Getting Granular with the Developing Supportive Policy Action Area

As part of the three days of focus February 1-3, 2022 on the Developing Supportive Policy Action Area of the UNESCO Recommendation on OER it may help to break down the specific items into potential annotation anchor points.

You can find this in the Recommendation under Section ii, article 12. You can open a direct annotation link to this action area

The general description is listed under article 12

  1. Member States, according to their specific conditions, governing structures and constitutional provisions, should develop or encourage policy environments, including those at the institutional and national levels, that are supportive of effective OER practices. Through a transparent participatory process that includes dialogue with stakeholders, Member States are encouraged to consider the following:

where you will find 8 different items (a-h) each with phrases or words that might be places to attach relevant notes. Look below for specific questions that we will offer for each item.

Under Action Areas (III) Article 12 (Developing Supportive Policy) we start with item a:

developing and implementing policies and/or regulatory frameworks which encourage educational resources developed with public funds that are openly licensed or dedicated to the public domain as appropriate, and allocating financial and human resources for the implementation and evaluation of policies;

Already added as an example of developing and implementing policies (direct link to annotation) is a reference to the OER Policy developed at the University of Edinburgh. You might add more examples as a reply to this note.

Or you might consider looking at other phrases such as:

  • regulatory frameworks how are these different from policies? What are examples of these frameworks?
  • Consider educational resources developed with public funds that are openly licensed or dedicated to the public domain which might be a point to add examples, bubt maybe more specifically ones that can be connected to the public policies that enabled their creation.
  • What are the implications of allocating financial and human resources and where has this been done successfully?
  • What is meant by implementation and evaluation of policies and again, what are examples of how policy evaluation os part of an ongoing process?

Next under Action Areas (III) Article 12 (Developing Supportive Policy) is item b, which offers many phrases worthy of annotation.

encouraging and supporting institutions to develop or update legal or policy frameworks to stimulate the creation, access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution of quality OER by educators and learners in a manner consistent with national copyright legislation and international obligations; and to develop and integrate a quality assurance mechanism for OER into the existing quality assurance strategies for teaching and learning materials;

Again we can send you directly to an existing annotation for encouraging and supporting institutions to develop or update legal or policy frameworks referencing a presentation at the OEGlobal 2021 conference on “Facilitating OER - A Comparative Review of Latest Proposed Copyright Law Amendment in Taiwan”

Again, this is a place to reply to an existing annotation with examples from other areas of the world where institutions have developed or updated legal or policy frameworks.

More points of potential annotation in item b include:

  • What examples of national copyright legislation that provide the opportunity to more easily and promoter the use of OER? Or where does the lack of understandable copyright legislation impeded OER development/use?
  • What are the international obligations this item refers to?
  • Add examples of a quality assurance mechanism for OER or elaborate on what these might look like.
  • What are existing quality assurance strategies for teaching and learning materials and where do they match or do not match the needs of OER?

Or find your own phrases in here to anchor a new annotation.

The following “grain” we look at under Action Areas (III) Article 12 (Developing Supportive Policy) or item c:

developing mechanisms to create communities of practice, promote teacher professional development using OER, create networks of experts of OER and properly recognize OER creation as a professional or academic merit;

You can find item c from this direct link to an existing annotation for developing mechanisms to create communities of practice You might add a reply to include other examples of communities of practice that are established under or with the support of government or institutional policy. How is policy connected to creating these communities?

Other potential phrases that might be annotated in item c include:

  • What are examples of policies that support teacher professional development using OER?
  • How do policies lead to the creation of networks of experts of OER? (one might ask about the difference between communities of practice and expert networks?)
  • How and where do policies lead to institutions or organizations that properly recognize OER creation as a professional or academic merit? We’d expect there are not only examples, but places where this is discussed.

You might find your own words in this item to add a note.

Following this item, we can look next under Action Areas (III) Article 12 (Developing Supportive Policy) for item d that recommends action on policies that encourage/require sharing of source files of OER:

developing mechanisms to support and incentivize all stakeholders to publish source files and accessible OER using standard open file formats in public repositories;

Go to item d via a direct link to an annotation that opens with a prompt set up as a question. Reply to that or consider adding notes such as:

  • What are examples of policies that incentivize individuals to publish of source files of OERs? What does this enable?
  • And how/where do policies influence creating accessible OER? Here we are not seeking examples of OER accessibility but how it is influenced by policy.
  • How does policy lead to OER created using standard open file formats and published in public repositories?

For the next granular view, we look under Action Areas (III) Article 12 (Developing Supportive Policy) for item e:

embedding OER policies into national policy frameworks and strategies and aligning them with other open policies and guiding principles such as those for Open Access, Open Data, Open Source Software and Open Science;

Go to item e via a direct link to an annotation that opens with a prompt set up as a question. Reply to that note or consider adding notes to phrases such as:

  • What are examples of national policy frameworks and strategies that OER policies might be embedded in? How can this be achieved? What nations have done this?
  • How will OER policies come to be aligning them with other open policies and guiding principles?
  • What are the ways and examples of OER Policy aligned with Open Access, Open Data, Open Source Software and Open Science?