around a couple of main ideas for the first one being that there are a lot of resources out there the second one being that there's a movement towards getting resources in different languages and there have been already initiatives that are started and I think that's going to be a very good start to the next topic that Jihan will be introducing which is about the electronic tool and the third point I want to bring in is the interaction between this activity, this working group and other working groups that have to do with accessibility and multilingualism in particular but also the two working groups I think it's important that we are able to focus on one subject clearly but it's also important to realize that it has dimensions that are intersecting and the issue of multilingualism seems to come up over and over and over again so I think we're going to have to find a way of seeing this and I think what's really interesting in the discussion is that we've talked about languages which have a very large number of speakers but which are not usually in the discussion because they are not languages that are used in Europe and North America and I think it's really important the discussion on Swahili and Hausa and Yoruba is really quite important because there is an enormous amount of speakers of these languages and it's important that the tools are available in a multilingual format so I'd really like to thank you Jihan and thank everyone for your very valuable inputs and I think we've made this discussion much more much richer and we've really been able to identify how diverse this field really is and how many actors and champions there are worldwide in all regions and I think this is really great thank you very much Thank you Thank you all for this great discussion Sena, is there something else that you would like me to talk about? Were you going to address the the tool? The OER The OER My sense there is that we've covered that quite comprehensively in previous sessions and even in the inputs today in terms of links to various resources and tools that exist I suspect that's now sufficiently covered through all the working groups Yeah I mean I would gladly talk about it but as Neil said we've mentioned it several times today and during other sessions and it basically alludes to the ICTCF for UNESCO where we are combining the capacity building efforts of different countries that have worked under the support and sponsorship of UNESCO to create materials for teachers they exist in three or four languages Arabic, English, French Portuguese and maybe one or two Spanish but most of these countries are either from Africa Asia or the Caribbean and personally with our efforts having this hub has been extremely useful in having great head starts rather than reinventing the wheel and then adopting it to our local context so I think that might be enough for now to talk about it we can definitely talk about it more elaborately the particular point in the future where we work on collaboration exchange of knowledge is that okay Zena but is there a particular point that you wanted me to focus on? I was actually referring to the electronic tool that we had been we had been looking to develop for all the activities and so I think one of the points that came up throughout this discussion is that there are a great number of sites already existing that have OER capacity building materials available in different languages and in different fields so from what I would understand if one of the tasks of this electronic tool would be to have a place where it would be able to have a view of everything that's existing already and to be able to also have contacts within the communities that are working in these different OER capacity building tools so I think we have had a very good experience with the tool that we developed for the ICT CFT ICT competency framework teachers which you mentioned which is really very good best practice example and I think a number of people in this discussion are members of this tool and one of the things that we found and I think others here I think a good third of the participants are part of that tool and it's done through ISCME and this tool is really useful for sharing resources but it's also useful for creating a community dialogue so in this regard I think what we could understand is that these electronic tools they're very good for sharing the information of course but they're also very good for setting up these collaborative mechanisms if I may throw out, we just have a little bit of time so if I could throw out one question to this group because a lot of you have already worked with one collaborative tool which is the ICFT platform one thing we found is that we have a conjoined whatsapp group to it which many of you are part of for this tool and we found that it's very good for sharing information and for just creating a sense of community would other people in the group have any ideas of tools or mechanisms that would bring support collaboration between the members of the people who are sharing information I would just put the question out no? I mean Zena if I may comment I think the wonderful thing about whatsapp is that it's so and it's exactly the idea of a community that is focused on a particular area but overlaps with other areas but it is focused on the ICFT CFT and your members of different groups that overlap with other communities and I think the powerful thing is that it's on our phones it's part of our lives we don't have to go anywhere to interact with it most phones have access to whatsapp so it is friendly in a multiple ways and that is something to consider that we need tools that are friendly and easy and accessible to almost everyone so in a sense they are inclusive and so that is something to learn from that it just comes to my phone I don't have to go anywhere and so it's part of my life even though I'm someone who's not Dr. The Phone but it's there and the dynamic of it makes you constantly engaged it makes engagement easier it might not necessarily facilitate all forms of engagement but the community is there it's alive for you and so I think that is an important thing to remember I do want to talk about just mention that I was really inspired by the idea of the map, the global map that was mentioned by a colleague from South America it's the idea that we could start with that and map what is there and then think of what layers do we want to add to such a map to make it more useful in terms of contextualization, communities so I think we have certain places and best practice communities that we can start working with and seeing what features make these more accessible and inclusive for a wider variety of people especially that I don't remember who made that point but the idea that that the situation for other parts of the world that are not Europe and North America might be very different in terms of the features that would make it successful in other parts of the world and more user friendly and would allow people to engage in that community. Something that I would like to mention is that our WhatsApp group is a group where some people contribute in English some in French, some in Arabic and somehow it always works so that is very promising so thank you Zaina for pointing that out and it's very exciting to see everything that we found out and that we can do. Seems that we are a place full with a lot of exciting things and projects to move forward and with that I need the last floor for you. Maybe just very quickly there's no hands showing at this stage but there is some chat going on about the pros and cons of different platforms for our consideration when it comes to the dynamic coalition so Wayne McIntosh down in New Zealand there indicates I strongly recommend that the dynamic coalition adopt an open first policy when selecting tools for communication to ensure inclusivity education should avoid tools provided by corporate entities So both Fabio and Christian have found that observation and it is also Lisa's mentioned WhatsApp and Slack when we've spoken about WhatsApp she mentioned Slack as well and both Wayne and Christian have just highlighted some of the risks of using proprietary platforms so I think these are obviously important considerations for us to consider I will take those into account in a drop communication strategy which will flow from this and obviously as with all of those processes that will be shared with the members of the community for their comments so and their feedback before it's all finalized I do think that what's highlighted through this is that we also going to need to differentiate between the communication platforms that will be the kind of official ones if you like of the dynamic coalition and then the various activities that are taking place down at other more regional national specific areas and obviously we'll need to think carefully about what UNESCO is harnessing for the official purposes if you like of the dynamic coalition and then obviously as a networking initiative it will be up to those regional initiatives and other initiatives to also make their own decisions about what they want to use rather than us seeing the dynamic coalition is trying to impose from the center but I think there's been some very good inputs there which we'll take into account as we put the plan together so I think that's all I've got from the community so far as in it yes thank you Neil thanks very much yes indeed we we are trying very hard to make everyone happy and make sure that everybody can access the information have the information and be able to use it easily and do it in a manner which is coherent so as Neil said we have to look at tools which are for communication which are for exchange and for sharing information in terms of sites so we're going to take into account the comments and I think we have to stay pragmatic and work towards an ideal but we have to be able to function because this is a global community and we're working in many regions in all regions and we're working with everyone and that means it's everyone who has access not everyone has the same access to the internet and not everyone has the same amount of digital skills necessary in order to configure tools which are not easily available so we do have to have our ideals but we do have to be pragmatic so but we thank you very much for for all of your comments and I would like to thank Jihan for this very very constructive discussion and all of the participants who and all of you have intervened and we'll be having our closing session this afternoon at 4 o'clock CEP and I look forward to seeing you all there and thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Just to thank everybody for their contributions this has been really very rich both exhilarating and intimidating in its scope but that is what makes life interesting so thank you very much for being part of this and looking forward to our next steps. Bye everyone, see you later on today for the closing session. Till then, bye.