UNITWIN Network on Open Education: A Global Initiative for Openness and Collaboration

In a bid to advance Open Education (OE) and Open Educational Resources (OER) globally, UNESCO has approved the formation of the UNITWIN Network, uniting 15 academic institutions across the globe. This network, spearheaded by UNESCO Chairs involved in Open Education, aims to revolutionize educational accessibility and foster international cooperation in the field.

But why does the world need such a network? The answer lies in the pressing need to address gaps in Open Education research and promote greater inclusivity in learning. While Open Educational Resources (OER) have laid a foundation for accessible education, the focus must now shift towards broader Open Education initiatives and their intersection with social justice.

The goals of the network are ambitious yet crucial. They encompass fostering community building, supporting countries with limited engagement in Open Education, and collaborating closely with UNESCO and existing academic institutions. Through joint research, capacity building, and the development of free and open-source tools, the network aims to advance UNESCO’s programmatic priorities while championing principles of openness and social justice.

At the heart of the network’s mission is a commitment to generating high-quality research, promoting gender equality, inclusion, and participatory designs, and making educational materials accessible to all. By exploring the potential of artificial intelligence, learning analytics, and other emerging technologies, the network seeks to shape the future of higher education in alignment with Open Education principles.

Key goals of the UNITWIN Network include:

• Facilitating community building and training to enhance knowledge of OE and OER.
• Supporting teams in countries with limited engagement in OE and OER.
• Collaborating closely with UNESCO and academic institutions to advance joint research and academic outputs.
• Generating high-quality research documents and promoting shared research programs.
• Exploring intersections between Open Science and Open Education.
• Examining the future of higher education with a focus on openness, AI, learning analytics, and more.
• Capacity building through professional development, policy-building, and mentorship.
• Promoting social justice and gender equality within OE frameworks.
• Sharing teaching programs, courses, and educational materials related to OE.
• Developing curricula and academic research to increase awareness and adoption of OE principles.
• Promoting free and open-source tools for education.
• Investigating the roles of artificial intelligence and crowdsourcing in OE design and dissemination.

In summary, the UNITWIN Network on Open Education represents a beacon of hope for global education reform. By fostering collaboration, innovation, and inclusivity, it paves the way for a more equitable and accessible learning landscape for all.

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.

Open Education for a Better World Mentoring Programme in the UNESCO Report On Open Educational Resources

After UNESCO unanimously adopted the Recommendation on open educational resources at the General Conference in November 2019, all member states are obliged to report on activities and progress in this area every four years.

The UNESCO Executive Board prepared the first four-year period report that was presented and discussed at the 42nd UNESCO General Conference in Paris in November 2023. It summarizes the reports received from 78 countries. The report presents actions and achievements made by countries on the development of supportive policy, on encouraging effective, inclusive and equitable access to quality open educational resources, and on building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute open educational resources.

In the capacity building section, the report also mentions the Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) international programme, launched by University of Nova Gorica together with the UNESCO chair from the Jožef Stefan Institute. The goal of this programme is to create open educational resources addressing sustainable development goals, and to provide mentoring support to developers of these resources.

While the report includes numerous references to countries and several highlighted projects, the mentions of concrete institutions are rare. We are very pleased that the work of the Open Education for Better World international mentoring programme was recognized and mentioned in such a positive context in a document that ensures world-wide visibility.

Please check the 2019 Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) – consolidated report on the implementation of the recommendation; OE4BW mentioned on page 2 – https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000386595

UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning Achievements in 2022

As part of the UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning, we were active in several areas in 2022. We would like to highlight some of our achievements:

The Chair successfully continues the activities related to the OER Dynamic Coalition, which was established at the 2nd International OER Congress in Ljubljana. In this context, the Chair has signed a cooperation agreement with UNESCO to establish a platform for the OER Dynamic Coalition in 2022. Through the platform, we will encourage the further expansion of the membership of the OER Dynamic Coalition by providing a platform for the exchange of documents and other OER-related content, communication, networking, and a point of public information on 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.

For the fifth year running, the Open Education for a Better World mentoring programme involved 62 projects and 92 developers from all continents (many of them in teams), supported by 87 mentors. The projects were organised into 9 hubs; 7 thematic hubs on computer science; education and pedagogy, teacher training; distance learning; science and sustainable development; social sciences and law; and youth; and 3 regional hubs – Africa, Americas, Slovenia. The programme also organised a well-attended webinar with 58 participants, entitled “Effective sharing and storage of OER: empowerment, stewardship, resource building and sharing”, organised by Huba Africa – speakers were Gino Fransman, Nelson Mandela University, Isabel Tarling, Limina Education Services, and Jako Olivier, Commonwealth of Learning.

The organisation of the final Open Education for Better World Eduscope 2022 event took place in a hybrid format between 20 and 22 September 2022 – partly at the Lanthieri Manor, Vipava, and partly through the MiTeam online platform. During the conference, participants presented the open educational resources they had developed during the programme and received direct feedback on the products from the audience during a panel discussion. The programme was complemented by speakers addressing topics related to the role of OER in emergency situations, such as COVID 19, open tools for the production of open educational resources, visual communication technologies, etc. Special attention was paid to the region in focus – the development of OER in Japan. The conference was attended by 50 participants in person and 138 online; 188 people in total from 6 continents. The event was co-sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The conference was held in conjunction with the BRIDGES Symposium, where 24 research and practice papers in the field of OER were presented and will be published in a special publication.

The Chair participated in the Erasmus + BRIDGES project “Bridging the educational emergency through digital pedagogy”, where we contributed to the creation of a digital hub that will include open courses for higher education teachers on how to create quality OER.

In 2022, the University of Nova Gorica, in cooperation with the UNESCO Chair, organised for the third consecutive year a Master’s programme in Leadership and Planning of Open Education, with a total of 24 students.

Success with the UNESCO Recommendation to promote access to educational resources for all

The OpeningupSlovenia think tank has after a five year long commitment succeeded in its work with UNESCO to publish this new Recommendation that will support the development and sharing of openly licensed learning and teaching materials, benefitting students, teachers and researchers worldwide. This global document comes also with the memory to our friends who started this journey with us but are not here to celebrate, Indrajit Banerjee, and Fred Mulder.

Success for the UNESCO Chair working on OER Recommndation

The UNESCO Chair in OER and his team have been working ceaselessly on the new OER Recommendation which was approved by UNESCO member states on 28th May, by consensus. Its final step for approval will take place at the UNESCO General Assembly in November, 2019. The UNESCO OER Chair was able to work with UNESCO members states to significantly edit some of the unhelpful definitions and improve other text in the document. The final text of the document will be now coordinated and translated by UNESCO and they will publish it prior to the November meeting.

UNESCO OER Recommendation final experts meeting

UNESCO OER Recommendation final experts meeting

UNESCO OER Recommendation final experts meeting

OE4BW Call for Mentors

University of Nova Gorica (UNG) and UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for OER and Open Learning at the Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI) are announcing a new round of the Open Education for a Better World international on-line mentoring programme.

The programme will take place from 7^th January to 5^th July 2019. Candidates with concrete ideas for open e-learning courses aligned with SDG goals are invited to apply by 6 January 2019. Up to fifty (50)  candidates will be chosen to be guided on-line towards the implementation of their course.

2018-2019 Application form for Mentors

OE4BW Call for Candidates

University of Nova Gorica (UNG) and UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for OER and Open Learning at the Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI) are announcing a new round of the Open Education for a Better World international on-line mentoring programme.

The program supports the development and implementation of freely accessible modules and resources for online education on topics with social impact according to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 2018/2019 round will be held from 7^th January to 5^th July 2019. Mentors are invited to apply by 6 January 2019. 

2018/2019 Application form for Candidates

#AI4Good @ World Summit AI

The World Summit AI agenda was packed with groundbreaking presentations from across business and science, hot-off-the-press AI announcements, heated panels , lots of lovely tech workshops, coding classes and more.

Interestingly there was also space to focus on #AI4Good and their new initiative AI Commons framework to make sure that wonderfully capable technological methods like deep learning and machine learning are developed in a way that makes the world a better place.

#AI4Good @ World Summit AI, Amsterdam 2018

#AI4Good @ World Summit AI, Amsterdam 2018

#AI4Good @ World Summit AI, Amsterdam 2018

#AI4Good @ World Summit AI, Amsterdam 2018

#AI4Good @ World Summit AI, Amsterdam 2018

UNESCO’s Partners Forum Structured Financing Dialogue

For two days, UNESCO invited us for the first time, its current and future stakeholders and partners, including Member States, development agencies, public and private actors – to strengthen links with its faithful and potential partners for the implementation of its flagship programs and the nine Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to which UNESCO is a direct contributor.

UNESCO’s Partners Forum Structured Financing Dialogue Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 September 2018

UNESCO’s Partners Forum Structured Financing Dialogue Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 September 2018

UNESCO’s Partners Forum Structured Financing Dialogue Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 September 2018

UNESCO’s Partners Forum Structured Financing Dialogue Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 September 2018

UNESCO’s Partners Forum Structured Financing Dialogue Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 September 2018

UNESCO’s Partners Forum Structured Financing Dialogue Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 September 2018

UNESCO’s Partners Forum Structured Financing Dialogue Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 September 2018

UNESCO’s Partners Forum Structured Financing Dialogue Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 September 2018