OER: the Way Forward
Joseph Hart,
EduResources,
Mar 10, 2008
I don't agree with everything in this document, recently released by UNESCO. Yes, I thought the process could have been more open in places (participation in the discussions was limited, for example, and the mailing list was annoyingly turned on and off at a whim). But I feel comfortable supporting it. Why? It's worth contrasting the process that produced this document with the Cape Town Declaration: instead of a closed meeting attended by a selected panel of experts (which produced a strident and arguably loaded manifesto), this document followed numerous rounds of online meetings and consultations, surveys taken among stakeholders around the world, more discussions, discussion at conferences, input from other agencies (such as OECD's study of OERs), and, in the end, produces a summary of community feelings rather than a Declaration of What Is True.
All of these are things I advised the organizers of the Cape Town declaration to do - advised them before it was announced to the world as a fait accompli. But I know why they did it that way - it would have been impossible to produce an institution-centric publisher-centric commercially biased document the UNESCO way. There would have been too many objections. Now The Way Forward moves forward - my own text version for people who can't download PDF, the wiki version, the translations and slide shows coming, as people from around the world pitch in.
All of these are things I advised the organizers of the Cape Town declaration to do - advised them before it was announced to the world as a fait accompli. But I know why they did it that way - it would have been impossible to produce an institution-centric publisher-centric commercially biased document the UNESCO way. There would have been too many objections. Now The Way Forward moves forward - my own text version for people who can't download PDF, the wiki version, the translations and slide shows coming, as people from around the world pitch in.
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