Government policy on Open Educational Resources
Working on a grassroots campaign promoting the use and creation of OpenCourseWare (OCW) [http://www.ocwconsortium.org/] and Open Education Resourses (OERs) - if you are not quite sure what these are, a quick web search will answer your questions.
Last year I contacted my member of parliament to ask about possible grant opportunities for OCW. After sending in my applications for these grants, the responses came back saying things like ’well, its a great idea, but to give you funding, we would like to see some letters of support from your higher administration’. Although I failed to get funding, I did have an opportunity to educate a key person about the benefits of OERs, Margaret Guest, assistant to my MP.
At the time, I was thinking about how it should be government policy, but I was focused on promoting the creation and use of OERs at my university. Now, over a year later, I see Reuven Carlyle’s webinar on OER policy and how there are people in government making policies about these things.
The first thing I did was write my Constituency and not long after I got a response that they will be writing a resolution on OERs for the next policy convention taking place mid December. They asked if I could provide some ideas for text to include in the resolution.
I was thinking of including two main points:
One regarding subsidizing the creation of OERs,
And another to encourage the use of OERs for the reasons Carlyle outlined in his webinar.
If anyone has any documents / drafts of resolutions about OERs please send it my way.
And for anyone thinking ’you know, there should be some policy about OERs in my province / state / country / etc’, I would say to write to your government, you will be pleasantly surprised to see that they write back.
