UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning Achievements in 2023
As part of the UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning, we were active in several areas in 2023. We would like to highlight some of our achievements:
The Chair successfully continued the activities related to the OER Dynamic Coalition, which was established at the 2nd International OER Congress in Ljubljana. In this context, the Chair established a platform for the OER Dynamic Coalition during the year. Through the platform, we will encourage the further expansion of the membership of the OER Dynamic Coalition, as the platform allows for the exchange of documents and other OER-related content, communication, networking, and is a point for informing the public about the developments and progress of the Dynamic Coalition and OER. The platform will enable UNESCO to connect national, regional, global platforms and networks and will create a central entry point for the exchange and promotion of OER knowledge products, OER initiatives and activities. Link to the Platform – https://oerdynamiccoalition.org/home
For the sixth consecutive year, the Open Education for a Better World mentoring programme took place, involving 70 projects and 92 developers from all continents (many of them group projects), supported by 85 mentors. The projects were divided into 11 hubs; 5 education and pedagogy hubs, 1 sustainability hub, 1 computing hub, 1 displaced persons hub, 1 youth hub and 1 regional hub – Africa.
We organised the final Open Education for Better World Eduscope 2023 event, which took place in a hybrid format between 1 and 7 June 2023 – partly at the Lanthieri Manor, in Vipava, and partly through the MiTeam online platform. Participants presented the open educational resources they developed during the programme and received direct feedback on the products from the audience during a panel discussion. The programme was complemented by the students of the Master’s programme “Leadership and Planning of Open Education”; who presented their views on data collection and ethics; followed by the panellists (Dr. Robert Schuwer, Mitja Jermol, Erik Novak, Dr. Suzana Loshkovska, and moderated by Dr. The programme was complemented by three invited speakers; Dr. Robert Schuwer addressed the future of Open Educational Resources; Patricia Gonsales gave a lecture on Artificial Intelligence and Literacy; and Dr. Madhavi Dharankar gave a lecture on the prevalence of Open Educational Resources in India. The conference was attended by 30 participants in person and 120 online; a total of 150 people from 6 continents. The event was co-sponsored by the Slovenian National Team for UNESCO.
The OE4BW programme was presented at the event “Digital Transformation of Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, co-organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) and IRCAI, which took place from 12 to 16 November 2023 and was attended by around 80 participants – teachers and their mentors from Asia and Europe. We have been looking for synergies with the organisers of the ASEF event in terms of expanding the network of participants and co-organising future events.
The Chair participated in the Erasmus + BRIDGES project “Bridging Educational Emergencies through Digital Pedagogy”, where we contributed to the creation of a digital hub, which will include open courses for higher education teachers on how to create quality OER, and participated in the final event, which took place from 6-8 September 2023 in Modena, Italy.
In 2023, the University of Nova Gorica, in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair, organised for the third consecutive year a Master’s programme in Open Education Leadership and Planning, with a total of 34 students.
