 Welcome everyone to the OER dynamic coalition webinar. This one is a special one. It's during the world conference on higher education, and we're focusing on OER policy. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. Today we will be looking at the OER recommendation and looking at it in terms of policy guidance and incentives as they relate to each of the five areas of the recommendation. In this regard, you'll see that there is number two is developing supportive policy, but our discussion today goes beyond just that number two, but it looks at how policy and incentives can be done to support the different, the other all five of these areas of action that's foreseen in the UNESCO OER recommendation. The guiding questions that you see on the screen are the will be the structure of our discussion. We'll be looking at our four speakers to follow. We'll look at the key elements of open education policies, criteria to consider for contextualizing open education policies and how universal this can be and enabling open education policies and an open education lens on higher education practices. And then we'll be discussing also best practices. The presenters were very honored today to have very high level presenters today from from a number of different institutions we have Dr. Javier Atenez who's a senior lecturer in learning and teaching enhancement at the University of Suffolk in the United Kingdom. Dr. Masata Nindia Nindai, who's a lecturer in computer science and ICT in education at the virtual University of Senegal. Dr. Catherine Cronin, who's an independent open educator from Ireland, and Dr. Mr. Neil Butcher, who's joining us from OER Africa side day. And we will have a short discussion period after. With that, I'd like to give the floor to Dr. Javier Atenez. Javier, you have the floor. Thank you very much Seine, but thank you very much everyone for joining us today. It's an honor to be sharing this space with you. And I'm here to introduce our latest co-creative publication, Defining and Developing and Enabling Open Education Policies in Higher Education. This policy brief aims at supporting the development and uptake of open and digital education policies in the higher education context. We have used an approach, and it's the same approach that we promote in policymaking, which is called co-creation, because we considered that it responded in the lines with the ethos of open education. These brief directly response and aims to support not only the implementation of the UNESCO recommendations in OER, but also directly and directly support the implementation of the UNESCO recommendation and open science. Our work builds up in a strong body of literature and also we have looked at a series of elements and like recommendations post and guidelines to provide their higher education system, a framework in which they can work with their own community and also with an extended community of practitioners, including librarians, learning designers, academics, and anyone involved as a community of practice aiming to develop sustainable, effective, and enabling policy. Open education policy normally can be understood as written on and written guidance and regulations to post and developing the implementation of open education practices, which include of course the use of open educational resources. And for open educational resources, we also consider every element that is openly available, such as open data, that can help build critical digital literacies, for example. We consider that one of the core aims of open education policy is to catalyze cultural and organizational change in the case of higher education, which has to be driven by social justice, social inclusion, diversity, and student support. When we look at the open education policy ecosystem in general terms, we look at three key elements. We look at collaboration, so how the communities can collaborate to have a policy that is effective for their own learning ecosystem for their own cultural context. We look at bench learning, we look at talking, discussing, and learning from all the institutions from all the realities to identify good practices in policymaking and in the deployment and uptake of open education. But also, we look at engagement, we look at the process and input of the community, the community consider as strategic partner in that includes the students using a variety of participatory arenas and also looking at using an approach that is quite well used in open government called co-creation. We aim to encourage a wide range of stakeholders to become policymakers and that includes developing capacity and developing skills in policymaking, opening up conversations, and including local, international, and a wide variety of people to enable spaces for the discussion in developing open education and open science, for example, or open knowledge policies in the higher education sector. We consider that in the context of open science, open access, open data, open government, open education in general terms, what is called organized policies. They need to create public value, though they need to have a transferral and democratic approach to policymaking. Policymaking in the context of openness cannot be a mandate just where people have to follow a rule and enact it. It needs to have a discussion, it needs to have participation because this is a way to prevent the railing and promote successful policy implementations and sustainable approaches to openness, to knowledge in general terms. When we look at the open education policy ecosystem, we look at it from European alignment, for example, with strategies. When we talk about strategies, we talk about strategies about education at national, international, and also institutional level. When we look at policy alignment, how aligned is the open education policy with the open science, for example, or with the open access approaches, is there a connection in the knowledge ecosystem of an institution. We look at the procedures, how are we promoting the enablement or how, or the deployment of open education practices within an institution. We look at supporting resources that includes, for example, budget and training to enable open education and also open science and open access. In the context of open education, we look at a pyramid, which is basically infrastructure. First we have the supernational international recommendations. We have the OER recommendation for open education, we have the UNESCO recommendation for open science, UNESCO recommendation for artificial intelligence, we have all the work, the Commonwealth of Learning is doing. So this is a series of guidelines and declarations, for example, so we think about Cape Town, we think about Louisiana, we think about Paris. That provides a solid ground for countries and for institutions to develop policy in the room context. But then we have to look at the national education strategic priorities in a country where we want to work, not just with countries, but with institutions into developing open and open education policy infrastructure. And the same applies for open science, for example, but then we have to look at the institutional priorities and how the priorities have shifted pre and post pandemic, where the uptake of digital education, it's been a catalyst to support starting the last two or two and a half years. So when we talk about enabling policies, we talk about the policy making process, the policy form and style, and the policy content. So we talk about collaboration, we talk about students that partnership, we talk about widely participation. We talk about supporting flexible ecosystems to develop policy. And we also, we talk about the targets and what they are alignments with all the policies and what's the kind of implementation model and this is something that I'm sure Dr. Kronin will discuss with us later on in general sense and in our research what we have identified, and this is part of the work that you joined with Leo Habermann for the last many years. We have identified six key elements that should be included in policy making policies in open education. And it's mostly capacity building so ensure that the people have the training and the qualifications to not only develop OER but also have an open education practices approach to learning and teaching. We've been talking about learning accreditation and the importance of micro credentials and the importance of transferring credits obtained through open education courses, for example. We talk about access and inclusivity, we talk about the importance of including the rights of persons with disability as part of the ecosystem of the policy. Open education needs to be inclusive and that includes for example using the universal design for learning in the case of open education resources. So we consider also that open education should promote a diverse access to knowledge and that as open education is about human rights. So promotion of cultural cultures, promoting democratic values, equity, social participation and transparency. Also we think about that it's quite important to have in the development of open education policies but also in the use of open science infrastructures. We think about that open education policies should not neglect the importance of open and digital practices in the context of platform ecosystems. Therefore they need to have a layer of data governance to protect the privacy of learners and educators. And finally we think that policies should promote and catalyze the culture of openness. Yeah, it's important for us that it's not just center on the resource and use of production, but also in practices that can promote fair access to democratic education. And that for example means to look into good practices from citizen science and open science. We propose a five layer policy development cycle, which is identified the need for policy co-creator policy with a group of stakeholders approved policy implemented and communicated but also keep it system for constantly monitoring and review it. We promote five steps so you can find all of these and kind of well detailed and well explained in our brief. So identify the needs promote consultation but not just consultation also foster collaboration for participation with their five levels from consultation to empowerment. And actually, the steps for co-creation need to start from consulting consultation with the community but lead towards empowering the community. So, looking at the five levels of public participation is really important. Contact research, contact analysis, conduct, conduct benchmarking and also it is quite important to keep evaluating and reviewing the process and the resigning of the policy. We promote in general terms, the development enabling open policies as an opportunity for the organizations and institutions on the countries to reconnect with the needs of the people to reconnect with the values and also to provide needs for collaboration and networking, embedding elements of thoughtfulness, creativity, collaboration and leadership as part of the capacity building ecosystem. Here is the link to access the brief, I think I'm just right on time with my 10 minutes. I'm here for any questions and yeah of course the brief is this open access. Thank you very much. I will post the link now in the chat and saying that I don't know if you want to follow up. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Questions will be through the Q&A chat so we can give the floor to Machata. Machata, the floor is yours. Hello, everyone. I would like to thank the organizers for having invited me and for allowing me to present the research findings on OER policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. My name is Ndeye Masata and I'm a researcher in the field of IT at the Virtual University of Senegal, which provides online education. We have some 50,000 students in Senegal at this digital university. So the results that I will be presenting this afternoon come from a research project with 16 countries that are involved. They come from the French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa. So you have Benin, you have Chad, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Chipputi, Congo and others. And all these countries are French-speaking countries from Sub-Saharan Africa. The goal of this research and the expected results are as follows. So first of all, we carried out a summary of the results in the field of OER supportive policy actions at international level. So we decided to have an international benchmark on policy actions at international level and we decided to sum up the good practices at international level. The second expected result was a survey on OER support policies in the educational resources project countries, the countries that I just showed you. These are the countries involved in the educational resources project by UNESCO. The third expected result is an analysis of OER support policies according to UNESCO's recommendations. The summary that we came up with in the first step about Sub-Saharan African countries are in line with UNESCO's recommendations and action areas. So this is all based on UNESCO's OER recommendations. And in the last part, which was the main expected result from this research project was the development of a practical guide. And this guide is for the integration of OER into the policies and strategies of the countries targeted by the educational resources project. So we are currently in the preparation of the practical guide. The first three steps have already been carried out. Now I'm going to talk about UNESCO's OER recommendations. So these recommendations have five action areas. First of all, strengthening the capacity of stakeholders to create access, reuse, adapt and redistribute OER, open educational resources. The second recommendation is about the development of policy to support OER. And it's within this framework that the webinar is taking place today. The third action area is about encouraging inclusive and fair quality of OER. The fourth recommendation is about nurturing the creation of sustainable models of OER. And finally, fifth area is about promoting and strengthening international cooperation on OER. So for those who are joining us now, these are the five action areas stemming from UNESCO's OER recommendations. And this is the cornerstone of the results of the research that I will be presenting to you now. Now about the preliminary results. I told you that we carried out an international benchmark project. I will not go back to the details of this, but it was done by the Commonwealth OER Africa. And I will tell you about what was done in Sub-Saharan Africa specifically. So we have three levels. It's structured around three levels. So we have the interregional level, which includes the AUF, Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie. And this agency has a digital strategy. And it consists in promoting OER. And we implemented the B9 library, which is now indexed. We have some 16,000 resources within this library. Still at interregional level, we also have a skills framework, skills repository, which is being completed by the universities based on a survey that was carried out in between 2020 and 2021. The Institute de la Francophonie pour l'éducation et la formation, the IFEF, has organized an online course on teaching with OER. And many teachers from primary education actually signed up to this online course. And this is something that was done at interregional level in order to integrate OER into existing policies. Now, at national level, I should remind you that the project is about 16 Sub-Saharan African countries. And we carried out a survey. And the survey showed us that only Madagascar has a formal strategy on free educational resources. So they had actually devised the strategy before the UNESCO recommendation, and they are working on this. Now, as for other countries involved in the project, they have projects that are being validated as in Burkina Faso, or they're being currently drafted, like in Niger. In Niger, they're thinking about integrating OER into the policies of the Ministry of National Education. For the other countries, unfortunately, there is no regulatory framework on OER. There are some initiatives, some activities that were implemented within this framework, but that's it. And it's also important to go all the way down to the institutional level to see what has been done. Once again, we have to make a distinction between primary and secondary education. So first level, primary and secondary education. At this level, we saw that with distance learning and remote educational resources, many countries have developed remote educational resources. So this was done between 2020 and 2021. But unfortunately, based on the results that we observed, these resources are not open. And usually the Ministry has used its own funds to develop these resources. And sometimes the source of funding is not clear. And the developers aren't aware of intellectual property rights. And this is an important issue that we will have to take on board when devising strategies at institutional or national level. For higher education, the situation is similar, especially for virtual universities in French-speaking Africa. They don't really have a specific policy on OER. But these resources, so OER, can be used as a complementary resource at virtual universities. And this is the case, for instance, at the Virtual University of Senegal. So these are some of the preliminary results at international level, national level and institutional level. So in general, we can say that most of the countries have not formalized the use of OER at a national educational level. But work is ongoing thanks to distance learning and remote connections following the pandemic. And still in the preliminary results, I would like to present some information stemming from the survey that we carried out within the 16 countries that I mentioned in the beginning of my presentation. So I will be presenting some guidelines according to the UNESCO recommendation. And the guide that will be provided at the end will be a guide with the aim of guiding all the countries to integrate the recommendations on OER and integrating these into their regulatory framework. It's about capacity building for the different stakeholders. We created training resources in French and in the official languages of the countries that I mentioned. Another important point when it comes to capacity building is the recognition of OER skills in the teaching profession. We have to update the initial teacher training programs. But for those who are already teachers and who will follow classes for further training, there have to be modules which include OER skills that are required by teachers. So we need to update initial training programs for teachers and strengthen training of trainers as well in science faculties. That is to say those who are in charge of these training programs have to make sure that these trainers are trained correctly. Another important point when it comes to capacity building is the establishment of communities of practices on OERs. Now once again, according to preliminary results, much needs to be done. In all countries there are individual initiatives but it will be useful to create communities of practices which is important in international benchmarking. Another aspect as you are familiar with is that in most countries when it comes to higher education, there are agencies who are in charge of quality assurance. And at the Ministry of Education there are structures in charge of validating content. So the staff of these agencies or these structures should be trained and should be aware of the use of OER in education. So this concerns the preliminary directive on the first level, the first field. Now the second one is elaboration of policies for support. Now my colleague mentioned co-creation policies. So to start with an inventory has to be drawn up of the regulatory texts. Now this is not restricted to OERs alone, we need to go further than that. These can be regulatory texts for open education, open science, open data and even digital education or any other related documents that focus on this theme. The second thing which refers to co-building is the fact that currently in universities and teaching and learning institutions there are certain policies that are already in place and work on resource development. So we should work with these groups that are already acting, consolidated or create a working group of actors of need be involved in the implementation of educational regulatory texts, regulatory plans so that there is a continuity and proper implementation of the recommendations. Sometimes ministers have pointed out the importance of sectoral policies. This is a tool that is used by ministries to communicate with the staff in charge of implementing policies at the ministerial level. So we need to see how to integrate OERs in these ministries in charge of training and education. And also we will also share some kits that are being elaborated. Now of course we need to promote effective and inclusive and mainly equitable access to quality OERs. But for this we need funding, national funding that are earmarked for education and training. So the idea is to create an impulse fund for open science and education at the national level. And then set up OER platforms online that are multilingual in French and in the official languages of the countries concerned. And also make sure that these platforms are accessible offline because in a lot of these countries there isn't enough internet access. So this needs to be taken on board and access therefore has to be available offline as well. And this needs to be kept in mind when these platforms are developed. And they also need to be adapted to any type of connection terminal, whether it's a laptop or it's a smartphone or it's a tablet. Then another important aspect when it comes to inclusion is to promote the development of OER that meet the standards of interoperability and of metadata so that these platforms are interoperable and transferable. They need to be transferable because it is also an important feature and also they have to be able to be printed. So the OERs that are put on these platforms are of course multimedia resources, but the learners or even the teachers need to be able to print them in areas where internet access does not exist or is very difficult which exists in numerous countries. And then we have to encourage public-private partnerships for the development of these OERs. The directives concerning fostering sustainable models is one of the recommendations and this recommendation wants to ensure that publicly funded learning materials are used as OERs. Most countries have developed educational resources. There is no specific information about the licensing policies, maybe there isn't enough information on copyrights, etc. So there has to be training on this how to transfer the database of resources that already exist into OER and this requires interregional discussion for the creation, translation, adaptation, access and funding of OER. And this is needed because we have to use the collaborative format for this sort of endeavor. And the policies have to make sense and in order to do so, teacher and learner involvement is actually very important. We need thereby in to be able to develop these OER policies. And lastly, these processes need to be monitored and improved on continuously and therefore we need to conduct surveys on the implementation of OERs and share the results with all stakeholders. Then the last point is international cooperation. This is the last item in this directive and the directive has tried to focus on developing groups or communities of practices and integrating the country and its communities of practice into regional and international communities as well. By using different platforms, OER, OER commons nodes, etc. Not everything exists in Africa, in French-speaking Africa, but it is very important to promote international cooperation. And therefore, when these communities of practice are implemented, they need to be integrated at the regional and international levels. And we're now looking at the fourth industrial revelation, which is the digital revolution. So one has to promote the digital presence of these local communities of practices so that they are all included in the digital world. And partnerships can be envisaged between governments to execute certain initiatives, especially when it comes to research projects in order to make sure that the investments are profitable. So these are some of the initiatives that I wanted to share with you in the framework of this research project. Just one last piece of information is the creation of a guide, which is like a handbook for the integration of OERs in the policies and strategies of the six countries that I mentioned at the outset. Just one important thing, this kit, as I did in my own presentation, will focus on UNESCO's recommendations. The first part will be dedicated to understanding what OERs are and what UNESCO's OER recommendations are. And then present practical modalities on how to integrate OERs into country policies and strategies through co-creation, either at the international level or at the national level. And also to support the guidelines for each field of action of the recommendations. And so this is what we have in mind, and we hope that in a few days we will be able to present the different actors that work in this field. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Thank you very much for your presentation. So the floor is to our next speaker, Dr. Cronin. The floor is yours. Thank you so much, Eleni. I'll share my screen. I just want to say thank you, of course, to the hosts today, to UNESCO for the invitation to join you all today and to my fellow presenters and everyone who's made the time to be here today. I appreciate it, we appreciate it very much. I want to begin simply by acknowledging the exceptionally challenging times each of us is living and working in, which can most definitely be described as a time of crisis. You know, some of this has been alluded to by the speakers already, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the climate crisis, rising austerity, rising authoritarianism, surveillance capitalism, deepening inequalities, which are, of course, both multiple and intersecting and evolving, ongoing instability, and that is all before we consider the multiple challenges and tensions within higher education itself. So part of the work that I think we're addressing today is addressing the challenges we face in this increasingly challenging time. The draft recommendation, which has been the pillar around this work, which this work has been developed as has already been mentioned where we are focusing on the second recommendation about developing supportive policy but they are of course integrated. I just wanted to acknowledge that the draft recommendation, even in its draft form has enabled so many of us to coordinate our efforts globally and I think that's already obvious today. In addition, the call for joint action, which was published just over two years ago. Certainly in my own work was a rallying point for encouraging consideration and use of OER and open practices. And, you know, as was forecast in the call for joint action, we've seen that OER played a crucial role during the pandemic over the last two years, when online and digital learning has become the new normal for learning worldwide at all levels. In these two years, of course, we've also seen that educators who've responded to the pandemic and wider crises found that sharing open practices was just as important as sharing open resources. They reinforced, you know, earlier research, which highlighted this importance of focusing broadly, I think, on open educational practices, which are inclusive of but not limited to OER in seeking to achieve the overall aims of open education of improving access, participation and equity. We have taken this approach, this broad approach in the policy brief, which is launched today, and we use the definition of open education policy that is open education policy supports decision making in the area of open education. But they are guidelines that seek to foster the development and implementation of OEP through the creation, including the creation rather of OER. Today, we are a collection of people who are gathered to talk about open education but in wider work in higher education and online education, I am often asked why the focus on policy, you know, we understand the focus on awareness raising and infrastructure and so on but why why is policy so important. And we, we highlight a great deal of research in the policy brief but I want to once again cite the findings of the very influential Roar for D project, which studied the uptake and impact of OER on education in the global south. And this figure here which I'll describe this from a chapter in the, in the collection of publications of the Roar for D project this was authored by Patricia Arendt, Cheryl Hutch, Consim Williams, and Henry Trotter. And these authors mapped the factors influencing OER engagement which you can see over on the left with levels of social inclusion, identified in green so progressing from access to participation to empowerment. So, you know, as you look up from the bottom of the list on the left up to the top, you, you see, you know, we are awareness and infrastructure and so on. But if we truly want to realize the aims the ambitious aims of open education. We want to reach the higher levels which are the levels that these authors identify as both participation and empowerment. And you can see here that institutional policies are indeed essential to this. Okay, I would say that they're really a linchpin in this work and anyone who's worked in open education, open education for some time would realize this. If we aim to meet the highest ideals of using, and using OER, OEP, and and open education at its highest level, and acting supportive open education policies is essential. So what did, what did we learn during the last two years during the global move to online teaching learning and assessment we learned many things, but in the area of policy. I know that in Ireland and conversations with colleagues globally. There was a growing realization that the necessary policies for teaching learning and assessment, either did not exist. Or, did not sufficiently meet the needs of students and educators and or institutions. So what kind of policies are we talking about. Well, certainly. If we're talking about specifically and explicitly open education policies. We might be talking about the existence of OER policies, open science policies, intellectual property policies. However, anything that is digital of course can be open. So many of the issues that arose, particularly in the last two years related to in the whole domain of digital and online education related to sharing privacy surveillance and data on the open web. So we suggest that even if our remit is to support the development of open education through policy, the entire digital and online learning and teaching domain should be our terrain. And I think this has already been alluded to by the previous speakers. So it's important for us that we engage not with just with those committed already to open education, but to all engaged in digital and online learning, which are are all in education, because these issues arise everywhere. Unfortunately as well another thing we learned is that the absence of policy speaks very loudly. So if policy supports decision making. It also communicates what is allowed what is accepted what is encouraged what is supported, and ultimately what is valued. An absence of policy is a lack of communication of what is encouraged supported and valued, and a lack of the opportunity to build collective understanding about those things because it is not explicit, and we will never reach, you know, our ultimate aim of changing our culture and and realizing the good that we that we know is possible. If we don't address policy and create supportive policy when individuals just as an aside to this when individuals share for example within a certified system for example within an entire education of VLE or an LMS and individuals identity and role are predetermined and set. But when we share openly on the open web and whether that's open scholarship open educational resources, whatever this is much more complex. This is described the use of OEP as complex personal contextual and continually negotiated. So again, this points to the need for open practice. If it is to be encouraged needs to be supported by policy. This is a brief that's being launched today arose from conversations around this guide, which the guide to developing enabling policies for digital and open teaching and learning, which was published by the National Forum for the enhancement of teaching and learning in higher education in Ireland last October. This collaborative project with colleagues from the National Forum and indeed from students and staff across the Irish higher education sector over the course of two years. And this guide pertinent to Irish higher education was defined enabling enabling policies outlined a five step guide and includes case studies and policy examples for people to draw from from both Irish and international higher education institutions. Importantly, it was published with a CC by license, which meant that when a network of open educators saw this and thought that it could be the seeds of, you know, a more global approach to supporting open policy. It was very easy to take this guide and adapted and remix it and so on, which is what we have done to create the policy brief. So today. So, Javier has already described how the definition of enabling policies consists of 15 criteria across three categories this is just another view of that. And this was drawn again from consultation with many students and staff across higher education, and also literature review which looked at a lot of policy guidance. And a lot of it is combined together, you know just a straight list of guidance for developing policies, and we thought it was important to disaggregate these areas of policy content policy making process and policy form. So the can be used almost as checklists or guidelines in different guises at different stages of the policy making process. So the content obviously should be integrated with institutional organizational strategy, it should be reflective of organizational culture needs to be aligned with other policies. The process should be of course collaborative democratic. It should, at its heart should be student staff partnership, and it should be both diverse and intentionally equitable. So again there's a lot more detail about all of these, the three categories and the 15 criteria in the policy brief. Again, Javier noted the five steps this is another view of this five steps and this view just points out that, of course there are sequential steps that are chronological and time that we start from, you know, a need for a policy to, you know, creating it and approving it and implementing it and reviewing it. But that step of creating it really embraces the notion of co creation and we explore this in great depth in the policy brief. So and this is a cycle. So there's a lot of depth to that step which is described in the guide. So the cycle of research collaboration review revision, and we know from evidence, certainly here in Ireland, and, and elsewhere I know that you know speeding through the step, because it's easier to consult with just a few people instead of many people and you know diverse audiences doesn't do you any favors later in the process because although it might be easy to develop and get it on paper. There's lower chances of approval and certainly lower chances that the policy will be effective. Once it's implemented. So we're very committed to co creation in terms of learning from this whole process, both, you know, our practice in Ireland and internationally. I often use this metaphor of, you know, focusing on a leaf to a brand to a tree to, you know, a whole ecosystem and I think it's really reflective of the work that many of us do around open education in higher education and in other sectors. And that is that we, we, you know, we want to support and raising awareness about OER, you know, at the, at the individual person and student and and educator level. We want to support people who are, you know, choosing a license deciding where and how to share rewarding practice, you know, for individuals, but also embedding in programs in schools in departments. Ultimately, keeping an eye on the broader global and equitable goals of open education and not losing sight of that. So moving, you know, embracing this, this, you know, individual small efforts to group and systemic efforts is obviously really, but all are required. And certainly, you know, the, the UNESCO recommendation really points to that need challenges. There are many of course, but we must be working towards systemic change. So it's the reason we address policy and strategy and talk about changing culture and systemic change is impossible without supportive policy. I'm so pleased, you know, that this, that this, the policy brief is published today and that we can, you know, engage in more collaboration around what that means to develop supportive policy. When we are working at the level of policy and strategy, part of our work is connecting the opens. So, and again, this has been addressed already. So a lot of that is really just communicating, you know, that the underlying values of open education, open science and scholarship open data, you know, are drive from many of the same values. So there's kind of an education process and if we want to kind of combine those efforts in the organizations within which we work. Again, realizing the broader values and benefits of openness. I think it's important never to miss an opportunity, even when helping someone to, you know, choose the appropriate open license for something to connect that work with the broader benefits of open education more broadly. And also, although it's a challenge, I think it's important that we adopt the most expansive conceptualizations of open that we can. And the definition of OEP is really important, which incorporates and includes reusing adapting and sharing OER as well as co-creation equitable community engagement and empowerment. And I'm, I'm honestly just so honored to be doing this work with you all, and just want to say thank you. The details are here linked to the slides and I, I just end with a quote from Eddie Glaude, a US author writing about racism and civil rights in the United States, and he has written recently just about the imperative of making bold choices in these challenging times which is, that's the work we are we are about here. So through collaboration on the policy brief and in all our efforts via UNESCO. We hope we find and sustain the courage to make bold choices. So thank you. Thank you Dr. Cronin. Thank you for this insightful presentation. Neil, you have the floor for the way forward. Thank you very much Eleni and greetings everyone. I realize that we are now very close to the end of the hour. So, I'm not going to say much, but I thought it would be useful just to make a few observations. I hope we'll tie together what you've heard from previous presenters. As Catherine indicated in the introduction to, to her slides, we are at a very difficult time, I think in human history where we've, we've, we're really starting to see the growing global problems are creating extended geopolitical instabilities. So through the COVID-19 pandemic we've seen just how poorly prepared our education systems are in terms of resilience to respond to the kinds of imperatives for change that we see. I would argue very strongly that the policies that we have that govern those systems are a very substantive part of the reason why we have such little resilience in those systems. Particularly what they illustrate is the growing inequalities that exist in access that are made worse as soon as there's any kind of crisis. So there's plenty of documentation that shows us just how much poorer people and marginalized people have suffered through campus closures and through various other responses that have come to these crises. Unfortunately, as we're hopefully emerging from the worst of the pandemic we're moving into a new series of challenges and I think these challenges are going to keep coming at us for some time. On the plus side obviously challenges bring the opportunity for transformation. And I think what we have seen is that our education systems are characterized by highly rigid, overstructured and out-of-date curricula, very heavy emphasis on summative assessments, very rigid, over-elaborated policies that show little resilience. And I think again COVID showed us just how dehumanizing for students so much of our policy environment is. So just reflecting on what Catherine spoke about and what previous speakers also mentioned, policies we should remember are nothing more than agreed codified agreements about how we decide to co-operate with each other in large scale systems. So they're nothing more than agreements between human beings. They can just as easily be changed as not. But what we've seen is that our policy environments are really not helping us to cope with the kinds of challenges we're facing. So as I spent this time over the last two years reflecting on that the one thing that's come through very clearly and I think it's reflected in Kaviera's and Catherine's presentations is that we now know for sure that just using open licenses is not really a proxy for any kind of meaningful openness in education. That open licensing and the use of open educational resources can just as easily be deployed to entrench rigid and closed systems of education as it can to help to create more open learning. In other words, if we're just using open licenses and we're creating policies that facilitate the use of open licenses. But they create the kinds of educational systems and experiences that are opposite of the opposite of those that Catherine and Kaviera described, then it's actually taking us backwards not forwards because it's making those systems more efficient. And by definition, in my view, dehumanizing both teachers and learners more. As Catherine's spoken about really every policy decision we make now needs to be measured against its real transformative effects on education and education systems. And so just just to try and build on what all three speakers have spoken about, and maybe to offer a couple of key points for reflection moving forward. I'm a great fan of simplicity, and one of the biggest concerns I have when I hear about discussions about policy development and how we create policies that support the recommendations implementation. I think one of the dangers is that we forget that they're being developed within a context, and that context already includes a lot of existing policies and regulations. My plea to people just using the kind of guy that Catherine provided us in the closing slides of her presentation is that before we rush ahead with developing new policies, we should focus first on reviewing the existing policies and regulations that are already in place to assess the extent to which they are supporting meaningful openness and supporting the implementation of the recommendation, of course, because if we create new policies on top of what already exists, we're likely only to create more complexity. And the more complexity we create, the less likely the hood there is of the kind of openness we've just heard spoken about today. So I think as we're doing that review, we've spoken so much about learner centered education over the last two decades that I've been working, that I think we've almost sidelined and forgotten the well being and empowerment of educators as fully functioning adults. And I think that what I've seen certainly in quite if I look at quality assurance policies in higher education around the world. Most of them seem to me to exist in ways that suggest that educators are not to be trusted, and are not fully functioning adults, and therefore we need quality assurance systems in place that continually micromanage and police everything they do. If we're serious about opening education, we have to be serious about re empowering educators as being critical to whatever kind of education we're delivering whatever form of blended digital open or face to face education we're talking about. So I think as a point of departure for thinking about how we might create real openness in our policies and reviewing what we have already. We should remember that no meaningful openness can be possible where policies dehumanize educators and treat them effectively like children who need to be police. And unfortunately, I think there's quite strong evidence that over the last 15 to 20 years, central education policies have tended to move more in that direction, and away from the kind of openness and trust in educators that is important for real . Secondly, then, is to consider the possibility that policy change might include the removal and or radical simplification of existing policies. We shouldn't just be thinking in terms of adding new policies. Again, having had the opportunity to work in 50 or 60 countries around the world. I've seen over and over again, that when we create new policies without thinking about how they interface with the existing policies. And particularly how we make sure that if we do develop new policies that we actually decommission the old policies with which they might come into conflict or potentially where there might be contradictions. We end up creating again so much complexity. I live in South Africa, which is in my mind the home of the most complicated policies in the world, and we're seeing the effects of an education all the time. It just makes it harder and harder for people to do things. Apart from anything else, one of the key challenges is that more policies proliferate more administration. And in higher education, we're again seeing that academic administration is a consequence of central bureaucracies and policies, both from national and institutional levels are actually robbing academics of more and more of their time, which they ought to be spending on doing teaching and learning or doing research, but instead are having to spend administering the policies under which they exist. So my plea to anyone who's engaged in policy change is to see policies as dynamic and and fluid processes, not as static documents, and to start by getting rid of policy, not just think about adding new policy. So listening carefully to what Catherine was describing in terms of open education policies. I saw so many ways in which the kind of philosophy that she was articulating could be just as well expressed by removing policies, rather than by creating new ones I think the enabling of openness actually comes more effectively by reducing the number of rules we have and making sure that those rules are meaningful and can be adequately enforced, rather than by adding new ones. Then just including closing and trying to pull together what all three presenters spoke about. As you move forward, ensure the considerations of openness are reflected in the development of all new policies and regulations that affect education, not just those that are specially purposely focused on these topics of open education practices and OERs and other related things. All policies should be looked at through this lens, particularly those that are now being devised as part of the adaptation of education provision in response to COVID-19. And what's followed on from that a lot of the COVID-19 practices are now being entrenched in education systems and policies and practices. So it's a really golden opportunity to achieve some of the aspirational goals that we've heard about today, but I think if we start with these just two critical things, let's get rid of policies, not just think about creating new ones. And let's make sure that every decision we're taking from a policy perspective is re humanizing and empowering educators, rather than dehumanizing them. And I think if we just to keep those two simple things in mind, and we can go a long way to achieving the aspirational goals that we've heard about today. So thank you very much. Thank you, Neil. Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us. We hope to see you again in our next webinar. Thank you very, very much. Be well. Bye everyone.