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.
