 Good morning. My name is Alek Tarkowski. I work at the digital center, which we usually call Centrum Cyfrowe in Polish We use the Polish word I'm also a member and vice chairman of the Polish Coalition for Open Education And I'd like to welcome you to the panel on opening up Poland. First, maybe I'll introduce our panelists We had some changes at the very end so the program might not be accurate with us today Professor Zbigniew Konkol, who already was introduced. He's a professor of physics here at the university and what's important He's both responsible for policy and for practice on open education So we're very happy to have you here Secondly, Jan Kozłowski from the Department of Innovation and Growth at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education Krzysztof Kamil Śliwowski, who coordinates with me Creative Commons Poland is the chairman of our Coalition for Open Education and Krzysztof Kurowski Who's director of the application unit of the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center Which is a public institution part of the Polish Academy of Science Which was one of the leading partners of the big open textbooks project because of which Poland can be called one of the leaders of open education around the world Thank you very much to all of you for joining our panel Before we start the discussion, I'd like to make some introductory remarks First important thing to know is that we won't be talking how to open up Poland. Poland has already been opened We have a success story to tell but then you'll see that we always try to come up with new ideas how to move ahead and Probably will be also discussing how to do more The reason for that and you must notice is that Poles have some Problems with acknowledging success of our education system and its success that goes beyond open education Poland hosted Last year a pretty big conference international conference on of educational leaders from 30 countries around the world and The keynote speech was given by at that time director general of the European Commission Directorate on education and culture Javier Pratz-Monte and he told this story that when he Talks in Brussels with policymakers There's one country that consistently doesn't believe Poland had educational success and that's Poland You know we insist on We are modest We you know, you know, we always try to do more. So I'm joking a bit. I actually think we will be able to show that we have a success But this is part also of a challenge being inside looking at all the you know small details that we're facing And switching the perspective to talk about the the big things happening in Poland That's what we'll try to do We'll have a short round of introductory speeches by our panelists But maybe I'd like to just set the stage and give you some basic information about how open education has been developing in Poland I might be a bit biased as I'm the member of the coalition, but I believe that the Shaping of the coalition for open education in 2008 Was one of the first milestones and it's important that was a milestone on the side of the civic society of grassroots action The coalition was formed by four institutional members It was the Polish association of libraries the Polish chapter of wiki media creative commons, Poland and NGO called modern Poland Foundation whose president will be giving the keynote on the third day of the conference and Today the conference group or the coalition group coming will probably talk about it to 30 partners institutional partners including the AGH University and And that was sort of the seed that started it that started a discussion on open education in Poland The next important step was a small project called Polish school Wąc Polska turn on Poland. It was a program for Polish schools abroad We have a relatively large diaspora quite visible for instance in the United States and we have a system of schools for the pose living abroad and one of the first significant Open educational resources was a set of Textbooks for these schools and I always felt that this was significant This was sort of a good lab to test certain solutions beyond the main educational system Make some experiments that were at the same time So it's a foot in the door as we say so you made the first step and then you can point to it and when Two years later in 2011 the debate around textbooks in Poland started and we started talking about opening them up There was already a previous case to describe and This is this is probably the most important project. It's called the digital school It was a complex project for IT and education for digital education Therefore the name Which started as a project to introduce computers into school, you know a kind of typical Infrastructural intervention that's often criticized as being not good enough and over a year of discussions Which involved not just the government but also Experts from academia from civil society from educational organizations This sort of blossomed into a much more complex project which had four Elements it had an infrastructural component equipment, but it also included teacher training. It also included to some extent connectivity issues and Importantly for us it included a resources component This component was the big open e-textbooks project a bit about which we will be talking I'm sure Krzysztof Kulowski will talk more about it since his institution runs the open e-textbooks platform and the project was initiated in 2000 early 2012 with the end date of 2015 so in a way meeting today in 2016 this is a very good time for us to talk about open education in Poland because a certain Story arc if you will ended We spent five years being uncertain as being pulled or this will work And a lot of people believe those textbooks were not be created that there will be too big of a backlash from commercial publishers that Then people started saying maybe public institutions which were creating the resources are unable to create textbooks. I believe The we all proved them wrong and today we have this platform and in a way We're also therefore in a new moment where you can ask questions. So okay when you have a big educational open Educational platform that provides open textbooks in digital form to all the students. What is the next step? One other thing I need to mention all this is mainly happening at the level of elementary And lower secondary education or what you would call K-12 in higher education. We have exemplary Universities like the AGH but to be frank there Sort of relatively few of them We have a very interesting story of digital libraries Which in my belief have been a driving force for a lot of these discussions on openness on sharing of resources on modern approach to digital technology and science in Education and cultural heritage But somehow in the end this story about higher education in Poland. We're not there yet the way we are with With school education, maybe this is something we can discuss But mainly I hope in our discussion we can focus on sort of talking about the successes and lessons learned of the last Five or seven years and talking about what's next and now I would like to give the floor to our panelists And we'll have professor conco speak again and as promised. He'll say a bit more about open education at this university I think I would like to give some information about the progress in and developing in open education at our university Our university has joined open education consortium in 2011, but of course much earlier we have identified the necessity of Introducing of open education practices at our university We knew it. We're building and promoting this for years and it finally resulted in 2010 in the first in Poland Open educate repository of open educational resources books courses Interactive programs and so on This was the first step, but very important. We showed to the public that is doable That people are willing to do so The next step, of course, we are not slipping for the coming years We are trying to develop it and we move from there. Let's call it static Repository materials to the more dynamic system this dynamic system was prepared On the IT platform at our university and it refers to the system in which you can create your own textbooks or course books from scratchers Now we've got it's simply like building the house from the bricks We are providing the bricks nowadays in two fields in physics and mathematics There are over 500 of such bricks You can take them and Combine them in any textbook or you can incorporate it into your textbook in any way you want You don't have to be a specialist in the IT technology just to use it. It's very simple and very clear to use it We in this way we can build an individual courses, which is very important. It will come in in a flowing discussion For the courses that are very unique nowadays We have to open so many unique courses that are not supported on the market with the proper books So then we can build it in the system, of course this open AG's platforms not the only Software that you are using. Of course we use a model as a basic e-learning platform our e-learning center is offering Mahara web applications to build electronic portfolio or RedMind project management web application We are using open meeting software for online training and web conferences But I would like to Point your attention to the fact that we are not Limiting ourselves to work with the student of the universities We definitely wants to go much wider and we are preparing and developing special programs for the students of the secondary schools This is the source of our students. We have to keep the contact with them And let me mention our biggest and the newest project. This is called educational cloud In the pilot phase of this program 20 schools of our region were involved in the full program It's about 120 schools and students that are involved And this is based on a direct cooperation with Krakow universities AGH is the leader and it's based on an open education materials open Access what we are building. We are trying to build a new channels for delivering this open Education and educational application education and software We got the multimedia communication with all the school Try to build not only the education but also the social community just to join them to exchange the best practices What we try basically we try to introduce a new paradigm To those schools just to tell them how to use technology and hands in learning and open materials And finally, I would like to say one thing about the educational system in Poland We are state university. It means we are supported by the public funds Students in Poland are not paying tuition at the public schools and of course education is extremely expensive So somebody has to pay them and taxpayers are doing this this money I distributed by the minister of science and higher education and We think that our duty is that we will do something that it is money will be given back to the society that it will go to the society and Preparing the open education material and providing an open access to all our materials is the one way to do it And I think all the public universities Supposed to do it. It seems to be our duty and all the university should follow this way because we think Our society is spending a lot of money and it's not very wealthy society still So it's a big challenge and big effort for our community Should have something back and and this is what we are doing and we think it's it's our duty. Thank you Thank you very Thank you very much so Okay, this is can you hear me It's a very soft mic So we'll continue with the with the round of presentations I also wanted to say we'll have time for questions if you have any Later in our discussion. So Staying at the level of higher education and academia would like to now ask Mr. Kozłowski to talk about a bit broader context from the perspective of ministry which looks at open education also from the perspective of other things low open like open access and open data Well, first, I would like to stay a little With a GH Well, I did probably is will the best university in Poland is closer of application of knowledge triangle Concept knowledge triangle as we all know Put says not only on keeping a balance between education research and innovation, but require a Guaranteeing kind of synergy between you between them and one of the most known fruits of knowledge triangle are startups Made by or made together with students at alumni and there are several several example examples of that kind and of course it's not the only Aspect of knowledge triangle in this university You have mentioned some some others as concern of our ministry. I would like to briefly talk about three issues the first is Open access by which I understand open publications Access to open to publications. So following not only European Union or ECD UNESCO and other International organization, but first of all relying on own reflection and Very very strong bottom-up pressure by numerous organization of which Alec Tarkowski mentioned Just just before Me previous minister a Point that group for open access which prepare two documents the first are Direction for development of open access in Poland. It's a kind of soft recommendation addressed to Ministry itself and to funding agency as well as to universities and research group as well And the second document is a plan of action. So a kind of concretization of previous Strategy addressed mostly to the ministry itself and to funding agency and it's in plan of action we Are dealing with such a questions like planning coordination Training and information aggregation of metadata or fun repository change of criteria in research performance funding change of criteria in the funding of research journals and many many others so now it's time to Implementation of plan of action and we do hope very much that it will be our task for upcoming months The second thing is that we plan to organize in autumn Conference on open data and those Initiate the other very important and interconnected chapter of open access We decided to make it Together with code data probably the most known But not the only organization dealing with open data and we Invited to Poland to Duffrey Bolton and Seymour Hudson, which chair code data They were Extremely helpful to us We plan to invite For this police conference to invite many foreign guests from European Union Commission of European Union code data and other organizations and To invite at this conference people from academia university and non-university institutes libraries and repositories business government and third sector institutions and the further goal of these conference will be to prepare road map for Open data so we assume that there will be other tracks compared to preparation of Documents concerning open applications Well, and the last thing is that we are trying in the ministry thinking about massive online open courses, but Well, just we have started to think by which I understand some Preparatory studies and that's all. Thank you Thank you very much If I may add just one thing I think at level of higher education You mentioned this bottom up pressure and this is interesting Poland has Some pulse of some sort of nag for this kind of Activities and and we see our coalition started in 2008 But for instance three years ago a much more informal movement called the citizens of science formed and now I don't know whether such Phenomena happen in your countries in Poland. This is clearly something special. This is a group of mainly young researchers, but you know, obviously the It's a very varied group from all disciplines which feel that that's forming sort of a civic committee That formulates policy proposals to the government is a good idea And what's even more this this framing of policy by such very informal Bodies with with this very strong civic framing works very well So the the document prepared by this group the citizens of science has been received very well in over two years They became a really strong sort of actor and policy debate and what's for us important This is not a open education or open access Activist group their goals are much broader their interest in the quality of education in the way the Scientific system functions in the way their careers develop, but among a dozen or so Recommendation open access and openness is there. So this is another thing I think that's important in Poland that we're able to build this cooperation that for instance our coalition Works with this group and sort of supports them in this one aspect that we're very good at Allowing them to have a position on this issue as well and currently we're a very similar group called the citizens of Education is developing and we can see the same pattern repeating I would like now ask moving to School level K-12 education as Kamil Śliwowski to talk a bit about his perspective Thank you So typically on this those kind of panels I'm the one guy from Poland who complains about the Polish myth of success because I don't believe quite in a suck such success story About Polish openness, but maybe this will allow you to better understand what happened in Poland It's not I don't believe in a success about digital school and openness in Poland I kind of see it in a different way than just a success story and I think Alek mentioned brief history facts about what happened in the last seven years in Poland and I just wanted to add some some points of Different axis that happened before digital school and before Polish the first the open Polish project and turn on Polish Textbooks which were a lot of different stuff happening in in open practice not in openness on the of education in K-12 or higher education because well what happened before coalition of open education even started it was years of Trainings done by librarians by people at universities by people from creative commons and other open movements and other open foundations in Poland that went all around Poland and just trained and talked about openness and You see the profits from that Seven eight ten years after they started not at the beginning and with the ICT projects with a lot of big projects with government or European funding You kind of think that the profits will happen at the second or third year and then you want to see the What what the changes but it doesn't happen in a in a such way in K-12 education? Especially in K-12 education because the changes happen very very slowly And there's this it's not a you cannot do a revolution in K-12 education You can do and very slowly evolution and then try to figure out if you can even see the changes because they are They are happening very very slowly and gradually it's kind of different difficult to even track the changes So maybe I'm complaining because I'm based in open practice So I don't just want to see the regulations the money flowing to open education resources I want to see real changes that happening at the teachers level and students level and Maybe this is why Polish coalition for open education and myself is often Trying to speak about new stuff not only the success with it like with the digital school and with a lot of requirements because Alek mentioned digital school, but Probably even the better story that you don't hear about Poland is not just the digital school The school is the biggest program program, but so we try to track smaller programs smaller competitions by different ministries and different public and private grant funders and probably This is why you are thinking about Poland as one of the best success story in openness because we don't have just one big program We have probably 20 different programs in different ministries and public and private both Companies who are funding open education resources in different fields from cultural education to higher education Cable education media literacy Whatever so a lot of stuff is happening But just part of those programs really influence what's happening in schools and this brings me to one problem Why we are still complaining because just after we ended working at the digital school and with the governments We started working at the copy for copyright reform So probably this is why we are right now still in in work We are not just partying after having all those regulations and digital school and and whatever because we just moved to the European Commission and start working about and working with with European Commission to to push forward even smaller chunks of possible copyright reform in Educational area which is of course very very difficult much more difficult than just pushing just pushing open education resources and money To all your projects because of course European Union is funding a lot of OERs. It is not Making any progress at the copyright reform level which is very difficult because fair use and open education resources are not enough So I think we should be honest with ourselves. This is not enough both in cultural education and both In higher education This is not enough and it won't be enough if we push even further into 3d printing and different technologies in k-12 education and in higher education because they are They are breaking the barriers of what is allowed by law And this will be a problem of next few years for a lot of a lot of teachers and a lot of universities So the open practice right now is happening Of course, and it's happening for years right now What's happening in open education resources that we are not seeing the different consequences of different types of getting to OER as the result of our project and this is why probably after digital school and after all those projects How like already mentioned Right now we are trying to experiment more with OERs and with open policies We try to experiment if it's possible to open practice and openness happen From the bottom from the teachers level even from students level not just from the government level when it's funded when it's Well-structured when it's planned to have a success in next three years So that's my belief that is also very important But I'm trying to think about stuff that can happen in schools and then we brought up as the best practice in open as the Best practice to create open education resources. So right now coalition for open education is even maybe thinking about Kind of getting back to the roots to the community building To the stuff that was at the beginning the most important for us. So trying to figure out who is making open education resources who is trying to innovate in education and an openness and Bring the best practice and show maybe the best practice to the government and then tell this is what you should be Founding in next few years. This is how you should do the openness do the open education resources. It's not only about Having a lot of money for OERs and a lot of different open policies open policies are very important But they should include skills practice and competences of teachers because this is what's making the change in education And I think this is very important to have this kind of discussion again, because I think we missed we missed sometimes Talking about what's happening in school But not only in a systematic way, but at a very low level of what's happening between teachers and students So maybe that's my complain, but I think it should be useful for you. Oh, thank you Thank you very much Krzysztof. We've been mentioned quite a bit the digital school project and the open textbooks project But I feel maybe we think it's too obvious for us and and the Participants don't know. So I hope that you can say a bit about the project and your perspective As as the leader of a key institution running this project. Can you hear me? Oh, yes Okay, so good morning everyone So I was asked to in five minutes to talk about a project which More okay, so so first of all Thank you so much for for the invitation I'm very glad to be here to share some experiences especially from from technical perspective in one of the the the biggest I guess Open educational Project for K-12 in Europe or in the world actually so But so I was thinking you know About the the most important things that that happened over the last Three years actually because we we we started officially in March 2012 and I think apart from technology I've learned that that in this project the most critical Issue was trust because an engagement because more than 400 people were actually involved in in this project and For us as a public institution the critical moment was that we Have been invited to this project as a public partner because There was a big public debate, you know, how to organize the this project at the end in this project We had three big universities and one private company one publisher And we as a technology provider so That time I remember the one of the first meetings that that we had a Ministry of Education when I Had to convince people that that open educational resources Have been delivered to end users Not in the form of CD-ROMs or USB sticks because three years ago many people were actually talking about delivering Open educational resources on on CDs or Memoristic so I said now that the the main medium for delivering content will be internet and So what that that was the one of the the first technical assumptions The second I think that I had to explain that we don't want to build another Facebook So we said that if we want to build a platform for Open educational resources distribution, we have to have some unique features and Enable people using different Platforms including Facebook easy integration. So that was the second important thing then the Ministry of Education said that You know, this is the pilot, but you have to cover 40% of the whole population. So that was you know the first pilot project which actually cover 40% of the whole population So I said, okay, it's it's a it's a big challenge, but but the the Ministry of Education Said that, you know, it's not only building open educational resources, but all those Open educational resources must be also approved by Ministry of Education. So it means in Poland that that all created attacks but Went through the official evaluation procedures and and they said, okay, you have only three years because that's the the end of the European Funding period. So we also that was you know, the deadline that the another push for us. So Then I think another important issue was we have many experiences with with technologies different technologies and We know by experience that the technologies change and we said, okay One of important assumption will be to separate data sources from presentation layers So we force Outdoors of open educational resources to deliver sources and the platform actually creates and on-fly different formats for for users, so you can get access from web browsers, but you can also get access from mobile apps or Generate PDF so for us it was really important to keep high quality data sources In this project because we know that technologies would change and the platform and the content is prepared to be Used in the future Then I think I was really shocked to see that there are no Solutions for disabled people in the digital form. So we also Did some experiments and we managed to Create data sources to be able for some some material create digital files in a braille language because there's no automatic way to transform Even text based digital material into to braille available as an open Platform and open resources. So we also experimented with that and Then the offline was really important because not all schools are well connected in Poland I know that in the States especially it's it's opposite. I mean the men's schools do have access to to high-speed internet and in Poland We are trying to catch up with this also and I think we will in two or three years We will change the the the the current situation, but Did the offline scenario was also important so We also Wanted to give public access to teachers and kids and we've observed that Many many people actually using the open educational resources not necessarily at school, but at home and we Didn't want to reinvent the world. So three years ago. We were looking for similar projects in Europe and We end up in some discussion with UNESCO and on the way to to some conferences I visited Rice University and people from connections not sure if there's someone from connections from Rice University so We I remember that the first meeting when I said, you know guys you have free many experiences and We would like to to at least use some schemas and your Your experiences because it doesn't make sense to to to push or to create new standards and and they said yes I mean that does some of schemas, but we actually in the face of Reimplementing our platform so can use schemas, but they're not too many software components that that you can use so so we actually had to implement from scratch many components, but we We really wanted to keep as many open standards as possible because I know that that that in many many educational initiatives when people create platforms and they use some technologies and and have commercial partners that then Not all of them are actually willing to really have open interfaces and for us. It was really critical because The way the open educational are used today Apart from our platform we see many many schools websites School websites so based on mood or other you know Platforms that link to to our platform or many people taking our resources through APIs to Use internally on some platforms. So these are key, you know Assumptions and and lessons learned from Last three years in five or seven minutes Thank you and one key piece of information about the scale of this project Maybe I should have mentioned this at the beginning if you're not aware. This is a national textbooks platform So this means it covers the whole core curriculum for classes K-12. So both for primary schools for middle schools and high schools and What was also important that we we said and I'm saying we because it was a discussion that was done together by representatives of public administration and sort of the civil side a strong standard for openness Which I think is can be seen as sort of a model Solution it's a standard first that assumes open licensing using a creative commons attribution license Secondly, it assumes an open format. So the content has to be available in at least one Open format no matter what kind of content be text or video or graphics and and thirdly The accessibility issue is important and and to be frank as you said, this is very challenging But the general assumption is we're not fully there But that this will meet for instance for online content WCAG standards And I think even the commitment to do that as part of sort of open thinking was an important step So we won't be on the simple argument about licensing. Can you say just a bit about? I know it's the Platform has been running only since December. So it's three months But can you say a bit about the scale because that was the the challenge in Poland when the government said 40% of student of teachers and therefore of the population because of also of students will use it The polls didn't agree some said It'll never happen because it will be 100% You know the market will be destroyed No one will want to buy textbooks, but the other half said it will never happen because actually be zero Because there's no connectivity people are not interested in your resources teachers are conservative and like they're printed books So where are we after these three months? okay, so The first comments because our policy was also Since the beginning that to be open as much as possible. So we we first we invited many schools many teachers We actually discuss the interfaces GUIs with end users, but One of the first so and then we also as you remember we We didn't want to to wait for all complete attacks So the policy was simply know to a little by little gradually publish Open education our resources to see no reactions and also sees and then collect comments One of the first comments that we received was actually not from Polish teachers we receive many positive comments from from Maybe you know wives of Americans But you know happy people teachers that are abroad and and They they they really were happy that they have access to complete attacks boots in the easy accessible way and But it wasn't enough because as I said we had to cover 40% of all teachers and all kids which is roughly two million kids and Around two hundred thousand teachers. So as you can imagine even if there was marketing Campaign Supported by them officially supported by the Ministry of Education even in the national TV broadcast We've observed, you know gradually more and more users interested in in the open educational resources, but The the the peak that that we receive we observe was actually when Ministry of Education Decided through official official channels To ask teachers to try to use open educational resources and they said, you know, you have one week To do some experiments. So then all schools in the whole Poland actually Wanted at the same time actually at 8 o'clock in the morning and get access to open educational resources and at that time We had more than five million visits per day, which was quite a challenge also for for the infrastructure, but Luckily the the platform and the resources are distributed through high-speed optical network and hosted on the the big big Robic computing cluster and storage facilities. So but it was a challenge and After that, I think as you said it takes time to actually maybe not convince teachers to to use but To change also the way or the change, you know that the data sources they are using for for teaching. I think in May on June they have to decide what Books or e-tax book they can They will use for for the for the next semester and the all e-tax books For all K-12 levels as I said have been officially approved by Ministry of Education So so I expect that many teachers will actually decide to use To use e-tax with the fun I think that we've observed that we've got many many questions asking, you know for giving them Access code, you know, and it's it's because the private companies simply know Provide a limited access to to educational digital resources. So they didn't believe that, you know, it's it's it's public available And no, we had to use the argument that it was, you know, publicly funded. So it's public available without access You don't have to even Logging to the platform. I mean if you log in you have extra features but you don't have to Have an account you don't have to have an Access code. It's simply no public available, but they didn't believe I mean it was Shack so so So as I said Currently it's I think more than 50 million definitely visits and Keep fingers crossed enough for for the future We'll have to maintain the the platform, but the the the Ministry of Education is planning also to add additional digital Educational resources also thinking about new new courses. So we'll Do our best to support the other activities Thank you very much Krzysztof you started talking a bit about The impact how it's being used I think this is a sort of a key moment where we are I even personally feel that for a very long time Our work is focused on the provision of resources. What we really wanted to achieve is just to see some open resources Available and that that was a I think an important sort of goal to have but but now having these resources It's all more question about the impact and most significantly is their impact on the quality of education So I wanted to ask you that and maybe starting with professor conco in a way your repository as you mentioned It's one of the oldest resources and you have a therefore At least several years of experience with this functioning within your university Can you say a bit about how you see this impact? You have to view it from the two points of your teachers and students Students are welcoming all these resources very warmly. They're using it For one year I was checking how many times my book was just downloaded Bridget like 40,000 per year. So people were using it, but I love the question was one of the One of the sentences was that when we are dealing with this education open education materials and we Want to improve our? Access to this we are facing different troubles different problems and the question is Is it good or not or if it's so good why it's bad? so at this point I I have to mention two fundamental problems at the university with the open education Both are from the point of view of the teachers One is our system of descent of the career at the university The other is the mental barrier for the teachers. The first one is very simple If I want to have a better position at the university ever want to be a professor I have to publish as many papers as I can and as fast as I can I have to gather the money to the university through the project grants honestly. I Don't have much time to work on Educational materials. It's obvious and What counts in my career how many papers I do have? How many citations I do have how many money the university has from my projects? that's the key factor and my educational resources Do not have such an impact on my career So we are not encouraging the people to do it. The other thing is the mental barrier People are you know know that if they will go open with the materials? They are also open for the criticism for the other people who are around other teachers Usually the criticism comes from the people who didn't route even a single Book or didn't prepare even a single or pre-educational material, but it's a fact If you're teaching in a four walls, okay You're interacting with the students and you're open to the criticism of the student But that's all it's not coming public when you are going public the situation is completely different and people love to Be in this situation that there is no criticism with respect to your activity because after some time You're coming to the conclusion that you are not making any mistake errors that you are perfect Nobody's criticizing you so that it has to be that you are ideal and of course These are the two barriers the model of the the model of the Courier at the University and the other this barrier. So as a result, I think that to say what's the impact of the open education of on the Quality of our education we have to look two ways first It's not that great because the number of the people that are involved in the open education Practices it's limited steer. It's too low definitely. So we can't estimate really Seriously, what's the impact? We don't have that many People involved in this the other is with what it means. We we have to work on it, of course We have to promote it. We have to Say to them that is very important to their career. The other thing is when you're talking to the students they are Sometimes even disappointed that there is not enough of an open educational resources that the open access to the Materials at the University is not satisfying them So I would say that's the one thing and the one thing that I would like at the end say, okay We are at the technical University and I have to say it The language we are using in the education of engineers and they know but basic sciences like mathematics physics Chemistry we are using a mathematics language, which is not easy to communicate It's not very narrative. So we have to take also some correction for this what I've said To prepare the materials for engineers. It's not easy the materials that they can easily follow The you it's not easy to build a dialogue in the mathematics language. So we see some barriers coming from the system we see some barriers coming from the people and from the fact that we are at the technical University, but I Strongly believe that the key factor is the promotion of this. We have to convince the teachers That it's good for them to go public all my mistakes all my errors In my books were caught in the first year The people were writing to me a mic improvement in my book is much better than it was Let's say 20 or 15 years ago when I started so You have to show the advantages. I would say no matter what people will say the Impact of the open education on the quality of education will go up definitely and will sit soon and the people who will not Go with us. They will soon be somehow excluded From from the teaching. I don't say that we have to go hundred percent for the open education Usually we do a blended system That's obvious we you can do laboratories in at the technical University using Online web materials you have to touch the experiment but if you want to really help the students just go for that and that's How we see it from the point of view from from our University those three things first the The way we advance at the University. So it's the system barrier. We have to change it the other way as How we have to change the mental approach to the open materials from the teachers and the third one We have to activate the students that they will show to the teachers that they are Expecting such a resource. Thank you. I Need to ask you one thing sort of a personal thing so and I agree that there are all the Areas to becoming a creator of open resources and without these creators and Kamil talked about it We don't really have open education as you can probably ask some companies to create resources for us But that's not the same. So why did you create these open textbooks in physics? You won't believe it. It's it the story was like that I wrote the first book and of course it was classic book in the early 90s It was printed and was brought to the book store and it was sold so two companies asked me to Write the next edition of the book improve it and so on and I say, okay, I will write the book and I will bring it to you and I don't want any money for that I'll give it for free. But there is one condition on the shelf in your bookstore The cost of the book should be lower than the Xerox copy of the book and they say you must be crazy It won't happen. I say why I'll give you the whole text camera ready with all the drawings all the graphics It's ready for printing. It's made professional. So why you are hesitating and see no, no, no No, they then they start to counting how many Companies are on its way and distribution and so on and what are the cause I say, okay, forget it I'll bring it and and put it into internet. I would start it then the reaction so it was a kind of a Anger that Brought me to this point and this appointment from from the reaction of those editing companies But then the reaction for the from the students was so enthusiastic. They say, okay, that's the way to go and I am a fan of education. So I think that's the primary Role of the University The primary role of the University is an education The science is the motivation for it, but it's not the primary And we don't have to forget it and Unfortunately Because the money stays behind So we are in the position that and I am doing the same. I've got five grants I'm publishing all the time the paper sometimes I am Very surprised what I have written in this paper But that's that's a separate story not not for today discussion. The reason was very simple it started in a strange way, but then I see the reaction from the students and that's what I I'm talking to our teachers do it and the reaction of the student will go sometimes beyond your expectations do it And then how it's happened. So But nobody's perfect. So remember that if I can add something because I totally agree and this is the same situation Kate for education. It's it's a matter of motivation of the authors to create and open their materials and One story because like two weeks ago I was in the study at the study is in the reeks museum. You probably know reeks museum in Amsterdam This is the best success story of glam open glam sector right now probably and they told us about what were the beginnings of their opening all the collections and Pushing to the public domain mark and cc0 and making all the collections digital and available in the highest formats possible They can send you tiff 100 or 400 megabytes for free. They don't They don't even don't want to have a recognition of the museum So we don't have to even attribute the museum you just attribute to the outer of the public domain so they're like the the best practice right now and they they They told us about two stuff the two things that they made the whole museum and the stuff Being for the change for the openness and this was simplicity and benefits So they counted money and they saw that the benefits for the museum will be to publish the whole process the workflow As being for the open materials for the public domain not just a workflow for selling those digital copies And this was the benefit it was cheaper. It was better. It was faster So it was better for all the stuff and the second one was If it's if you can see the benefits and we will have more money at the end of the year without all those stuff We need to sell the digital images We can just have more money with putting those images online for free and open It will be better and then the the simplicity they were searching for something that will be the easiest way to make their mission It at the core. So the mission as a museum is to make those stuff May may may not make the paintings available But the promote those paintings and they just okay This is the openness at the as the level where it's simple and it's benefiting the institution So if we can see benefits and simplicity in institutions We should see the same for teachers and for creators They need both to see the benefits of openness and they need to see how it's making their life simpler If it's not making their life as a teacher or as a out or simpler and then don't see any benefits They won't do it and this is a part with where it's the most difficult because this is different in different countries you go to Belgium they have different motivational programs for teachers then Poland and in different countries and then it's not only about money because sometimes it's about Attribution sometimes it's about some cultural stuff the teachers in different countries needs to be motivated and we are not talking about this We are talking more and more about values or policy, and we are not talking how policies and values should reasonate with benefits personal benefits of the authors of teachers and of academics There of course, there's nothing wrong with it when the teachers are making the money But the story goes gives different way what what we are talking. We are thinking also about the students They have to say to them, okay You have to learn at my physics course from five six different books that you have to buy In the store or to get it from library and this part comes from here this part from here It's much easier to prepare your own textbook, but but that's my point of it But the other story goes like that We've got enormous amount of unique courses that goes for three four years because of the The world is demanding from us the outside world is demanding to start such a course For example, we've got the only one in the Europe for a quarter of drilling oil and gas dealing with all these problems So there are not available materials at the market so people are writing their own books, but They are writing in in a different way, of course they're preparing the textbook and they are making them available through the open access through our library But it doesn't have it's not on the creative commons license You can read it, but you can't copy it. You can't take any part You can't use it freely in the sense So you have to distinguish between this what our academics are doing when writing a textbook Most of them are putting this book in the digital form on our library platform But it's only read only a text It's not a book like my book anybody can take any part of it Drawing picture text and can do whatever he wants with it. It's a different approach We have to understand it that some of the teachers are Are willing to maybe they are afraid of the competition I don't know, but you have to look at this. It is a long time process. We have to convince them But all the environment is trying to do opposite way to say forget about the classes think about the science And what's more important? I have to say that I'm vice-rector responsible not for their education I'm responsible for the science at this university, but even though I have to admit the education is the number one Thank you Maybe just about the impact. I forgot to mention, but there is what we've been observing There is a real concrete impact also on the on the on the on the market I mean on the I remember three years ago As you also mentioned at the beginning those even in a big fight, you know between, you know, the paper business and you know the open access initiatives and We have been observing that we actually are at the two to two cents, you know to stimulate the digital educational market because there's Some companies asking, you know for the the open educational resources and they would like to improve the quality of the the resources and sell to you know to for instance to teachers and if the If there are some teachers who are willing to pay, I mean, I Don't see any conflict. I mean as long as we also have many many teachers Receive thousands of comments Remarks to the the open educational resources, but trying do doing our best, you know to fix typos or change change the content. So it's an ongoing process, but I See, you know that they know also that the impact the real impact on a digital educational market, so That's our, you know experience, you know Since you know we we launching officially the e-text books If I can add to that, I think that was during last five years a very important and different discussions We had in Poland about Resources in a way as a market goods, you know, it's it's you know It would be nicer to just talk about educational resources as as teaching materials But they there is obviously a market component and a big debate in Poland the policy debate was about how to shape this relationship between open resources and markets and again, I think we're We made big progress. So we moved from a space around 2011 where even our coalition would have really heated debates with publishers to a space where at the end of last year and over This winter and also together with Krzysztof's institution institution We built this working group where we had IT companies. We had the best schools using IT technologies We had public institutions. We had our coalition, but we also had the publishers and we were able to write a shared document on On the model of a digital school which included language around openness, which was shared Which was a big advantage. I think the reason this was possible that This is also a big change that happened Poland moved from a model where parents pay For textbooks to a model where they're publicly subsidized and this is actually the model that dominates in Europe I don't know how that is abroad if you're beyond you if you come from beyond Europe but in a situation where there is a provision of funds to the market Of course the publishers who always want this subsidy to be bigger But once you sort of Negotiated at a certain level and there's money to be made They will I think accept the open model because it becomes complementary If you ensure them that there will be funding for the public resources I think that's a big sort of question for the future whether that's really the case that we can have a complementary system of printed commercial goods and online or Digital commercial goods and open online goods. I think we're even as our coalition. We're changing our approach I think at the beginning there was a lot of discussion that you can move to a fully digital Fully open system where these will be publicly funded publicly available resources on the internet one of the sort of first Moments we realized that's not that simple as the connectivity issue Which you already mentioned and I think this for me personally this was interesting I remember when I read the Paris declaration and there's a big part in Paris declaration about availability of internet in educational institutions And I felt you know, this is not open education and want to be talking about licensing and legal aspects But I grew to realize this is crucial and in a way today. I think you cannot separate open from digital and in Poland Really we and and this is I think actually very good We're reaching a point where debate on open education is a debate on that on digital education So for instance when the government declares that by 2020 they really want to fix the situation of Elementary schools and provide high-speed connectivity. Hopefully fiber to every school Which is not the case today. We feel that's a very big change not just for education Not just for digital education, but also for open education But I need to add that the challenge there is that people tend to forget about the open part. We did some research on how to talk with people about open and And talk about these changes that are happening and we realize it's very easy to talk tell people about digital education They can sort of understand what it means that you can have a textbook in a tablet or a textbook That's available at home on the internet, but explaining to them that open bid the fact that it's reusable that it's Elastic that it gives some freedoms that sort of gets sort of lost. We felt in the In the translation just to be very blunt. We did a picnic an educational picnic where people could throw bundles of textbooks, you know like the way they do at the Olympics the Earthrow and that gave them a real clear sense that it's not going to be heavy anymore But how do you illustrate at a picnic that it's going to be open that's challenging? But maybe you have some thoughts about this because that's also the question of how to involve be at academic researchers at University or teachers in the open textbooks platform And this is what came to describe the challenge we're facing. So what are your ideas how we can improve this engagement? so I think There are many issues first from a research perspective, I think It's a completely New world, I mean you cannot imagine working with kids, you know What kind of expectations they have to be honest? They don't want to read about Exercises they want to do exercises so with internet of things with completely new software delivery models We have realized that we actually have to have open we call it the future school laboratories so open space when when we are designing or building New solutions for using virtual reality augmented reality Sensors, etc. Then we have to be really really close to to kids and teachers and then you actually Can collect Ideas scenarios and be you know very very close to them and think someone mentioned that The open educational resources as are as as bricks the way we see k-12 and digital education is more about Lego boxes so in additional to boxes you also have Some concrete educational scenarios Define and I think it's it's more important at this stage not necessarily to have more open educational repositories, but actually to have really interesting educational scenarios and Involving many different technologies not necessarily only Open digital documents, but also application and it's got it's also getting more more complicated because It's much easier to create open e-text books with text than to Create or develop interactive application and then maintain Sustaining of the software in the future. So it's not gonna be an easy task So I think what we did that the first step and now it's getting even more complicated because we believe that in the future Kids teachers will be more more mobile and and I think that the learning process will be performed not necessarily within schools, but in many different places They're gonna have many gadgets sensors. They're gonna use it so more Interesting open educational scenarios We will have the better for kids that the better for us If you don't have any comments Let's maybe see whether the any of the participants of the conference have any questions Maybe you want us to clarify something? Hello, thank you very much. I found this so interesting My name is Barbara Elowski from the United States and I am an author of a university used open textbook introductory statistics and I Really found it fascinating with what you were with what you were saying because I I in an early author and I received a lot of Chastising from colleagues who did not write a book and had never planned a book to write a book but were angry that my book was open and free and Especially that we use the Creative Commons attributions license and it was published by connections from rice and Then OpenStacks College and they were mad that I might be giving something away that somebody else could make money on And I wouldn't and what I found was it led to innovation So that the for-profit companies could do innovative work, but I was I was curious If you experience the same that that your colleagues actually from around the country felt that it was almost Inappropriate to put your work up there for free for everyone But they are not saying this in an open way I would say In physics is a little bit different At our laboratory it says to work here. You don't have to be crazy, but it helps But this is a little bit different story But I face many times this situation that people who are writing the open things who were complaining That some that their friends are pointing their finger fingers at them and saying oh you were just Changing the market for the books that we are writing for the years We got some expertise and we are making some living on this and now you are introducing your own books The answer is so you have to have a better book You need to have a better material Oh, I would say much better than my open because my for free may be a little bit worse, but it's free So the only way if you want to compete with me make something much much better You always got a chance That's the simplest answer that I am giving to them. It's like they're complaining about my computer simulation being computer simulations on some physics phenomena and the guy saying oh This particles are moving this way and it should go that way. I mean immediately saying, okay I'm giving you a full code of my programming code open currency. I Don't need it. I don't know how to make a program. I am I'm not familiar with programming So I'm saying okay So you have to find somebody else will write the program for you and and it should be a little bit better than mine Then then it will work if not then it was The always the thing is if somebody is telling you that it can be done in a better way that's obvious It's true. Of course, it's true But the problem is is the person who is telling you this as any experience Does he know how much time consuming is that it's the same story if I'm going for the class I got a one and a half an hour class and somewhere They count these hours and they pay me salary if I'm spending the hours talking Through the internet with the students giving them Advices and answering the questions consulting them Nobody's counting the my time and nobody wants to pay it for so You have to be a real teacher. That's the simple answer and And for those people who are complaining you can always say them I know that you are very smart. You are much better than I am So you can make a much better book and much better material Yeah, but but but that's the thing we all know if you are a scientist That that's a very hard profession because when you are moving around you always meet the people watch Mars It's much smarter than you are who are really clever Much wiser than you are and you have to face it. That's true. That's the scientific world My name is Dutra. I'm from Brazil on the rest of Sao Paulo and I think although we have lots of Very good quality resource All over the world. I think we need more local flavor resources And to do that we need more local creators or remixer or advisors So to have more local revise or remixers we need a very easy tool to do that I understand that they already have one and I would like If you can to share some experience of the teachers using this tool to revise or to remix the resources Thank you. So I can make one comment that from our perspective as our coalition that's for instance the challenge with the With the big open textbooks project and this was sort of a debate on the approach Sort of between providing Content or making content openly available That in the end the platform doesn't have an authoring tool. It's a it's a platform that lets you You know use resources but not reuse them as a teacher and this is something for instance that I hope And I know you feel the same as your institution, but in the end that's not the decision yet of the government To move in this regard then it's not a tech there are technical aspects. I agree when you say this has to be an easy tool You can also do it in a way that it's not easy and no one will want to touch it But as Krzysztof described a lot of the technical and interface issues have been solved and then it becomes sort of an issue of Educational policy which either assumes that you want to create a situation where you give teachers tools where you give them Encouragement where you create programs where they become active in using resources And I really like your examples for instance from Belgium of the class cement platform Where they really try to work with the community of teachers to do that or or you assume that that's maybe of secondary importance I think I would describe this as a very big challenge for us in the coming years whether we can move the textbooks project in that Direction that similarly in higher education whether we can for instance create some kind of a project Supported by the Ministry of Science that takes examples for instance from a GH because the the sort of the template is there How to do it and the tools are there and how to scale it So I I didn't mention actually a very very important thing That in this project we actually started Creating platform in the same time we had As I said more than three or four hundred people Asking for tools for you know building than the content so that that was really you know a big challenge and we We have realized that that many of them really many of them would like to use Many tools that are using like you know for instance word Just to you know to collect quickly ideas and you know at least have you know the Creates on some text so The platform has been has been designed in a way To be connected with many authoring editorial tools So my message is simply don't try to come up with new tools for for authors because they actually May not accept you know new interfaces simply know Spend your time and do as many integration Activities as possible so use as many tools as people are using and connect or try to use those those tools to To get you know sources from from different places and the if we Didn't Go that way I think it wouldn't be possible with a limited time to collect you know Inputs from authors editors because it was simply not too much I mean at the end we have thousands of objects for full multimedia and interactive Components it's really bit complicated complicated because you simply not only writing a text Paragraph, but you actually write a piece of software For the multimedia is also Another story because you actually have to create the the multimedia the video in a appropriate format and Deliver the the the the file, but then Keeping open standards and interfaces you actually can promote and integrate many tools Available today If I cannot in less used languages like Polish as well It's not very difficult language probably like 10 for 9th the most difficult probably in the world So a lot of those resources that are in Polish They happen in very different platforms like they happen on local computers of teachers in word or maybe in Google Docs so it's very difficult to To make those resources to bring them somewhere up So make platforms and this is very difficult question because most of the OER platforms build locally like the digital I like I love digital school platform Which is like well based on your user experience Methods you you worked out a lot of different difficulties that that wasn't They weren't it worked out before in a different platforms in Poland But still most of them are not very simple to use for teachers So if they make their local in local language there are the resources they are using the Best tools they can have which is Google Docs probably Google Docs probably or Microsoft word or maybe like in Europe right now Learning apps if you know learning apps for for a lot of teachers and this was translated in a few other languages so right now it's in Polish as well and And this is one difficulty we have that most of the OER projects are not Ready for a mass-scale use because the interfaces are not good enough I like to Tori the I would be just like the Outer of one of the German platform is right here probably which is based on very simple idea of just forking the resources And I want to meet you or and personally probably you see somewhere here and The idea is that most of teachers they are afraid of making their resources public in their languages because they are not good enough so This is one case with the being a very good author. They want to be a very good author They want to publish there are maybe not a textbook, but just a part of the resources, but they're making it just in a draft version So it's ready for their Pupils it's ready for their friends, but it's not ready to be published online And this is where policy should go and try to fix that because it's not just about Making the resource open but helping them giving their sub them them some kind of a support different in different countries probably To make this the last mile to publish this resources to maybe correct their Mistakes to make the reduction the end process editing process and then you can publish a very good Resources and this is like the shift from what you are taking they are making a lot of different stuff Most of them would be just Flooding the the the platform and there's the space where we are not covering right now Making the last edits for the teachers because they are not able especially k-12 education Teachers that not able to edit themselves the last The last parts of the resources to make this good good enough to be publishing and it's if it's not good enough They are afraid of publishing of course and they are not making their resources open and I think We we had many discussions and We also asked actually teachers and and kids what are the key features you would like to see on the platform and they actually Didn't point or ask for for editorial tools. They actually ask for simple notes they can make You know on a text so we We've discussed this scenario and end up with the relatively simple feature which gives you An ability to to put Any link you want to your own resources and with that the cloud-based services you can actually quite easily Create the additional material in PowerPoint Publish or create a video put on a YouTube and you can simply link with that the core material your additional Resources and create kind your own e-text books on your account So instead of changing, you know the editing Text you can simply you fork it or you add the you know as many additional resources as you want So that that's the current stages. Maybe we will add, you know more social editorial tools But I don't think it it's that critical. I mean I Believe more in integration and that the added values services and synergy out of such integration Okay, it's time to finish our session I think it's very interesting how we in the end started talking about practices and Interfaces and then tools that help them. I personally am a bit fixated on policy issues I have a goal for Poland to have a general open policy for resources. We made the big step I forgot to mention last year that the funds from the European social fund Which is a really big funding source of European funds Especially for education which goes into the two billions of euros billions of slots is introduce the open licensing rule That's a big win for us But I'm happy to see that others will focus on the non-policy parts because of which this will all work So just to end I'd like to ask you can you make some final comments? I would be very happy to hear what from your perspective are the key things to do you want to start Thank you very much So I want to say that This conference is mostly devoted to for talking about Contribution of open education open research Open data open publication to research and education itself However What is very important to say that? It's well open data Open publication efforts effort open educational resources it is well kind of bidding block of Future of the new production revolution of open society and we all know It's great input to the new education new communication New energy logistic Manufacturing production is so I would only want to say that it's well part of big change Describe among the many others by the relief kidney in his famous book zero marginal cost economy This and especially I suspect that The most important motif of our leg action is Contribution of open Education and open science to open society Open democratic society The main conclusion is about the cooperation Let's cooperate not to just sharing the materials They are by definition open so you can openly access them But let's share between the teachers and the universities the best practices and also the software The IT platforms all this stuff that can help to create the open access materials really The futures in the very close cooperation. Thank you so I wouldn't be probably even working with you if I like if I wasn't a fan of policies as well, but But my conclusion not only from this panel But maybe for last years working both in Polish projects and trying to figure out what what are the best practices from around the world from open education resources Projects all around the world both governmental non-governmental at universities that's it's one It's cooperation of course and the second one we need to be more flexible And I think this is a part of what we will be talking at the oh your policy forum Thursday That there are very different paths. We need to consider how it's the best way to success at openness at the university or at K-12 education or at the government project or if you are just making your I don't know school open policy or one school making being opened by a teacher or by a Bar even by maybe a group of parents who want to change something in their school So there are very different ways To get things done in openness, and I think we are we should discuss more different ways more local more flexible to different needs of different authors different groups of actors in openness and So this is I think what's what's already happening that we are not just talking about resources not about just the technology or money or policy We're figuring out what are the best ways to to even make it better my conclusion I think that the education teaching learning is an emotional thing and I Think my advice is don't put technology on the first place at the end, you know humans are in the loop so Technologies there and could be no as transparent as or should be as transparent as possible Collaborate share experiences and really carefully Listen to to to kids because they really have Great ideas, you know how to use technologies better than us. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. I hope this has been an inspiring discussion that highlighted both dry policies and interesting personal experiences and the interfaces that run between us Thank you very much and please enjoy your coffee break