ICDE OER Advocacy Committee

ICDE OER Advocacy Committee

At the 27th ICDE World Conference in Toronto, October 2017, ICDE launched a committee for the global advocacy of OER as a reinforcement and support to the ICDE Chairs in OER. Paul Bardack, the Chair Emeritus of the United States Distance Learning Association, serves as the first Chairperson of the Committee, that works to increase global recognition of OER; and to provide policy support for the uptake, use and reuse of OER. First I am really honored and pleased to have been appointed Ambassadors for the global advocacy of OER, but also to be in the core group. Looking forward to the work ahead. All members of the ICDE Advocacy Committee are appointed Ambassadors for the global  advocacy of OER for a limited term until end 2019. A smaller group of the members form a core group that works more closely with the chair to facilitate the activities of the Committee and its members: Core group members: Mark Brown, Office of the Vice President, Dublin City University, Ireland Ebba Ossiannilsson, Consultant and VP, Swedish Assocation of Distance Education (SADE), Sweden Other Advocacy Committee members: Cengiz Hakan Aydin, Professor, Anadolu University, Turkey Paul Bacsich, Director and Senior Consultant, Matic Media and Sero Consulting, United Kingdom Chandra Shekhar Dubey, Director, Campus of Open Learning, Dehli University, India James Glapa-Glossklag, Dean and Treasurer of the Board, College of the Canyons and Open Education Consortium, USA Dhaneswar Harichandan, Director, Institute of Distance and Open Learning, University of Mumbai, India Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, UC-Irvine California, USA Jean-Marc Meunier, President and VP, FIED and University of Paris VIII Vincennes – St-Denis, France Valerie Peachey, Professor in Open Education, Charles Sturt University, Australia Xiangyang Zhang, Open University of Jiangsu, China Cable Green, Lead OER, Creative Commons, US

Read the full Blog post by  for ICDE here
Paul Bardack, the Chair point to nine advocacy actions

1. Advocate for national and sub-national governments to require all research funded publicly to be openly accessible to all.
2. Advocate for expanded government funding of peer reviewed online content that is to be open and accessible to all.
3. Advocate for expanded recognition of prior learning experiences and other alternative paths for receiving course credit, including open content and open access.
4. Advocate for expanded government funding of personally owned laptops and smart phones, to allow the benefits of open access to be available to all.
5. Advocate for more government funding of wired and wireless networks, so that those in poorer communities are not left behind.
6. Advocate for changes to national intellectual property laws, to allow more content to be freely accessible by potential users of that content.
7. Advocate with the nonprofit and private sectors to encourage more government and nongovernment money to go towards funding of openly accessible online content and courses.
8. Advocate the end of censorship of educational content.
9. Make it physically safe for those who must leave their homes to get an education to get the education they seek without fear of physical harm.

Relevance to ICDE

Upon further reflection, those actions will require at least some, and perhaps many, changes to government policy, in my country and in countries around the world.

And that is precisely why ICDE just launched, at the World Conference on Online Learning in Toronto, a new OER advocacy committee … to help empower those of us around the world who believe in the power and promise of open and distance education; and to help reshape our national and subnational laws and policies to help the people of the world to make that dream a reality.

Read the full Blog post by  Paul Bardack for ICDE here