Dear all,
the European Training Foundation and UNESCO-UNEVOC are looking for stories of use of OER within vocational education, professional higher education, and adult learning (also informal), with the objective of promoting the use of OER within these sectors, through webinars and other capacity building activities.
If you are aware of such stories please let us know. The world of TVET is a bit “absent” from the OER debate and we’d like to change that!
Thank you,
Fabio Nascimbeni
European Training Foundation
The biggest TVET OER initiative I know of was the U.S. Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program which awarded 256 grants totaling $1.9 billion over four years through September 2018. The TAACCCT program built industry-aligned programs in manufacturing, health care, information technology, energy, transportation, and other TVET industries. The curriculum and other learning materials developed by TAACCCT grantees were all Creative Commons licensed as OER and uploaded to SkillsCommons.org. The industry wheel on that site lets you explore resources by industry type. The showcases, metrics and outcomes documented on Skills Commons are a testament to OER. There have been over 5 million downloads of these OER so far - from all around the world.
On a personal note I worked at Creative Commons (CC) during the TAACCCT program years and had the privilege of helping the hundreds of community colleges involved understand what OER are and use CC to license their resources. I’ve been surprised that this early work did not inspire and stimulate other such initiatives and collaborations.
@FabioNascimbeni, I am happy to contribute and share my over 30 years experience with Sarvodaya NGO of Sri Lanka and Nottingham Trent University. Mostly I worked with UNESCO, UNDP and Save the Children Fund. Please contact me if you would like me to contribute.
Best regards,
Hi. We are an international association of school leaders with membres in 10 African countries. Since in our educational systems there is no pre-service training and little in-service training, we are trying to use distance education to help managers learn the basics to improve learning outcomes. We developed a Master program with Senghor University, and promote peer training through our international collaborations.
Hi Fabio,
At World Ed, we’re working on expanding OER use and access in adult foundational education (serving adults with limited or interrupted formal education) in the U.S. We’ve worked on some federal initiatives to that end including Digital Resilience in the American Workforce and an Integrated Education and Training (IET) project. We’d be happy to do some knowledge exchange with others who are expanding OER use in vocational or adult ed.
Hi Fabio,
not on the same scale as those mentioned here but as an open practitioner I train HE practitioners in virtual exchange with UNICollaboration.org and create and use open educational resources as well as teaching about the use of CC licences and open praxis.
A public health capacity building programme using OER, open source platform and published under CC licence is described here: Heller, R.F., Barrett, A., Oaiya, O., Heller, J. and Madhok, R., 2022. Final Report of a Novel and Successful Online Public Health Capacity Building Experiment – Peoples-uni. Open Praxis, 14(1), p.83–92.DOI: https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.14.1.150
Much appreciate this kind of question to his community, and this string of quality responses.
I was not quick as Jennu to suggest Chad Flinn. His accomplishments in adopting open pedagogy while teaching in the electrician trades at BCIT is inspiring, Note that Chad has been a Dean in Trades and Technology at Medicine Hat College in Alberta (see LinkedIn profile). If you can find any of Chad’s presentations, you will hear the kinds of stories you are looking for.
These are just from two colleagues I know. There’s a huge amount you will find in the work of open educators at community colleges, which have been active for a long time with putting open education to work in vocational and adult education - e.g. make some connections with CCCOER, suggest perhaps put your request out on their community mailing list.
Dear Fabio,
Please refer to OpenLearn and/or contact James.Davies@open.ac.uk. OpenLearn is a huge provider of OER for adult learning in a variety of capacities.
Hello Paul
SkillsCommons is really impressive, thanks for sharing.
I will get in touch with them since they could definetly inspire similar ventures in the EU.
Best
Fabio
