Green-Paper: The State and Challenges of OER in Brazil: From Readers to Writers?
Citation: Carolina Almeida Antunes Rossini (2010-02-08) Green-Paper: The State and Challenges of OER in Brazil: From Readers to Writers?. Berkman Center Research Publication (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Green-Paper: The State and Challenges of OER in Brazil: From Readers to Writers?
Download: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1549922
Tagged: Education
(RSS) OER (RSS), Brazil (RSS), Education (RSS)
Summary
Text below from paper used under CC BY.
In addition to SSRN the paper is available from http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/access/articles_publications/publications/oer-brazil-20100101/OER-Brazil-100101.pdf
The paper is an attempt to structure the open educational resources debate as it relates to access to publicly funded educational resources and innovative approaches to learning. There are four axes of structure to the OER context in Brazil, echoing internal structures of traditional education as well as the new opportunities afforded by the move to digital networks for dissemination and use of educational materials:
- public access to educational materials in general, as an open education strategy to include the individual, the family, the community and the whole society in the process of learning and of collaborative knowledge production;
- the economic cycle of educational materials production and its impact on the “right of citizens to learn”;
- the possible benefits OER may bring to learning strategies, the production of educational resources more sensitive to issues driven regional diversity and regional standards of quality;
- the impact of digital, online, open resources on teachers’ continuous professional development.
Wide dissemination of education contributes to more inclusive and cohesive societies, fosters equal opportunities and innovation in line with the priorities of a renewed social agenda focused on the knowledge society.
Theoretical and Practical Relevance
Brazil sits at a decisive moment to improve education. With a record budget of more than 41 billions of Reais in the hands of the Ministry of Education, a major national effort to connect the public network of schools to the Internet and to foster the adoption of digital educational tools, in addition to an increased investment in research in higher education, is taking place.
The paper establishes three pillars regarding the intersection of ICT and educational policy, assuming that the highest return on public investment in education ensues when the following principles related to the interaction of contents and networks are reality:
- Public access to publicly funded educational materials: Publicly funded educational materials, both the teaching materials and theresearch output, should be considered to be public goods and made available under the international definitions of OER. Adherence to this principle requires attention to Intellectual Property Rights law and institutional regimes, price, access, and training.
- Transparency and collection data: Data, statistics, and metrics regarding the success of the OER policy should be easily available to all.
- Training the trainers to collaborate: Public funds for ICT investment in infrastructure should be conditioned on the recipient having an acceptable pedagogy plan to educate teachers and other key stakeholders in regard to open educational resources and the collaborative characteristic of the Information Society and the Internet plan. A pedagogy plan defines the inputs of open resources, the outputs of the educational process, and explains how teachers and the community will be engaged to take full advantage of the combination of technology and open content.
The unifying concept behind these recommendations is that policymakers should carefully consider the culture of the collaborative project on the network. Before the network, the impact of choices related to the interaction of technology, pedagogy, price, access, and intellectual property might have been small compared to the importance of classical infrastructure like the construction of buildings for libraries. But now, all of these factors must be considered as core elements of the social infrastructure of the community of educational stakeholders, and key to the long-term success or failure of educational technology investments.
