OER Monitoring

The Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) was adopted by UNESCO's General Conference at its 40th session as the first international normative instrument to embrace the field of openly licensed educational materials and technologies in education. This standard setting instrument aims to assist Member States at the national level by supporting the development and sharing of openly licensed learning and teaching materials, benefitting students, teachers and researchers worldwide. It supports the creation, use and adaptation of inclusive and quality OER, and facilitates international cooperation in this field through five areas of action and by:

• building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER;
• developing supportive policy;
• encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER; 
• nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER, and
• facilitating international cooperation.

It contributes to the building of open and inclusive knowledge societies, and to the achievement of  the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, namely SDG 4 (Quality education), SDG 5 (Gender equality), SDG 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure), SDG 10 (Reduced inequalities within and among countries), SDG 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the goals).

Capacity development and awareness raising:

• The OER dynamic Coalition series of webinars
• The ICT CFT OER contextualization workshops

Below are the different activities undertaken by Area of Action of the OER Recommendation List of ICT CFT meetings and minutes and links OER Workshop and Dynamic Coalition webinars to support MSs in the implementation:

• OER Dynamic Coalition Webinar Action Area 3: Encouraging quality, inclusive and accessible OER
• How to OER webinar
• ICT Competency Framework for Teachers OER Webinar
• Open Education Week Dynamic Coalition webinar
• Encouraging supportive policy for OER
• Open Education Global webinar

The first consultation of Member States on the implementation of the OER Recommendation will be launched after the approval of draft guidelines at the 214^th session of the Executive Board. The questionnaire will then be sent in June 2022 to the relevant national authorities, establishing 31 January 2023 as the deadline for submission of the reports. The Secretariat will prepare subsequently a consolidated report covering the period November 2019-2023. The first consolidated report will be examined by the Executive Board at its 217th session, in the fall of 2023, and by the General Conference at its 42nd session. 

Member States are encouraged to organize the necessary consultations within and outside the concerned ministries and institutions, including with professional associations, civil society and private sector partners and National Commissions for UNESCO. The proposed reporting guidelines have been established based on the topics set out in the 2019 Recommendation on OER.