Emundus/Country overviews of open education

Country overviews of open education

We are gathering information on Open Education developments in the eMundus countries, with the objective of identifying successful patterns of international collaboration enhanced by MOOCs and Virtual Mobility.

The following country reports have been produced:

• Brazil
• Canada
• Europe
• Indonesia
• Mexico
• New Zealand
• Russia

Brazil

Introduction

Location of Brazil

Brazil is the only country in Latin America where Portuguese is the official language. Brazil borders almost every country in South America, except from Ecuador and Chile.

With over 204 million people, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) – July/2015 [1], Brazil is the 5th most populous country in the world in territorial area (covering 48% of the total area of South America) and the 8th largest economy on the planet [2].

Even being such a huge country, Brazil has achieved significant advances in education over the last 15 years, as reported by the World Bank, 2010. The report points out the continuous public policies and the effective long-lasting reforms as factors that have contributed to these advances. However, to guarantee, make and improve the country´s progress, it is unquestionable that much more has to be done, in terms of providing economic, educational and social equalities to all Brazilian citizens, unevenly spread in the country´s territory.

Country Demographics

Education in Brazil is controlled by the Federal Government, by means of the Ministry of Education, which defines the rules and demands for the organization of educational programs in the country. The local governments are responsible for establishing and implementing the programs which use the funding supplied by the Federal Government.

The Brazilian tertiary education system is not compulsory. Higher education is offered by private, public universities, colleges, higher institutes and educational technology centers.

To pursue higher education in Brazil, it is mandatory that students have secondary education. In addition, students must also pass a competitive entrance examination (Vestibular) to be able to take the course of their interest in higher education. Similarly to Vestibular, the National Examination of Secondary Education (ENEM) is another type of higher education entrance examination adopted by a number of public universities in the country.

Most of the growth at the tertiary level has been absorbed by private institutions which enroll almost three quarters of the total student population. Educational attainment rates in Brazil have been rising over the past decade, according to the OECD Educational Glance 2013. As registered in the document, tertiary attainment rates stand at 9% among 55-64 year-olds and 13% among 25-34 year-olds.

To improve equity and opportunities for tertiary education, the Government of Brazil has launched the ProUni program [3] to help place academically qualified low income students into private education institutions. Also attempting to give underprivileged Brazilian students a chance of getting free higher education and, thus, access to better jobs, a new law was approved in 2012. [4]. The so called Lei das Cotas n. 12.711/2012] (a polemic law) guarantees 50% of the places in Brazil´s federal universities and institutes to students coming from public schools, low-income families and who are Afro or indigenous descendent.

Due to Brazil´s territorial extension and the number of people wishing to have access to education, Distance Education (EAD) in higher education started to be seen as a feasible and interesting solution. The 2011 Higher Education Census has confirmed the tendency of growth of distance learning programs in Brazil. Considering the academic background, it reports that the enrollments of authorized courses were mainly in the higher level, with a larger incidence in licentiate´s degrees, technological courses and bachelor´s degrees[5].

Connectivity

Despite the fact that technological infrastructure is yet a problem in Brazil and the existing regional and socioeconomic disparities in ICT access, data shows that the number of Internet users has been increasing along the years in the country.

In 2013 the number of Internet users reached – for the first time - 51% of the population (85.9 million Brazilians), according to the survey carried out by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI. Br) published in October 2014. The survey points out that Internet users via mobile phone stood out in 2013. The survey also unveils that while 24% of small businesses claim to have an IT area, the percentage reaches 51% and 89% for medium and large companies, respectively.

According to Forbes [6], 23.3% of Brazilians use their phones to access the internet and Reuters forecasted that as of the end of 2013, Brazil would be home to the largest mobile phone market in Latin America.

Even though computer use in schools is encouraged by the Brazilian government, in general, computers are still mostly used in computer labs. Technological infrastructure problems are a significant barrier to frequency of ICT use in a great number of schools in the country. Another existing barrier is the need for training programs that help teachers to develop abilities and competencies in the use of technologies in the learning and teaching process.

The challenge to include all students and teachers in the universe of information and communication technology still persists in the country.

State of the Art of Open Education in Brazil

“Despite appearing in the literature since 2006 and the increasing actions to raise awareness of OER […], the Open Education Resources movement still has a long way to go in Brazil” (Inamorato, 2011).

According to Inamorato, by involving all private and public education sectors in the implementation of specific national policies relevant to OER, it will be possible to have a significant impact on widening participation of OER in Education in the whole country.

The Open University of Brasil System (UAB System) [7], which is composed of public universities, was created under Decree 5800 [8] in June, 2006. Through distance education methodology, it aims at expanding and democratizing access to higher education courses and programs for the population at large and in particular for primary teachers living in areas far from big urban centers. The UAB System supports researches in innovative technological higher education methodology and stimulates collaboration between the Union and its Federate members. It also encourages the creation of centers for permanent training in strategic poles located in the countryside, thus trying to curb the migratory movement towards the big centers by those seeking higher education opportunities.

At present, 88 institutions (among federal and state universities, and federal education, science and technology institutions (IFETs) compose the UAB System. UAB System is the articulator between the higher education institutions and the municipal and state governments in attending to local demands for higher education.

Considering the main Brazilian government goals for national education for the next decade, OER can help bring about (as summarized by Inamorato) the following:

• Additional extra-curricular basic and secondary educational activities using ICTs;
• Encouragement of the use of tutored and self-study OER programs;
• Career development opportunities for teachers;
• Collaboratively written textbooks for public access;
• Collaboratively produced pedagogical and training materials for teachers and students;
• Broader participation in higher education.

Virtual University of the State of São Paulo (UNIVESP) [univesp.br] is the newest and most innovative public university of the State of São Paulo. Created under Decree No. 53.536 [9] on October 9th, 2008, the program of the Government of São Paulo aims at expanding access to free quality public higher education for the population of the State of São Paulo. To achieve the objective, the program counts on three universities - University of São Paulo (USP), Campinas State University (UNICAMP) and University of the State of São Paulo (UNESP) - and on Technological State Center Paula Souza (CEETEPs). The program receives grants from the Research Aid Foundation from the State of São Paulo (FAPESP), Paulista Administrative Development Foundation (FUNDAP) and Padre Anchieta Foundation (FPA). While the universities are responsible for the academic project itself, UNIVESP guarantees the material; financial and technological conditions for the courses and does the follow up of the students´ development and performance. Associated with face-to-face activities in the learning poles (settled in several regions of the State), the virtual learning environment includes pedagogical materials, articles, videos, forum and chats. Besides the internet, UNIVESP counts on UNIVESP TV [10] - a digital channel from Padre Anchieta Foundation directly linked to UNIVESP courses.

e-TEC BRAZIL NETWORK [11] – created under Decree n. 7589/2011 [12] aims at developing, expanding and democratizing access to public professional and technological education. The Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) is responsible for the funds. The States, Federal District and Cities provide the structure, equipment, human resources and everything necessary for the courses delivered by public universities nationwide.

OER Initiatives

According to information presented on the Website of Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REA) [13], the visit of an international commission to the Ministry of Education and a series of events on the relevance of OER in both São Paulo and Brasília gave rise to the OER Brazilian Project (Projeto REA.br). Also, the REA project - launched by Carolina Rossini in 2008 -, was the first attempt to suit the international discussion on OER and on Open Education to Brazilian reality. It has partnership with and counts on Digital Institute [14], the Law School of São Paulo of Fundação Getúlio Vargas [15], UNESCO [16], among others. Funded by the Open Society Foundation [17], it is conducted in conjunction with several international projects and initiatives focused on OER. The REA-Brazil Community gathers whoever is interested in discussing about and or reflecting upon OER and Open Education.

To delve deeper into the history of REA-Br Project, see Inamorato, 2011, whose link to the electronic copy of the whole publication is in the References below.

Besides the REA project, many other initiatives related to OER and Open Education have been tried and implemented in Brazil along the years.

Cases of International Collaboration on OER

There have been interesting cases of international collaboration with Brazil that contributed to the sharing and spreading of good OER practices in the country.

It can be mentioned as examples: In 1997, Brazil set an agreement with the United States of America to develop technology for pedagogical purposes. Two years later, in 1999, the Interactive Virtual Education Network (RIVED) [18] - one of the first initiatives in Brazil to provide free digital learning materials through the web - was launched, as a result of a partnership between Secretary of Secondary Education and Technology (today SEB) and Secretary for Distance Education (SEED). In 2004, the production of learning objects was transferred from SEED to the universities, giving rise to RIVED/Virtual Factory. RIVED sponsors multidisciplinary teams at universities for research and production of learning objects. All contents produced are public and are gradually being licensed through Creative Commons License, allowing copy and distribution of the materials, once credit is given to the authors. RIVED presents itself as the Brazilian counterpart in the Latin American Network of Educational Portals (RELPE). Access to educational contents produced by the participant countries can be shared among them. Besides Brazil, Peru and Venezuela also participate in the project.

In 2008 the Ministry of Education in partnership with the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Latin American Network of Educational Portals (RELPE), the Organization of Ibero American States (OEI) and others launched the International Database of Educational Objects (BIOE)[19], a repository that offers public access to digital learning resources, in various formats, languages and for all educational levels. The objects can be accessed individually or in collections.

Mapping of OER initiatives in K12 in Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America (MIRA) [20] is a research project that received grant from Hewlett Foundation [21] to develop a prototype for a world map for Open Educational Resources. The objective of the project is not only to develop software but also gather content. It works in synergy with other mapping projects, including POERUP [22] and Emundus [23]. MIRA website is accessed in English, Portuguese and Spanish. One of the results of MIRA Project was launched in 11/11/2014. It is the first Brazilian video [24] on OER. It resulted from a collaborative work among Open Knowledge Brazil (OKBr) [25], Instituto Educadigital (IED) [26], Núcleo de Informática Aplicada à Educação (NIED-UNICAMP) [27] & Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL) [28]. The video with subtitles in English and in Spanish is licensed under Creative Commons.

UNESCO Chairs Programme in Open Education/UNICAMP, whose opening dates from November 11, 2014, focus on developing projects, research and training on Open Education and Open Education Resources, mainly for elementary school teachers and teacher training. At UNESCO Chairs Programme in Open Education/UNICAMP one can find several links to OER map, resources, publications, events, open data tables. It is worth visiting the site [29].

UNISULVIRTUAL [30] collaborates with the OpenLearn project - an OER repository launched by the Open University in 2007. UNISULVIRTUAL is also an active collaborator of Open Learning Network (OLnet) [31] whose focus is on researching and identifying OER users and the impact OER can have in the users´ life. Recently, UNISULVIRTUAL was invited by the Open University to participate in the OpenScout project [32]. Funded by the European Community, the OpenScout aims at researching technologies for adaptation, creation and greater reuse of OER. It also aims at offering internet educational services that help users find, access, use and exchange contents in business management areas.

Virtual Campus for Public Health (CVSP) [33] is a space to develop interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of public health training. CVSP resulted from a partnership between the Health Pan-American Organization (OAPA) and the countries in the region of Americas. It is a decentralized network of individuals, institutions and organizations that share courses, resources, services and educational activities aiming at strengthening the labor force competences in public health. It is expected that it becomes a space of creativity and innovation. Some courses and learning resources are licensed under Creative Commons 3.0 for Intergovernmental Organizations; others may appear under another type of CC license.

The Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) was the first Federal Brazilian University to become a member of the Open Education Consortium through Imagine Project [34]. It is an international solidary project aiming at the scientific inclusion and the cultural exchange between diverse communities. One of the specific goals of the project is to develop teaching tools which will be available in digital format in several languages, as OER.

It is important to mention that Brazil has higher education institutions which are members of the Open Education Consortium (The Global Network for Open Education):

• University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNISUL)[35] offers a range of undergraduate and graduate programs and specialized online training programs for students in general, as well as for various governmental and non-governmental Brazilian organizations. UNISUL was elected member of the Institutional Board of Directors of the OEC in May 2011 for a two-year mandate and relected in May 2013 for the second mandate.
• Higher Education School of Administration and Management (ESAGS) [36]) offers courses, such as How to Write Scientific Texts; Time Management, Leadership Training, among others, all of them free of charge.
• FGV ONLINE [37], created in 2000, is an online higher education program that serves undergraduate, graduate students, executives and entrepreneurs, besides the corporate universities that develop e-learning projects. It was the first Brazilian School to become member of OEC. In 2011, FGV Online awarded the first edition of OEC People´s Choice Awards for the best initiatives within the consortium in the category of most innovative programs.

Case of National Collaboration

This initiative started in 2014 aiming at developing a collaborative work between the University Center of the Educational Ignatius Foundation “Padre Saboia de Medeiros” (FEI) [38] and eMundus partner through the Engineering School of University of São Paulo (POLI/USP) [39]. FEI developed an open source game engine software for teaching computer programming. This game is based on a previous business game developed in the Production Engineering Department from FEI. The initial results indicated that such approach to teaching computer programming could improve the learning process and motivate students. To learn more about the objectives and initial results of the use of the learning tool, see [40].

Other Brazilian OER Initiatives

Several important initiatives have been emerging in the area of OER in Brazil. To mention a few, we can cite:

THE PUBLIC DOMAIN PORTAL [41] - launched in 2004 - is the biggest virtual library in Brazil. The library was implemented by the Ministry of Education and Culture to provide access to a collection of pieces of work – mostly literature, academic papers, audio and video files, among others-, which are in public domain or whose use was authorized by the author.

THE TEACHER´S PORTAL [42] launched in 2008 by the Ministry of Education in partnership with the Ministry of Science and Technology is a collaborative work with numerous resources to enrich the teachers` pedagogical experiences and practices. The resources are either licensed under Creative Commons or authorized by the authors to be used by the Ministry of Education.

VIRTUAL LABORATORY (LabVirt) [43] is an initiative from Escola do Futuro [44] (an interdisciplinary lab that researches the use of new technologies in education) from the University of São Paulo (USP). LabVirt is at present being coordinated by the Education School from USP and aims at making up a successful learning community. The lab offers simulations; links for simulations and sites of interest found on the Internet; examples of education projects, among other services. Specialists answer questions sent by users from the website. One can choose between accessing the resources from Chemistry or Physics.

ESCOLA DIGITAL [45] is a searching platform with a vast repository of videos, games, infographs, maps, among others, categorized by level, course, theme, idiom, level of accessibility, among other functionalities. The platform was developed to help teachers easily find educational materials to enrich their classes. Escola Digital can be used, reproduced or even adapted by anyone or any interested organization.

DIGITAL REPOSITORY OF THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF RIO GRANDE DO SUL (LUME UFRGS) [46] is a collection of digital documents produced in the university or of interest to the Institution. The digital collection (texts, images, videos and audios), is mainly of free access; however, there are some exceptions restricted to the University community.

CRUESP SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION REPOSITORY [47] launched in October 2013 offers about 75% of all Brazilian scientific productions without any charge. This metasearch tool collects intellectual production from the University of São Paulo (USP), Paulista State University (UNESP) & Campinas State University (UNICAMP). It is the first initiative that integrates more than one repository within the same interface. This initiative expands the visibility and accessibility to research results, empowering the reciprocal transfer with other national and international institutions. It also encourages knowledge sharing, thus expanding and giving back to the society the investments it has made.

THE INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY FROM THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF BAHIA [48] aims at spreading the academic production developed in the university. The repository is in agreement with the governmental recommendations of free software use.

CONDIGITAL PUC-RIO [49] is a project from Pontifical Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro . The project aims at developing chemistry multimedia digital content: audio, video, software and complementary materials (found in the chemistry virtual museum and in the reading room of the site).

e-UNICAMP PORTAL [50] aims at disseminating knowledge produced in the Institution by means of videos, animations, simulations, illustrations and classes. The Portal was developed to stimulate the use of educational technologies that allow the establishment of new relationships among professors, students and the community in general. All the content is licensed under Creative Commons and the conditions established by Law 9.610/98 [51] of copyrights. The access to the material is free of charge. However there is no assistance from the authors and accessing the Portal does not imply in any compromise between e-Unicamp Portal and the user.

Inspired by Mit´s Open Courseware, OPEN COURSEWARE UNICAMP [52] is a portal that hosts graduate educational content in digital format. The content is available to general public, free of charge. It does not offer certificates or diplomas, nor does it offer support or assistance to the users about the contents available. The content in pdf can be downloaded and the videos can be watched in Youtube. All the contents are licensed under Creative Commons and Terms of Use.

To encourage the habit of raising education-oriented funds, the Education, Research and Extension Board (CEPE) approved in May 2014 under Resolution n.10/14[53] the evaluation criteria for promotion and progress in the Higher Education Career in the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). The Resolution provides that when OER activities are published in the Institutional Repository of the University, 25% be added - the grade being rounded up to the next decimal place.

The Federal University of Paraná [54] also offers a collection of OER and OE practices (PEA) produced in the university. All the resources are under license of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Reflecting upon the social function of the university and the necessity of qualifying biology teachers so that they could create effective learning environments, the Teaching, Research, and Extension Nucleus of the Department of Cell Biology of the Federal University of Paraná (NUEPE/PR) [55], came up with the initiative of producing videos, interactive resources, 3D modelling and hypertexts for elementary and high school levels. All the resources are licensed under Creative Commons. The NUEPE stimulates experiments and/or research projects; the production and the evaluation of learning materials, and socialization of the knowledge produced.

Another interesting initiative to be mentioned is concerned with the Open Educational Tools developed by undergraduate and graduate students from USP /São Carlos in 2015. The tools offered at [56] are meant to teach computing. These tools are under GNU/GPL license and can be used by students and teachers.

MOOCs in Brazil

Aiming at democratizing access to information and knowledge Paulista State University “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” (UNESP Aberta) [57] launched the first MOOC initiative in June 2012. The courses with videoclasses, texts, activities, animation, educational software from various areas of knowledge were open, free of charge and available to anyone via Internet . There was no certification, tutoring or evaluation of the activities done along the course.

In the second semester of 2012, the first MOOC in Portuguese language was launched. MOOC-EAD (on Distance Education), whose site is no longer online, was a MOOC organized by two professors: one from Brazil and a colleague from Portugal. The MOOC with support from the Post Graduation Program in Inteligence Technology and Digital Design from São Paulo Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-SP) [58] and the Brazilian Association of Distance Education (ABED) [59] did not offer certification. However, this initiative resulted in a dissertation in e-learning pedagogy presented at Open University.

From April to June, 2013, the same Brazilian university professor who organized MOOC EAD coordinated MOOC LP (on Portuguese Language). Differently from the first initiative, this MOOC offered a certificate issued by the Brazilian Association of Higher Education Maintenance (ABMES) [60].

In June 2013, to contribute to better the quality of education in Brazil, Veduca [61] - an edtech company that provides business to consumer and business to business solutions in education and professional training - in partnership with the University of São Paulo (USP) launched two MOOCs: Basic Physics, and Statistics and Probability.

From then on, other renowned Brazilian universities also started to offer courses at Veduca. Among them, we find Brasília University (UNB)[62], Campinas State University (UNICAMP) [63], Paulista State University (UNESP) [64] and Santa Catarina Federal University (UFSC) [65].

Little by little, more and more universities and institutions are offering their courses and materials for free at the plataform. At present, Veduca platform hosts MOOCs, courses for professional development, MBAs, free classes offered on the Internet by their respective institutions, and video classes selected from some of the best institutions in the world, such as the Brazilians USP, UNESP, UNICAMP and Harvard, Stanford and Princeton in the US, and Oxford in the UK. As being demanded, the open free courses offered by the foreign universities are being translated into Portuguese by the community of volunteers.

All the content at Veduca is free of charge. However, not all courses hosted at the plataform grant an official certificate. When they do so, student wishing to earn a certificate must pay for it, after proving the competences and knowledge acquired in the course. The certificates are issued by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC).

Veduca also hosted the first World Open Online MBA in 2013. To learn more about this initiative, see [66].

In September, 2014, Coursera (a for-profit educational technology company) was launched in Brazil hosting Portuguese language MOOCs from University of São Paulo (USP) and Campinas State University (UNICAMP). Similarly to Veduca, the courses offered by Coursera are free of charge and some give the option to pay a fee to join the "Signature Track", which allows the students to receive a verified certificate, appropriate for employment purposes.

In June, 2015, Paula Souza Center from the Government of São Paulo [67] launched online courses aiming at better qualifying professionally the population. The two first courses are Labor Market (with certificate) and AutoCad (without certificate). The courses are dynamic, with videos, games, exercises, many readings and online evaluations. The platform works via browser. Anyone can take the course without any costs. It is necessary only to create an account with login and password. The Center is already working on new courses to offer the population.

MOOClike Courses

UNESP Aberta [68] is an open learning environment that offers training and professional development in several areas of knowledge to any citizen in Brazil or in the world via Internet. It is necessary only to create a login and password to access the courses. It is an initiative of the Dean Department of Paulista State University “Julio de Mesquita Filho” (UNESP) along with the Distance Education Board of the Institution (NEAD/UNESP). The courses are free of charge. There is no tutoring, evaluation or certificate upon completion of a course.

IPED [69] is a portal that offers dozens of free online courses separated by area of knowledge. The courses offered by IPED without any charge lack tutoring, study groups and live lectures. However, the courses offer a printable online certificate without any cost.

Air Force Technological Institute – ITA OpenCourseWare (ITA OCW) [70] is a portal that hosts educational content in digital format from ITA under grad and graduation courses. The material is offered to the community without any costs. ITA OCW has the objective to promote engineering education in Brazil. ITA OCW does not issue certificates or diplomas, nor does it offer any pedagogical support or content assistance.

Propaganda & Marketing Higher Education School (ESPM) [71] offer open online courses for professionals and those interested in the subject, free of charge. To take the courses it is necessary to have login and password. The courses are autoinstructional.

ENAP VIRTUAL SCHOOL [72] is an initiative launched in 2007 by the National Public Administration School. The School offers certified training and professional qualification to public servers. Some of the courses, such as Ethics and Public Service and General Notions of Authorship without tutoring are open to any citizen interested. It requires login and password.

Another interesting initiative was carried out by the Education School from University of São Paulo (FEUSP): a platform [73] that offers a free online open course based on graphic animation. It aims at spreading and teaching Braille to anyone who is not visually impared. The program can be downloaded and works in computers with very few resources.

Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) [74] in partnership with ABCD Institute [75] has launched DISLEXIA BRASIL [76], a free online course. The virtual environment offers basic content on dyslexia, ways to identify the problem and how to deal with it. Soon DISLEXIA BRASIL will also be offered in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). The objective is to offer even better training for teachers and other professionals. In the VLE the learning process will be assisted and a certificate can be received by those who get 70% or more in the final evaluation.

Bradesco Foundation Virtual School [77] is an e-Learning portal that offers courses both at a distance via Internet and hybrid. Students and former students, educators and collaborators from Bradesco Foundation have access to the Escol@ Virtual, as well as any community or unemployed individual wishing to gain a new specialization or re-qualification for the labor market. Besides the several free courses offered, the students may organize themselves into a community of practice for continuous training. With a minimum of 70% proficiency, the student is able to print a certificate.

SENAI Network on Distance Education - by means of SENAI (Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial - National Industrial Learning Service) & SESI (Serviço Social da Indústria - Industry Social Service) [78],- offers short distance education courses with printable digital certification for those who perform with a minimum of 70% proficiency.

Video Classes

Several universities are offering video classes for free on the Web. Some examples are listed below.

Portal of Video Classes from Fluminense Federal University (UFF) [79] hosts several video classes which can be accessed via Internet by anyone, without the need of login or password. The videos from different areas of knowledge serve as a supporting tool or rather a complementary material to recycle one´s professional knowledge. The videos can be downloaded and watched offline.

E-classes from University of São Paulo (USP) [www.eaulas.usp.br] – free online classes without tutoring, evaluation and certification. It is not necessary to be USP student to access the e-classes. Depending on the program and subject, there is no knowledge requirement.

NEADUNESP has launched an education Youtube channel [80] with several video classes, interviews, news and events from UNESP.

The Education School from University of São Paulo (FEUSP) [81] is an example of a School from a Public University that is offering a course via UNIVESP TV (the communication channel of the Virtual University of the State of São Paulo). The free online video classes are on Topics of Epistemology and Practices [82]. Any teacher or person interested in widening their knowledge in teaching and education can access the videos. The classes focus on education and the elements that help to organize the school spaces and times, and to redefine the teacher´s role and authority.

Legal Frameworks and Regulations

Discussions on the issue of openness in education in Brazil still need to be done. So far, three Law Projects support OER in Brazil: 1. Federal Statute-Law (PL [bill] 1513/2011- Paulo Teixeira) [83] treats of the policy aimed at contracting for, and licensing intellectual pieces of work funded by the public and private sectors;

2. São Paulo State Statute-Law (PL [bill] 989/2011 – Simão Pedro)[84] establishes the OER policy acquired or developed through funding from direct or indirect administration;

3. São Paulo City Decree No. 52681/2011 – Alexandre Schneider) [85] provides for compulsory license of intellectual pieces of work produced with educational pedagogical objects within the scope of the municipal public education network.

The adoption of public policies and enactment of laws in effective support of OER, will make it possible to guarantee the right established in the Constitution to inclusive education for all Brazilian citizens.

References

Albuquerque, R. C. S. P. O 1º MOOC em Língua Portugueesa : análise crítica do seu modelo pedagógico. 2013. Dissertação (Mestrado em Pedagogia do E-Learning). Universidade Aberta, Lisboa . 2013.

Barbosa, A.F [executive and editorial coordination; translation DB Comunicação (org.)]. Survey on the use of information and communication technology in Brazil: ICT Households and Enterprises. 2013. São Paulo: Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil, 2014. Retrieved 14/06/2015 from: www.cgi.br.

__________. Survey on the use of information and communication technologies in Brazil: ICT Education 2013. São Paulo: Comitê Gestor da Internet do Brasil, 2014. Retrieved 14/06/2015 from: www.cgi.br.

Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Green-Paper: The State and Challenges of OER in Brazil: from Readers to Writers? Rossini, C. Retrieved 15/06/2014 from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1549922.

Carneiro, J. Brazil´s universities take affirmative action. BBC News, Business. Retrieved 17/06/2014 from: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-23862676.

Inamorato, A. (2011) Open Educational Resources in Brazil: State-of-the-Art, Challenges and Prospects for Development and Innovation. Unesco Institute for Information Technologies in Education. Retrieved 14/06/2014 from http://iite.unesco.org/pics/publications/en/files/3214695.pdf.

OECD. Education at a glance 2013. Retrieved 14/06/2014 from http://www.oecd.org/edu/Brazil_EAG2013%20Country%20Note.pdf.

Salmi, J. & Févre, C. Tertiary Education and Lifelong Learning in Brazil. Retrieved 14/06/2014 from http://www.anped11.uerj.br/internacionalizacao/Banco_mundial/tertiary_education_in_brazil_15_Jan_09.pdf.

Work Bank Report. Achieving World Class Education in Brazil: The Next Agenda. Human Development Sector. Management Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Office. 2010. Retrieved 14/06/2014 from http://siteresources.worldbank.org/BRAZILINPOREXTN/Resources/3817166-1293020543041/FReport_Achieving_World_Class_Education_Brazil_Dec2010.pdf

Canada

Open education practices in Canada

Rory McGreal, Terry Anderson, Diane Quirk Athabasca University

Location of Canada

Canada has important areas of expertise in open practices, mostly on the tertiary level, which are beginning to be built upon or replicated more broadly. There is no federal government strategy at present, but there is activity at the provincial level in Western Canada. Other than the western Canadian initiatives on open practices (see Regional initiatives below), there are not yet any governmental policies to support them. With only the western Canadian exception, there are few other signs of any significant open practice-related activity across Canadian governments, institutions or industry.

Open initiatives in Canada tend to focus on access and availability issues as opposed to development of practice and policy and/or initiatives to encourage use and re-use. This state of affairs was supported by UNESCO and Commonwealth of Learning (COL) research and literature on the experiences of other jurisdictions, that open practices are neither widely known nor well understood, especially by policy makers and institutional managers. There is considerable confusion surrounding terminology related to open educational resources (OER), open source, open access (OA), openness and accessibility.

Paul Stacey (formerly at BCcampus) now of Creative Commons - a non-profit organization that "enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools" - has worked intensively on what he terms the Creative Commons opportunity and has developed a map of what he views as "the opportunity sectors which are undergoing change through use of open licences" and the activity and new public/business models emerging across:

• open educational resources;
• open access;
• open user generated creative works;
• open data;
• open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums);
• open government;
• open policies, practices and guidelines;
• open licences;
• open licence tools (i.e., Creative Commons), embedding them in authoring and search engine platforms;
• open standards; and
• open source software.

Stacey reflects on the impact of openness, suggesting there is indeed "a lot of open" and many opportunities to work in an open environment whose full potential has not been tapped.

Although the Canadian government's promotion of open access to all ended in March, 2012 with the termination of its 17-year-old Community Access Program (CAP), providing access to computers and the Internet to citizens in communities across the country, there is a federal program underway to promote the growth of the open data movement through the introduction to businesses and citizens of an open data pilot project with three streams: open data, open information and open dialogue.

The anticipated benefits of this pilot project include:

• support for innovation;
• leveraging public sector information to develop consumer and commercial products;
• better use of existing investment in broadband and community information infrastructure;
• support for research; and
• support for informed decisions for consumers.

The British Columbia government has undertaken open government initiatives that provide public access to government information and data, giving citizens opportunities to collaborate on matters such as policy and service delivery. Its open government licence enables use and reuse of government information and data. In October 2012, the government announced support for an OER initiative for the creation of courses at the post-secondary level (see below).

Canadian universities are becoming familiar and comfortable with the concept of open access and are actively sharing scholarly research and data through university repositories; author funding to assist researchers minimize or avoid open access fees levied by publishers; support for open university presses such as Athabasca University Press (AUPress) and limited titles from University of Ottawa Press; and participation in the development of the Canadian Creative Commons licences.

The concept and activities of openness are clearly evident in the many Canadian universities and community colleges developing programs and policies to broaden open access and designing, developing and building learning object repositories (e. g., Athabasca University, Memorial University, Concordia University, University of Calgary, etc.).

Of these, Athabasca University - sometimes referred to as Canada's "First OER University" - was the first Canadian institution to adopt an open access policy in 2006, revised in 2014, which recommends ...that faculty, academic and professional staff deposit an electronic copy of any published research articles (as elsewhere accepted for publication) in an AU repository. In 2009, The University of Ottawa adopted "a comprehensive open access program that supports free and unrestricted access to scholarly research." Some of the initiatives in its open access program include a promise to make accessible for free, through an online repository, all its scholarly publications; an author fund designed to minimize open access fees charged by publishers; funding for the creation of digital educational materials accessible by all online, for free; and commitment to publish a collection of open access books and research funds to continue studies on open access.

Other universities are following suit. University of Toronto/OISE, for instance, adopted a formal policy on open access in March 2012, referencing the Open Data pilot (Government of Canada initiative). Nonetheless, while the concepts of openness and open access appear to be gaining considerable ground, and in spite of the apparent endorsement by government, their growth - similar to that of OER - is threatened by lack of public funding.

While openness can be seen as a growing trend, specific or detailed Canadian OER initiatives, in many sectors, are difficult to isolate. Few Canadian institutions are visibly working on OER practices and/or policy development. Nevertheless, the western region of Canada does have real projects and initiatives in progress and is engaged assembling, developing and using OER (see Regions below).

National open education initiatives

Open Data

The Canadian federal government has initiated an Open Data pilot project using an open government licence, which is similar to the Creative Commons attribution licensing allowing for remixing and non-commercial uses. In April 2014, Industry Canada launched Digital Canada 150, which aims to support “connecting, and protecting Canadians, economic opportunities, digital government and Canadian content.” Canarie is a federally funded corporation that is “a vital component of Canada’s digital infrastructure supporting research, education and innovation.” Along with National Research Council Knowledge Management and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, it is supporting Research Data Canada in “ramping up” its activities to meet researcher needs in the co-ordination and promotion of research data management. The strategy includes developing open science and open data to facilitate open access to the publications and related data resulting from federally-funded research in easily-accessible formats.

As previously stated, education in Canada is a provincial responsibility. Nationally, no initiatives are possible unless individual provinces collaborate with each other. On the other hand Creative Commons Canada is supporting open licencing; the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (CMEC) have signed onto the Paris Declaration on OER; the the Tri-Council group of federally financed research funding agencies have all agreed on a common open access policy; and a growing number of Canadian institutions are joining the OER universitas initiative.

Creative Commons Canada

Born from the global open education movement, the creation and use of OER benefits from the development and use of Creative Commons licences, which provide the legal framework to share these resources. A non-profit organization, Creative Commons "develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation." It has created a set of free licensing tools permitting authors/developers to share, reuse, and remix materials (including, but limited to OER) with an explicit "some rights reserved", but others clearly allowed, approach to copyright. As an affiliate of the larger body, Creative Commons Canada (CC Canada) is a collaborative initiative comprising the Samuelson Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), BCcampus and Athabasca University. Working with members of artistic, education, government, private business, cultural, scientific and technological groups, CC Canada aims to

advance the mission and goals of Creative Commons and communities it supports and enables, through the advancement of public education and outreach about CC licenses, tools, technology and programs, among other things, for the purpose of cultivating a cultural commons of shared intellectual, scientific, educational and creative content.

(CC Canada, 2012)

In addition to helping users choose licences and find cc-licensed work, CC Canada is a proponent of open government and the philosophy that government data should be accessible, shareable and re-usable under open licences by everyone. It is actively involved in this pursuit, studying how CC licences can be used by governments to make data available freely for public use.

Another CC Canada project is being spearheaded by its legal team at CIPPIC, which is researching the development of user-friendly tools that will provide comprehensive knowledge to users on how to analyze and use different open licenses. CC Canada has also launched a series of conferences (salons) country-wide to raise awareness of CC and its potential among different constituencies including educators, writers and artists.

In May, 2014, the new CEO of Creative Commons worldwide, Ryan Merkley, was appointed. He is Canadian and lives in Toronto.

Council of Ministers of Education of Canada (CMEC)

The CMEC is an organization of the 13 provincial or territorial ministries of Education. They met in Iqaluit, Nunavut in 2013 and there unanimously endorsed the UNESCO Declaration on OER. This Declaration played an important role in the growing support for OER across Canada. In response to the Declaration, OER were discussed for the first time at a national meeting in 2012. The Ministers "reaffirmed their commitment to open access to knowledge and education and to the need to adapt teaching and learning practices to the new realities of the information age." The Declaration followed by discussions at CMEC has been instrumental in the establishment of OER initiatives in three western provinces.

Tri-Agency Open Access Policy

The three Canadian research funding agencies, namely the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) have agreed on a draft policy supporting open access in scholarly publications. The agencies strongly support knowledge sharing and mobilization as well as research collaborations domestically and internationally, and so understand the importance of open access supporting the free exchange of knowledge.

OER universitas in Canada

The OERu is an international consortium of more than 30 institutions/organizations on five continents supporting pathways to learning using OER that lead to real world credentials. To support this, the OERu members are collaborating on thedevelopment of assessment and accreditation of learners policies, methods and applications.

There are six OERu members in western Canada and one in Ontario. These include BCcampus, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Thompson Rivers University in BC; Athabasca University, ECampus Alberta, and Portage College in Alberta; and Contact North/Contact Nord in Ontario.

Regional OER initiatives (Provincial OER initiatives)

Western Canada

The most important development in Canada for the open movement in 2014 was the tri-province Memorandum of Understanding on Open Educational Resources. The three western provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan have agreed to “cooperate on the development of common OER”. This includes facilitating cooperation among the provinces in sharing and developing OER; identifying, sharing and encouraging the use of OER; and by using technology, foster an understanding of OER issues.

British Columbia

This MOU initiative was led by the British Columbia Ministry Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology (MAE) influenced by BCcampus. In November 2012, theE MA announced that they will collaborate with post-secondary institutions in implementing an open textbook policy in anticipation of their use in B.C. institutions, supporting students taking 40 of the most popular post-secondary courses. The development of this open textbook initiative has gone ahead with input from B.C. faculty, institutions and publishers through an open Request for Proposal process co-ordinated by BCcampus. In 2014 the number of Ministry financed OER courses was increased to 60.

Alberta

Following from this MOU, the Alberta Ministry of Advanced Education and Innovation announced an OER initiative, pledging $2 million for OER development, promotion and sharing. The CollabOERate Grant Program will provide publicly funded post-secondary institutions within the province of Alberta with the opportunity to apply for funding to support the assembly, use, development, implementation and evaluation of OER to support teaching, learning and research. This is seen as

“a long-term strategy to help reduce, over time, the costs students face for a post-secondary education. By reviewing and recommending how to integrate open educational resources at post-secondary institutions, this initiative will encourage flexibility and access for all Alberta learners.”

- Alberta Premier & Minister of Advanced Education and Innovation, David Hancock

Previously, Alberta, without making direct commitments has been actively supporting OER-related initiatives for several years. In 1999, the Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects (CAREO) was funded to promote the sharing of open learning resources within Alberta. Unfortunately, these initiatives were not funded after the initial investment and eventually were closed. Another limited project that is still extant is the Alberta Core (Collaborative Online Resource Environment) and the LearnAlberta.Ca site at the K-12 level. These are limited quasi-open initiatives, restricting the openness on some resources to provincial or institutional teachers similar to the BCcampus so-called BC Commons licence (see below.) CanCore Learning Metadata Resource Initiative was yet another early open education initiative in Alberta, which resulted in the creation of metadata implementation standards for learning objects.

Through its Access to the Future Program, the Alberta Department of Enterprise and Advanced Education has been financially supporting OER initiatives at Athabasca University. These include a project to promote OER within the university and search out and identify reusable objects for courses and support for the AU UNESCO/COL/ICDE Chair in OER, who is charged with promoting the use of OER institutionally, provincially, and internationally.

Saskatchewan

The government of Saskatchewan, as of June, 2014 was working on an OER open textbook initiative for Saskatchewan universities and colleges. It has been heavily lobbied by student groups and has been following the initiatives in BC and Alberta closely.

Ontario

The Ontario government currently uses a password-protected learning object repository (LOR) to share resources amongst primary and secondary teachers, and to manage ownership and copyright. Although Ontario has worked with people to develop policy related to accessibility, and there is a degree of activity province-wide at different institutional levels with respect to OER, to date there is no evidence that any provincial policy related to OER is being considered. On the contrary, their recently announced “Ontario Online”, which is a collaborative Centre of Excellence in technology-enabled learning is not supporting OER development. The Ministry has allocated $42 million to this initiative, which joins Ontario colleges, universities and training institutions in an effort to maximize online learning opportunities for students. Unfortunately, the “Shared Online Course” fund of $8.5 supports restrictively licensed resources rather than OER.

Québec

In Quebec, the government has differed from other provincial governments regarding copyright protection in education and so has not been inclined to be supportive of OER initiatives. Quebec, as Canada's only officially unilingual French-speaking province, has a thriving local francophone cultural industry, unlike the anglophone provinces that tend to rely on US cultural imports. So, the protection of the French language culture in Quebec is a paramount concern, and as such the government is much more concerned about protecting their publishers and authors than they are about supporting open content for their educational institutions. They officially and legally use the term "droit d'auteur" (author’s rights) to translate the term "copyright" rather than the more precise “droit de copie” (copy right), This is more in keeping with the European custom emphasizing the rights of the publishers and authors over the rights of learners and other consumers. Membres du Comité sur le droit d'auteur de l'Association nationale des éditeurs de livres [Members of the committee on author's rights {copyright} of the National Association of Book Editors] have been particularly vocal in expressing their opinions. And the Quebec government has been alone of all the provincial and territorial governments in Canada opposing the educational exemption to copyright.

However, perhaps leading to a recommendation by the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, whose conference was hosted in February, 2013 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, there is renewed interest in Québec in the promotion of ‘des ressources éducatives libres’ (REL = OER). The Québec Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport du Québec is financing the website brer - banques de ressources éducatives en réseau, which is hosting French language OER. THOT CURSUS is another Québec organization that has implemented an OER repository.

Institutional/Organisational OER initiatives

Athabasca University

There is significant OER activity at Athabasca University. AU was the first university in Canada to join the OpenCourseware Consortium (now the Open Education Consortium - OEC), and as of 2014, was still the only Canadian institutional member. The province of Alberta and AU have been chosen to host the 2015 OEC Conference. AU was also given an OEC ACE Award in 2014 for its highly visible OER research website, the OER Knowledge Cloud. AU has also made available courses and course modules including multimedia objects at the AU OEC site licensed for use, generally with a Creative Commons Attribution licence.

AU is home to the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI), and the UNESCO/COL/ICDE Chair in OER, which promote the use of OER at the institutional, national and international levels. The Chair is a member of the board of the OER Foundation, which hosts the OER universitas (OERu), an international consortium of universities, community colleges and other organizations supporting pathways to accreditation using OER. Athabasca University is a founding partner in the OERu and a partner in the re-launch of Creative Commons Canada described above.

AU is particularly well suited for participation in the assessment and accreditation of informal learners, as is the goal of the OERu initiative. The Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) program (known in the UK as Recognition of Prior Learning - RPL) at AU has been a feature of this open university for many years through the Centre for Learning Accreditation. Through PLAR, the university awards credit towards a degree or certificate based on the recognition of learning acquired through life experience, job training, workshops, seminars or other experience. AU also has a well-established Challenge for Credit policy that allows people to demonstrate that they are proficient in the subject matter of a specific course, without having to take that course. Credit is given based on a challenger's knowledge of the course content and the payment of a testing fee. Transfer credits from other universities across Canada, the USA, and internationally are readily recognizable at AU. And, it is the only Canadian university that has US accreditation (through the Middle States Commission on Higher Education) and so AU credits are likewise generally recognized across North America and internationally.

As previously mentioned, AU policy on open access already exists, and emphasizes the belief that access to information and knowledge defines both the classical and modern university; to this end, it encourages making results of research accessible to everyone and has made a public commitment to Open Access research publishing. This started with the AU library in 2005, with the implementation of AUSpace, a DSpace repository of scholarly articles, theses, and other documents produced in the AU community.

In addition, AUPress at AU was the first open access university press in Canada. It publishes all titles under open access licence and in multiple formats including print (at a cost) and PDF (no cost). In a research paper comparing AUPress sales using data from Amazon, the print book sales of AU Press compared favourably with sales of other restriced licence university presses in Canada (McGreal, Shen, McNamara, 2012).

In addition, the Athabasca University Graduate Student Association (AUGSA) developed two policies it has proposed to government around open access. A draft document, designed for provincial government action, asks for the introduction of policies to support OER and the delivery of publicly funded research findings back to the public in Open Access publication formats, as well as legislation for the integration of OA with authors, institutions and other funding agencies.

A second draft policy to the federal government includes requests for the three federal research funding councils (SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR) to adopt a policy to ensure that all findings produced with publicly funded research are made available in Open Access formats; calls upon individual researchers to publish in Open Access journals and/or deposit their peer-reviewed manuscripts in Open Access repositories; requests academic institutions to adopt policies that mandate researchers to publish all their post-refereed manuscripts in an Open Access format; and supports the creation, maintenance, archiving, promotion, standardisation and interoperability of Open Access repositories at the institutional and national agency level. In addition, the AUGSA report Canada's Contribution to the Commons makes several recommendations to administration and faculty in support of OER. These include adopting open practices, incentivizing OER, open access publishing, and using open textbook. The efforts of AU students in supporting OER were a major reason for the Alberta government’s support of OER and along with students in Saskatchewan and BC led to the Tri-province MOU on OER.

Editors from AU's scholarly journal, the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL), were instrumental (through appeals and lobbying) for the SSHRC aide to scholarly publication program to reverse itself from discriminatory funding prohibiting funding for OA journals to the current policy that supports not only OA journals, and now promotes open access more widely.

AU staff are building an inventory of existing OER produced and used in AU courses. Training for faculty and staff in the identification, evaluation, selection and adaptation of OER for adoption as learning resources in courses is currently being implemented, and there is an extensive list of OER activities undertaken and underway for internal and external audiences, including, but not limited to:

• an OER Open Education Consortium website;
• an open access database, AuSpace;
• OER research;
• a mapping exercise of international activity related to OER;
• Open education/open access activities (presentations, workshops, conferences, etc.);
• the OER Knowledge Cloud;
• the OER Global Graduate Network;
• OER awareness survey (internal);
• OERu courses, e-texts and AU press book on OER;
• OER evaluation (development of a matrix to assist internal staff to evaluate OER); and
• Open Education MOOC.

AU researchers/course designers developed an OER English Second Language Grammar course for use on mobile devices as early as 2006 and they have also adapted and delivered its first online graduate course adapted and developed entirely from an existing Australian OER in Green Computing. In addition, AU has delivered MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) on Change and Open Education. These were made available freely online.

BCcampus

BCcampus, arguably the most active collaborative Canadian organization in the OER arena, is a publicly funded service which has turned to open concepts and methods to create a sustainable approach to online learning for BC public post-secondary institutions. BCcampus was created to enhance students' ability to not only identify, choose, register for, and take courses but also to apply any academic credits earned against credentials from a selected home institution; it was also intended to benefit institutions through the rationalisation of demand for academic opportunities from students with the supply of online courses from BC public post-secondary institutions.

BCcampus has been the leader in Canada in promoting OER and were instrumental in forging BC leadership on OER at the CMEC. The also played a major role in the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology’s decision to support the Open Textbook Project, which they are implementing. BCcampus hosted a working forum on OER for senior post-secondary institution representatives in Vancouver in October, 2012 with the objective of developing a common understanding of what OER could mean for BC and building a shared vision of how to develop and use them. The session also studied ways BC can take advantage of the promise of OER and specifically, open textbooks. This led to the announcement by the MAE that they will collaborate with post-secondary institutions in implementing open textbooks. As mentioned above (see BC government) the Project started with 40 open textbooks at the postsecondary level and now is committed to 60.

A founding member of the OERu consortium, BCcampus is a leading proponent of OER. It has been operating a provincially limited "open" course programme since 2003. Supported by annual Ministry funding for a cumulative total to 2014 of more than $10 million through the Online Programme Development Fund (OPDF). This follows from previous Canadian course development programmes initiated by Contact North/Contact Nord and TeleEducation NB in the 1990s.

The OPDF provided developers with the option to license their work under the global terms of a Creative Commons licence or, in what might be seen as a strategic move to promote OER, to use a BCcampus licence, which restricts sharing to a local environment (the BC public post-secondary system) and audience (post-secondary faculty and staff only). This, according to Stacey (2006), "provided developers with an opportunity to experience sustainable development benefits through sharing on a local level, amongst peers, before considering the larger global context." More than 90% of the OPDF developers have taken this BC-only route. Proponents contend that this provincially-confined openness step has reduced fears that the sharing and reuse of one's material comes with a loss of control over authorship, while promoting critical knowledge of how open licences work in relation to copyright in a sheltered BC environment. However, as these fears recede, there will be more use of national and international Creative Commons type licences. On the other hand, the BCcampus licence could be seen by others as an unnecessary concession to recalcitrant faculty.

The BC OPDF achievements include the creation of more than 350 courses and nearly 400 course components leading to 47 credentials, although less than 10% of these are openly licensed, most being under the BC Commons licence and restricted for use only by BC post-secondary institutions. Interestingly, Athabasca University, although situated outside the province in Alberta, has been recognized officially as a BC documented university, and so also has access to these BCcampus licensed materials.

As projects complete their development cycle, they are licensed for sharing and uploaded to the BCcampus Shareable Online Learning Resources repository (SOL*R), which enables the licensing, contribution, and access to free online teaching and learning resources. SOL*R adheres to the principles of sharing, discovery, reuse and remixing of learning objects (from individual activities to full courses) from a variety of disciplines and subject areas. SOL*R also has a search engine that enables one to search for resources by field of study, subject area, contributing institution and other attributes.

Specifically in support of OER, other BCcampus initiatives are underway. This includes the major Open Textbook Project announced by the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology. Another initiative is the implementation of an OER initiative around apprenticeships for the trades in partnership with BC's Industry Training Authority. BCCampus is also working with the North American Network of Science Labs Online (NANSLO), building on the success of the Remote Web-based Science Laboratory (RWSL) and open educational science courseware previously developed by BCcampus.

Thompson Rivers University (TRU) Open Learning

TRU houses the former BC Open University as its distance education wing, called TRU Open Learning. It is working with several of OERu partner institutions providing initial prototype courses to be released as OER. TRU Open Learning, like AU, has a robust PLAR system that includes challenge examinations and transfer of credit, which makes it a key partner for OER initiatives nationally and internationally.

OCAD U Inclusive Design Research Centre (OCAD-IDRC)

IDRC, a research and development centre at OCAD U in Ontario, consists of an international community of open source software developers, designers, researchers, advocates and volunteers working collaboratively to ensure that emerging information technology and practices are designed inclusively. The learning technologies and products that have been developed and distributed by IDRC are distributed under the GNU General Public License meaning that the code is open source and requires users to share product on the same liberal licensing that they have acquired it.

A key project, FLOE (Flexible Learning for Open Education) is one of the Centre's biggest initiatives. It has received substantial funding from the Hewlett Foundation and the European Commission. FLOE takes advantage of the fact they have a set of curricula that is openly licensed that can be repurposed and reused to make content accessible. This makes FLOE heavily dependent on OER. OER present an optimal learning environment to meet the needs of all learners, including those with disabilities. FLOE advances the strengths and values of open education and encourages pedagogical and technical innovation. FLOE also promotes OER for their content portability, ease of updating, internationalization and localization, content reuse and repurposing, and more efficient and effective content discovery.

FLOE's work is international and broad: to support adoption in Africa and other areas where mobile devices are more prevalent than internet access, FLOE is acting to create critical tools and services for delivery of OER via audio-only, text messages and the small screens found on popular cell phones. These same tools and services are intended to support accessibility, adding a compelling motivation for OER adoption of inclusive design.

FLOE's goals include:

• development of an engaging outreach and awareness program for both the OER community and the accessibility community;
• supporting OER producers to create and label transformable content, and OER repositories or portals to match learning needs with suitable OER; and
• assisting the OER community in meeting the commitment to inclusive learning

Contact North/Contact Nord

Contact North/Contact Nord is Ontario's distance education and training network. It works to provide programming from public college, universities and schools with a focus in smaller towns, rural and remote communities. Contact North works with Ontario institutions to help develop strategic, cost-effective and focused approaches to online learning. CN/CN is attempting to create OER, modelling the BCcampus approach. They published a major position paper on OER, "Open Educational Resources (OER) Opportunities for Ontario which "set(s) out the case for the implementation of an Ontario OER initiative, noting their benefits for post-secondary education in Ontario. CN/CN has also published an OER primer as a video series.

Téléuniversité du Québec (TéLUQ)

TÉLUQ has a policy on the dissemination of educational resources - Politique de gestion de la diffusion des ressources d'enseignement et d'apprentissage (REA). These policies relate to learning content in general and could include OER, but are also designed for proprietary content. Because TéLUQ faculty retain the intellectual property of all original material they produce for teaching, institutional policy has limited impact on what professors do with their material outside TÉLUQ. The LICEF - Laboratoire en Informatique Cognitive et Environnements de Formation is a research centre at TÉLUQ, which is hosting the Banques des ressources éeducatives en réseau (brer) a repository of French language OER.

Virtual Mobility in Canada

As previously mentioned, in Canada education continues to be the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces and territories, and educational systems vary from one jurisdiction to another. As a result, student mobility issues are the responsibility of the different provinces. Nevertheless, student mobility, based on credit transfer across Canada is fairly widespread and virtual mobility is a growing phenomenon with the growth of online learning offerings from Canada's open universities and from traditional universities and community colleges. The provinces of British Columbia and Alberta are Canadian leaders in supporting student mobility and their standards and guidelines make no differentiation between student credentials, whether they be earned online or in a traditional classroom mode. An Alberta report on credit transfer entitled What we heard, also called for further integration between the BC, Saskatchewan and Alberta systems.

Several transfer agreement issues have been identified, among them the continuously changing role of the community colleges and universities and the inconsistency of course transfer among institutions. Most courses do not have defined course outcomes and this impedes the course evaluation and impedes transferability. There are also significant inconsistencies with “laddering”, that is in fitting transfer courses into the proper level in a programme of study. Laddering combined with block transfers of multiple course credits can be problematic causing problems for students. As of 2014, there is not even a common definition for block transfers. In addition, many institutions do not have the expertise on staff to advise students properly to their advantage. Staff training is required.

The growing demand for virtual mobility is opening up further considerations as students are becoming more aware of learning opportunities available online. Students are no longer limited to local institutions, but do want their learning accepted and accredited. This can lead to students and institutions questioning the role of study programmes and how externally completed courses fit. Programme issues are a major source of the inconsistency in evaluating transfer credits. This is especially frustrating for students when courses that are accredited at one college or university are not accepted for transfer credit into programmes at another institution, especially when they are “essentially similar”. To date there is no systematic way of resolving these issues and it has been proposed that professional bodies need to have a role in deciding on standards and requirements.

Another obstacle to student mobility concerns the disparate and often confusing student admission processes in place at many institutions. There is a need for clarity so that students can understand what is expected of them. The raising of minimum entrance requirements excludes many students especially more mature students who often do not meet the standards.

The Canadian Virtual University is an association of 11 universities in seven provinces that hosts more than 2000 online courses that are transferable to partner institutions and others across the country and, for some programmes, in the United States. CVU does not grant credits or degrees. These are granted by the member universities. However, students can mix and match courses from several universities and save administration fees or use the network to fill in courses that they are missing in order to obtain a degree.

Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) is another way that students can be virtually mobile. Adults, who have extensive experience in the workplace and/or training can receive credit from several universities in Canada (e.g. Athabasca University, Thompson Rivers University). Learners' experience, training and participation in workshops is known as non-formal learning. Informal learning or life experience can also be evaluated. Both are assessed by the institution and appropriate credits are awarded. PLAR can reduce the number of credits that a student needs to complete a degree programme. On the downside, PLAR credits are not readily transferable among institutions.

Challenge for Credit is another way in which some institutions evaluate student learning. This consists of a challenge examination or other form of assessment. This allows the student to demonstrate their proficiency in the subject matter and skills of a specific course without actually taking it.

MOOCs in Canada

MOOC List: Canada

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have a Canadian origin. The name dates to an experimental course led by George Siemens at the University of Manitoba and Stephen Downes at the National Research Council in 2008. They opened up a regular university course, Connectivism and connective knowledge, with 25 students and more than 2 200 additional learners joined the course online. As Siemens reports, this course, delivered in 2008, was the first MOOC, combining open content with open teaching. This concept was developed from the idea of an open Wiki pioneered by David Wiley at Utah State University and an open session on social media in which international guest experts led discussions implemented by Alex Couros at the University of Prince Edward Island.

According to McAuley, Stewart, Siemens and Cormier (2010) “the MOOC is open and invitational”, anyone can participate and the each learner determines for him/herself the extend of their participation. This decision may be based on personal interest, worplace requirements, academic goals or for other reasons. This openness allows many people to participate who may otherwise be unable to access learning.

In 2011, Sebastien Thrun at Stanford University delivered a MOOC on Artificial Intelligence to more than 100 000 learners . But, this MOOC was more teacher-centric than the original connectivist MOOC. Downes coined the term c MOOC to describe their course — the “c” stands for “connectivist.” His called the new type xMOOCs. Whereas cMOOCs had the goal of using the Internet to create an extended network of learners who generate content and learn from one another. The later xMOOCs were exporting the “sage on the stage” lecturing model of classroom learning to the online world.

These xMOOCs have become the predominant form of MOOC delivery in Canada, with more than 20 MOOCs being offered by Canadian institutions or individuals presently. The majority of MOOC deliverers are aligned with the for-profit US company Coursera, with some others aligned with the not-for-profit EdX group led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Udemy is a for-profit company that hosts a platform for independent instructors, who run their own MOOCs, so far there is only one delivered from Canada. Wide World Ed is a Canadian grass roots organization that has tried to implement some homegrown Canadian MOOCs “for the public good” with limited success.

OER universitas, while not using the term “MOOC”, is offering free online university courses in collaboration with Canadian partners so that learners can gain formal credentials from the partner institutions. OERu is a consortium of more than 30 institutions and several organizations on five continents. It is dedicated to widening access and reducing the cost of post-secondary education for learners internationally by providing OER pathways to achieve formal credible credentials. There are seven members of the OERu in Canada: three universities (Athabasca, Thompson Rivers and Kwantlen); one community college (Portage College in Alberta); and three organizations (BCcampus, eCampus Alberta and Contact North in Ontario).

Examples of open education higher education collaboration

Most examples have been mentioned above. These include the activities of the Canadian Virtual University consortium, the provincial networks such as BCcampus, eCampus Alberta and Contact North in Ontario, which are examples of network collaborations supporting the sharing of learning resources, and credit transfer. The OERu members in Canada, along with their international partners are also sharing in the offering of MOOCs as well as accepting credit transfer supporting virtual mobility. The Tri-province MOU on supporting OER is another example of policy encouraging the open sharing of resources among different provinces.

Summary

The implementation of open practices in Canada is in its early stages. However, with the recent OER initiatives and MOU in Western Canada, it could very well be on a fast track to world leadership in open education. Although there there are only a few organizations in Canada currently working to develop and establish higher level government policy, standards and protocols related to open education, with the western Canadian initiatives, the process has begun and one can optimistically forecast expansion to the other regions of Canada.

This report is based on, adapted and updated from work done previously for the POERUP project by Diane Quirk, Terry Anderson & R. McGreal.

Europe

Introduction

May of the European Union

The situation of open educational practices in Europe is an interesting mixture of national and regional initiatives, along with collaborations and projects working across many countries of Europe or simply within the European Union. POERUP and eMundus are two projects; there are many more such initiatives. This paper represents a fresh look at European open educational initiatives, policies, partnerships, projects, and collaborative activities, as well as inclusion of initiatives and policy issues of individual European countries.

For ease of reference, in many cases information is included in the form of a list with an added hyperlink, to lead to much more information.

Country/region ID card

Europe:

• European Union Factbook published by Central Intelligence Agency Library.
• Wikipedia entry for Europe

State of the art of Open Education

Open education policy developments (identified by POERUP)

• The Paris OER Declaration
• The European Commission’s Communication on Rethinking Education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes
• The European Commission's Communication entitled“Opening up Education: Innovative teaching and learning for all through new Technologies and Open Educational Resources”
• The POERUP-based paper on Suggestions on ten meta-principles for interventions
• The ‘Policy shift’ analysis for OER-related archetypes done in the UNESCO IITE paper onAlternative Models of Education Delivery
• Recommendations from the OPAL project[86]
• As was done in the presentation to the OER workshop just prior to Online Educa, by adapting the policy recommendations for virtual schools to what we now call OER/MOOC-based providers
• Scottish Open Education Declaration
• Wales Open Education Declaration of Intent
• OER Policies by country: Hungary, Spain, Poland (Digital School)

OER Initiatives

According to the POERUP interim report on each country, plus recent additions including one regional OER initiative in England (on the following country reports, scroll down to the section: ‘OER Initiatives’)

• Belgium
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Greece
• Hungary
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal[87]
• Romania
• Spain
• Sweden
• United Kingdom: OER Northwest Regional Network (England)
• Additional Spanish OER initiatives:
  • Acceso Abierto: portal analysing the situation of OER in Spain, has 3 search engines on OER [88]
  • BuscaRepositorios: Open Access repositories of academic, cultural and Research institutions in Spain [89]

MOOCs (originating in Europe)

• OpenUpEd Platform
• FutureLearn Platform (UK Open University and the British Broadcasting Corporation)
• Open Education Europa Portal
• Iversity Platform (Germany)
• "MOOCs in Spain" , report by the Telefónica Chair of UPF explaining the role of MOOCs in Spanish Higher Education [90]
• MiriadaX [91] Spanish-language distance learning resource, a reference in Spain and in Europe. Created by Universia and Telefonica Learning Services.
• UNIMOOV-aemprende: course platform oriented to entrepreneurship. [92]
• MOOC platforms from Spanish universities: National University of Distance Education  Polytechnic University of Valencia University of Granada  San Antonio Murcia University  University of the Basque Country 

Virtual mobility developments

• Erasmus+ - European Union programme for education, training, youth, and sport
• VMPass project – implementing recognition of virtual mobility and OER learning through a learning passport

Legal frameworks and regulations

• European Commission Education and Training
• European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL)
• UK: Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education – safeguards standards within higher education in the United Kingdom
• Spain: National Agency for the Evaluation of Quality and Recognition (ANECA): State Foundation for the improvement of the quality in Higher Education, through the evaluation, certification and recognition of learning Programs, teachers and learning institutions.

Barriers and success factors for the adoption of open practices of academic cooperation

UK: Quality assurance is regulated by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education as higher education depends on public funding. A barrier is that the QAA may hesitate to approve credits earned in universities outside the UK, for accreditation at UK universities because UK public funds pay for UK accreditation and cannot vouch for credits from non-UK institutions. A success factor is that UK universities have been participating in Erasmus programme for a long time, so probably the case can be made to acknowledge credit from other universities into UK universities under other cases in addition to Erasmus.

Main open education actors and networks in the region

• MENON Network – European research and innovation network
• OER Universitas (includes European and outside-Europe universities)
• Open Education Consortium (includes European and outside-Europe universities)
• WikiEducator

UK:

• Jisc
• Jorum – UK’s original OER repository
• Open University of UK
• Association for Learning Technology
• OER Conference series and its volunteer committee (started from SCORE – Support Centre for Open Resources in Education)

Spain

• National Distance Education University [93]

Role of international networks and initiatives in the country/region

• European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) – scholarship and research on open educational practices, regular conferences.

Examples of open education-enhanced Higher Education collaboration

Policy issues (RPL, credit transfer, recognition and quality assurance)

UK: Credit transfer: Each programme in each university has discretion to accept credits earned elsewhere, as credited to its own course. Mozilla OpenBadges is an example of an attempt to create a general and recognizable online accreditation which can be awarded for learning done online through a variety of providers.

Language and cultural issues (incl. discipline issues)

• Avicenna Virtual Campus – Science and Technology e-learning knowledge network – example of disciplines getting together across institutions even without common language OER repositories by disciplines with associated communities, such as HumBox– humanities repository, and iSpot – identify wildlife online
• XarxaMOOC [94] Introduction course for language specialization in Catalan-speaking universities. The Xarxa Vives d’Universitats is made of 21 universities of Spain, France, Italia and Andorra where the Catalan language has most infuence.

Virtual mobility dimension

VMPass project – working to create a learning passport to enable virtual mobility UK: Grade Point Average pilot and national discussion: This Higher Education Academy initiative includes 20 UK universities which are piloting grade point averages rather than the current degree classification scheme, for the purpose of increasing international comparability of degree results.

Technology issues (access, cost ...)

MOOC platforms (section 2.c above) represent attempts to offer a smooth learning environment to many people online. Their technological achievements and enhancements include machine-marked assessments. OpenLearn, the Open University UK’s original open-learning platform, which is both open access and open source.

Pedagogy issue (educational models behind, ways of sharing content, assessment methods ...)

• Conole’s 12-dimension MOOC classification scheme
• Donald Clark Taxonomy of 8 Types of MOOCs

Organisational issues (staff development, reward mechanisms ...)

• UK – Higher Education Academy

Sustainability issues (business models)

• Downes, S. 2007. Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects. 3. 29-44.

Indonesia

Introduction

Location of Indonesia

Indonesia is an archipelago continent covering 5,193,252 square kilometers and consists of 17,508 islands with three time zones. It has 80,000 kilometers of shoreline and is the fourth most populous country in the world with an estimated 253,899,536 population. The population represents more than 500 ethnic groups. In short the country is demographically different, geographically vast with its people practicing different cultures and traditions.

About 88 percent of Indonesians are Muslims. The rest are Christians (8 pct), Hindus (2 pct) and those of other religions (2 pct). Hence, Indonesia is thus the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia is also the most populous in Southeast Asia and the 13th most populated city on earth. The official metropolitan area known as Jabodetabek (Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tanggerang and Bekasi) is populated by more than 28 million people.

The country is characterized by four core problems: diversity, disparity, scalability, and sustainability (Indrajit, n.d). Its diversity results from having more than 300 ethnic groups speaking more than 500 languages and dialects. This only means that every district is unique and different from each other. The imbalance in physical development of the country through the course of history contributes to disparity.

Country demographics

Indonesia's tertiary education sector comprises over 3,000 higher education institutions serving 5.4 million students. About 27.1 percent of the population is enrolled in higher education. Entry into public universities is competitive. Candidates are required to sit for the university entrance examination. Jakarta and Yogjakarta, two cities on the island of Java, are home to the largest number of universities, public and private, in any one city. The rest are spread over the Indonesia archipelago.

The country’s open distance education institution, Universitas Terbuka (UT), a public institution that was established on 4 September 1984, is located in Jakarta. It delivers programs both face-to-face and online via print and non-print materials as well as through radio, television, and the Internet. It has an enrolment of over 580,000 students throughout the country, including those in some of the remote islands, supported by some 37 regional offices. The majority of its students are public school teachers and their enrolment in UT is part of the Indonesian government’s effort to ensure that all teachers are equipped with a degree.

Connectivity

It is predicted that Indonesia will see as many as 41.3 million smartphone and 6 million tablet owners by the end of 2013 (Lukman, 2013a). It is further predicted that the number will increase to 103.7 million smartphone and 16.2 million tablet users by 2017.

As of Dec 31, 2011, there were 55 million Internet users, that is, a 22.1 percent penetration rate. Out of these, 51.1 million are Facebook subscribers. A 2012 survey found that the number of internet users has grown to 74.6 million internet users (Lukman, 2013b). In 2015, the number of internet users in Indonesia is expected to surpass 100 million. Lukman also pointed out that almost half of Indonesian netizens are below 30 years old, while those above 45 years old make up 16.7 percent of Indonesian netizens. About 86 percent of the netizens access the Internet using smartphones and spend between IDR 50,000 (USD5) and IDR 100,000 (USD 10) monthly for Internet access.

As Enrico (2013a) reported, consumers tend to use their personal devices (smartphones and tablets) at home. They mostly go online to socialize (38 percent), chat (28 percent), listen to music (21 percent) and play games (19 percent). About 17 percent are reading content. The percentage of penetration is relatively low compared to its neighboring country such as Malaysia whose internet penetration rate is 60.7 percent, that is, 17.7 million out of a population of 29.2 million (http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia/my.htm). However, Indonesia’s 74.6 million internet users with 41.3 million of them having smartphones is no small figure. Needless to say, a majority of internet users tend to come from those living in cities and large towns.

Overview of tertiary education in Indonesia

The vision for education in Indonesia is to produce bright and competitive individuals. Education in general is seen to be a way to address the socio-economic gap between the haves and the have-nots. However, access to higher education is not attainable by all school leavers who perform well in the national examinations due to the limited number of places in public universities and the unaffordable fees of private universities. The 3,016 higher education institutions can only serve 5.4 million students, whereas applications to enter public universities exceed

Higher education programs in Indonesia are under the jurisdiction of the Directorate of Higher Education (Direktorat Pendidikan Tinggi-DIKTI) while the National Accreditation Board for Higher Education (Badan Akreditasi Nasional Perguruan Tinggi) (BAN-PT) is responsible for accreditation of study programs and institutions. External quality assurance is the responsibility of the Ministry of National Education of Indonesia Departemen Pendidikan Nasional).

Wicaksono & Friawan noted that since the endorsement of the very first Education Act in 1961, Indonesian higher education has continuously experienced rapid expansion. In 1975, the Directorate of Higher Education took considerable changes in higher education system by establishing a basic development framework for higher education. It helped determine the roles of HEIs - public and private institutions - with linkage to regional and national development context. This framework further helped to standardize the national higher education system. It covers the structure of academic program (undergraduate and graduate), governance and organization, and the roles and responsibilities of faculty members. The latter paved the way for the end of European influence in Indonesian higher education system and by the late 1970s, a US style system of credits for courses taken with a stipulated total of credit hours for the various levels of tertiary education was adopted for university curricula. The student population in higher education institutions (HEIs) grew from about 200,000 students in 1975 to 2.5 million students in 1995.

State of the Art of Open Education

It can be generally said that Indonesia has been seeking to increase the quality of life of its people through education. However, given the number of places and those who can afford private education, only 27.1 percent of its population is able to obtain university education. It implies that for a country this size and this populated, open education may contribute to overcome the problem and help educate more people by increasing access to education. In addition, OERs will enable the sharing of these resources utilizing technology as an enabler and transformer of education. The government and education community have agreed to enable the latter through collaborative efforts among the HEIs (Nizam & Santoso, 2013).

The DGHE has invited HEIs to initiate the development of OERs and most recently, the offering of MOOCs as outlined in the next section. As Indrajit, the President of Aptikom OCW noted, there is a multi-digital gap in the nation. Scalabity is not as easily achieved as an initiative in one area is not replicable to other areas. Sustainability is another issue as it is difficult to have IT practitioners propose a financial model that can ensure long-term existence of an IT program.

OER initiatives

Tertiary institutions in Indonesia tend to use open source learning management systems. Several universities in Indonesia have established OCW repositories as part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. This includes: Universitas Indonesia, Universitas Sumatera Utara and Udayana University. The Universitas Sumatera Utara OpenCourseWare was named the best new site in the OpenCourseWare Consortium in 2011. The universities had then published materials from 177 courses in 12 disciplines, including materials from 20 textbooks in both English and Indonesian languages.

The SEA EduNet project that involves SEAMEO SEAMOLEC in Jakarta includes an online repository of open education resources for teachers in South East Asia to re-use.

UT had earlier launched their OER initiative with 64 learning objects for Biology, Chemistry, Ecology, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, all in the Indonesian language (http://www.ut.ac.id/OER/index.html)

In 2013, OERs were being used to help develop the ICT competencies of school teachers in Indonesia (see Increasing teachers’ ICT competency through open educational resources published by UNESCO.)

MOOCs in Indonesia

Recently, on 13 March 2014, Universitas Terbuka (UT) of Indonesia or the Open University of Indonesia launched the country’s first few MOOCs (http://moocs.ut.ac.id/). The five MOOCs launched by UT includes courses on:

1. Public Speaking
2. Manajemen Pemasaran (Marketing Management)
3. Pendidikan Jarak Jauh (Distance Education)
4. English for Children
5. Aneka Pengolahan Pangan (Multi Food Preparation)

These are available via the office MOOC site of UT and are free to the general public. The first round of courses were offered between 2nd May and 2nd July. More courses are being planned. It should be noted that funds to develop MOOCs and conduct research related to MOOC design and development are being made available by the Indonesian government.

Legal frameworks and regulations

In 2003, a new law on national education was endorsed by the House of Representatives to provide greater autonomy to HEIs compared to the previous law. The law also enabled distance education (and the use of ICT) to be used as one of the ways to deliver education to the masses. Incidentally, an Open University was established in Jakarta in 1984.

In 2005, there were nearly 2,300 HEIs, consisting of 86 public HEIs and about 2,200 private HEIs serving more than 3.5 million students. Today, the country has over 3,000 higher education institutions serving 5.4 million students. The latter is far below the required number of students applying for places in the public university and provides a strong case for open education in Indonesia.

A new law on higher education was approved to, among others, encourage the development of open and distance education, development of OERs, promote resource sharing and collaboration as well as develop an ICT based HE network and information system.

Indonesia is projected to be serving 135 million students by 2030. However, it will need more HEIs to be established. In this regard, in 2013, the Indonesian parliament enacted the Higher Education Law to invite and allow international co-operation in higher education between local and international HEIs for the delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate study programs in Indonesia (Heath, 2014). Foreign providers will now be able to obtain a license to deliver their programs locally but must show evidence that is not for profit and must prioritise engaging Indonesians as lecturers and support the national interest.

References

Friawan, D. & Wicaksomo, T. Y. (2008). Recent developments in higher education in Indonesia: Issues and challenges (pp. 159-87). In Financing higher education and economic development in East Asia Edited by Shiro Armstrong and Bruce Chapman. Canberra, Australia: ANU E Press.

Heath, J. (2014). Education in Indonesia: Opportunities open for Australia. Retrieved 15 April 2014 from: http://www.corrs.com.au/thinking/insights/education-in-indonesia-opportunities-open-for-australia/

Lukman, E. (2013a, 29 October). Yahoo: Tablet owners in Indonesia prefer local news to celebrity gossip. Retrieved 15 April 2014 from: http://www.techinasia.com/yahoo-tablet-owners-indonesia-prefer-local-news-celebrity-gossip/

Lukman, E. (2013b, 30 October). Report: Indonesia now has 74.6 million internet users; this is what they do online. Retrieved 15 April 2014 from: http://www.techinasia.com/indonesia-internet-users-markplus-insight/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=indonesia-internet-users-markplus-insight

Nizam & Santoso, A. (2013). Indonesia: OER initiatives & ICT in Teacher Training. Paper presented at the UNESCO-OER Follow up Meeting, Paris, 26-27 March. Retrieved 16 April 2014 from http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/news/indonesia_oer_initiatives.pdf

Mexico

Introduction

Location of Mexico

In Mexico, in general, there is a lack of IT used for open (OE) and distance superior education (DE). The biggest part of the Higher Education Institutes (HEI) that actually use them, has been only for DE, and almost no one for OE. It may be several reasons for that. The first one is that although every government has published educational programs mentioning those topics, they are always too general, without monitoring methods, and without clearly defined policies. Another reason is that public university budgets are lower every year, so the HEI do not have enough to invest on these kind of programs. Today less than 25% of the HEI, most of them private universities with very low quality, have at least one DE, and the number of students registered on those programs is less than 10%. This very little interest of the young students for choosing on line programs may be another reason because the HEI are not attracted. On the other way, we have to notice that Mexico, according with some international surveys, has one of the worst home internet infrastructure in the region. This may cause loss of interest on on-line education. There are no open courses portals in Mexico, and also a very few produced courses, 12 in total by only two HEI, all in Coursera.

For the case of VM, there are also very few experiences. We could only find three signed agreements. All of them are between the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), the biggest and more important HEI in Mexico, and some foreign universities.

Country / región ID card

México

State of the art of Open Education

General OE policy developments

The Mexican government system is of six year periods. Every president, in the first year of government edits a National Development Plan, that derives on Sectorial Plans. The last two ones (2007-2012 and 2013-2018) have created some interesting educational initiatives. In 2007 was founded the ECOESAD: Espacio Común de Educación Superior a Distancia (Common Space for Higher Distance Education), an association of public HEI, that now group up to 39 of the most important universities in the country. In 2012 began activities the UnADM: Universidad Abierta y a Distancia de México (Open and Distance Education University of Mexico), that has been growing slowly, and offers 12 different programs. Unfortunately, these Sectorial Plans focus more on the basic education, and with less support to higher education.

• The Plan Sectorial de Educación 2013-2018, section 2.6

http://www.sep.gob.mx/work/models/sep1/Resource/4479/4/images/PROGRAMA_SECTORIAL_DE_EDUCACION_2013_2018_WEB.pdf  

OER

The association ECOESAD: Espacio Común de Educación Superior a Distancia (Common Space for Higher Distance Education) has been working on collaborative resources. http://ecoesad.org.mx/

The UnADM: Universidad Abierta y a Distancia de México (Mexico’s Open and Distance University). http://www.unadmexico.mx/

MOOC’s platforms

Although there is no a Mexican MOOC’s portal, two HEI that have develop on this platform using the COURSERA page:

• UNAM: https://www.coursera.org/#unam

• Tecnológico de Monterrey: https://www.coursera.org/#tecdemonterrey

VM developments

None

Legal frameworks and regulations

It exists a Ley para la Coordinación de la Educación Superior (Law for the Coordination on Higher Education) unmodified since 1978, and a Ley General de Educación (General Education Law), they touch only topics about budget assignment, HEI autonomy, etc. Every HEI have its own regulations.

Barriers and success factors for adoption of open practices of academic cooperation

As in Mexico there is a very little practice on those topics, there is a great opportunity to begin, especially with the help of other experienced foreign HEI. In general, the Mexican universities are open to academic cooperation.

We may notice that this moment might be of a great opportunity for Mexico to begin develop this kind of platforms, as there is an urgent need to raise the educational level of the graduates and the country’s economic situation is not very promising. A fact is that the few HEI that have been working on line education use the Moodle platform very strongly, but not on an open education effort, but as courses support. It’s only a little step needed to jump.  

Main open education actors and networks in the region

• The UNAM’s SUAyED: Sistema de Universidad Abierta y Educación a Distancia.

• UnADM: Universidad Abierta y a Distancia de México (Mexico’s Open and Distance University).

• ECOESAD: Espacio Común de Educación Superior a Distancia (Common Space of Distance Higher Education).

Role of international networks and initiatives in the country/region

As part of its activities, the Red Universidad Empresa ALCUE (RedUE ALCUE) [ALCUE University-Enterprise Network], of which the UAM is coordinator, is promoting at Latin American level, a MOOC program to encourage the universities and productivity sectors relationship. This initiative is currently being developed along with the Universidad de Alicante of Spain and the VINTEC Program of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación de Argentina (Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry of Argentina).

Examples of OE-enhaced Higher Education collaboration

Policy issues

Each university has their own regulations, and in the credit transfer credit topics, each HEI is free to accept it or not.

Virtual mobility dimension

We could find three examples of VM efforts:

• Between the UNAM and the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) of Spain: http://www.cuaed.unam.mx/movilidad/movilidadeducacioncampusnet/convocatoria__movilidad_educacion_campusnet.pdf
• Between the UNAM with the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) and the Universidad Nacional del Noroeste de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (UNNOBA), both of Argentina: http://www.unlp.edu.ar/uploads/docs/movilidad_virtual.10%20(1).ppt‎
• Between the UNAM and Universidad Aberta of Portugal, Universidad Quilmes of Argentina and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia of España: http://ibervirtual.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98:movilidad-virtual&Itemid=124

New Zealand

Introduction

Location of New Zealand

New Zealand as a small country with a population of only 4.2 million has made progress in establishing the foundations necessary for scalable uptake and integration of open education approaches in the formal education sector.

The penetration of open source learning management systems in the tertiary sector is relatively high by international standards. The New Zealand Government has adopted an open licensing policy for Crown Copyright which encourages School Boards of Trustees to adopt open licenses. However, the framework does not extend to the higher education sector. Currently, open access policies and practices have been adopted at three tertiary education institutions. The OER Foundation is headquartered in New Zealand and at the time of writing, eight tertiary institutions from New Zealand are partners in the OERu international collaboration. Four of New Zealand's eight universities are experimenting with MOOCs covering the spectrum of cMOOCs, xMOOCs and OER-based micro Open Online Courses. Otago Polytechnic has been incorporating open online courses through the OERu collaboration since 2009. The OERu network is leading the development of practices to facilitate international learner mobility through credit transfer and course articulation.

Country demographics

New Zealand's tertiary education sector comprises eight universities, 20 regional-based institutes of technology and polytechnics, three Wānanga (publicly funded institutions guided by Māori principles and values), and approximately 400 registered Private Tertiary Education (PTE) providers. The universities, polytechnics, and Wānanga are state funded and all have authority to award degrees in accordance with the Education Act 1989. Degree awarding authority is not restricted to the university sector, as Polytechnics have degree awarding status in New Zealand. This ensures parity, equivalence, and quality of degree credentials registered with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) or the Committee on University Academic Programmes (CUAP) for the post-secondary sector.

More than two-thirds of New Zealanders have access to the Internet at home. The tertiary education sector is highly competitive, is challenged with escalating costs for tertiary study and derives significant income from export education largely derived from physical mobility models.

Connectivity

The 2013 census data indicates that 77% of New Zealand households have access to the Internet and 84% of households report access to a mobile phone at home (Statistics New Zealand 2013). It is estimated that broadband subscribers account for approximately 85% of the total number of subscribers to the Internet (Statistics New Zealand 2011).

Rising costs of tertiary study

The relatively high number of tertiary education providers for a small population, combined with a high gross enrolment ratio of 84% for the 18 to 24 age cohort, places considerable pressure on the funding model of the sector. Until 1989, government grants for tertiary study covered about 90% of the student costs for tuition. Rapid growth in enrolments during the 1990s resulted in considerable reductions in the ratio of government grant for equivalent full-time students and signalled a shift to a ‘user-pay’ system. During the period from 1991 to 1999, average student fees increased by 170% compared with an increase of only 13% in the consumer price index for the same period (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2006). In 1992, Government introduced a student loan scheme. Progressively, national student debt is becoming a decision barrier for potential students, with debt amounting to levels which are hard to repay for new entrants into the labour market. In response to these challenges, in 2004, Government introduced a fees maxima regime, which restricted the amount by which tertiary education providers could increase student fees, thus placing further fiscal constraints on the system. In 2010, the new government introduced the Annual Maximum Fee Movement (AMFM), policy which also restricts the amounts by which fees can be increased.

In the university sector, in 2010 for example, 40% of the annual income was derived from government grants totalling NZ$1.3 billion of the combined total university income of NZ$3.1 billion. The remaining income for universities is split evenly between student fees and other sources including research contracts and commercial income. The most significant cost in the sector is staff salaries and related costs equating to 60% of the sector’s total expenditure of $3.0 billion (Universities New Zealand 2013).

The historical funding model has traditionally encouraged competition among tertiary providers. Competition can promote quality, but can also contribute to unnecessary duplication and inefficiencies within the system. This is particularly evident in New Zealand given the relatively high number of providers for a small population that is geographically dispersed. The problem is amplified when organizations use a proprietary intellectual property model for course resources. Citing an extreme example, there are currently 62 registered qualifications available in New Zealand that are intended for the education and training of tertiary teachers serving an average intake of approximately 1,000 learners per annum (Projects International 2010). The NZQA is undertaking a comprehensive review of the system to reduce duplication and proliferation of qualifications. It is hoped that, as a Crown entity, Government's open accessing licensing framework will inform strategies for rationalizing the qualifications framework using open education approaches. For example, generic national qualifications like the NZ Diploma in Business, which can be offered by all accredited institutions, could use the framework to map the availability of OER courses produced by New Zealand institutions and those re-contextualized from elsewhere to avoid similar subjects being duplicated by closed course alternatives within institution-approved credentials. Open and transparent development of the processes and frameworks for rationalizing qualifications would foster the principles of self-organization within the sector when proposing new qualifications or decisions favouring closed course developments.

Export education and the international brand of New Zealand education

Export education is a significant component of the New Zealand economy. Education is ranked as New Zealand’s fourth largest export market generating approximately $3.2 billion in 2013 (Universities New Zealand 2014) . New Zealand universities generated approximately a third of this revenue with the remainder distributed among the school sector, institutes of technology and private tertiary providers. Historically, export education consists predominantly of international students studying locally on campus at New Zealand institutions rather than the provision of online learning offshore.

Five of New Zealand's eight universities are ranked within the top fifty places of the Times Higher Education list of top international universities (Universities New Zealand 2014). Maintaining the quality of provision and protecting the brand of the New Zealand education sector is a high priority, given the magnitude of the higher education export market.

State of the art of Open Education

Opening education

Over the last decade, various Government initiatives have contributed to a favourable policy environment for open education futures in New Zealand. For example, Government established the E-learning Advisory Group in July 2001, culminating in a report published in March 2002, entitled ‘Highways and Pathways: Exploring New Zealand’s e-learning opportunities’ (ELAG, 2002). Essential outcomes of the report worthy of mention include:

• The recurring theme of collaboration and dialogue within the sector as a necessary prerequisite to achieve sustainable e-learning futures; and
• The emphasis on local leadership to forge an e-learning vision with a New Zealand identity.

Another good example of a government initiative was the establishment of the e-Learning Collaborative Development Fund, which invested $28 million over four years from July, 2003 to June, 2007. This was a relatively small investment compared to similar investments in e-learning abroad at the time. However, this competitive fund was designed to enhance the system’s capability with a conditional requirement for inter-institutional collaboration. While not requiring open licenses at the time, the funding agreement stipulated that the outcomes were to be made available for use across the tertiary sector. The e-Learning Collaborative Development Fund facilitated networking and relationship-building among individuals and institutions who previously worked in isolation under a very competitive model. A number of the networks and relationships established as a result of this development fund are currently driving OER innovations in New Zealand.

Headquartered in New Zealand, the Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation was established in 2009 as an independent, not-for-profit organisation that provides leadership, international networking and support for educational institutions to achieve their strategic objectives using open education approaches. The OER Foundation administers WikiEducator, an international community of 70,000 educators collaborating on the development of OER. The OER Foundation is also coordinating the implementation of the OER universitas (OERu). The OERu is an innovation partnership of more than thirty accredited universities, colleges and polytechnics from five continents who will provide more affordable education for students, using courses based solely on OER, with pathways to gain credible qualifications from recognised education institutions.

Open source

The New Zealand Open Source Virtual Learning Environment project was one of the initiatives funded by Government's e-Learning Capability Development Fund. The Open Polytechnic, as project lead, initiated a sector-wide consortium, which grew to 20 universities, polytechnics, and training enterprises collaborating on the review and selection of an open source learning management system, followed by an investment of NZ$1.6 million in code development to improve security and scalability of the Moodle open source platform. Code developments and improvements to the software were shared back with the community in accordance with the General Public License obligation, thus meeting the capability fund requirement to make the outputs accessible for the sector. In November 2004, the Open Polytechnic implemented an enterprise-scale deployment of Moodle serving 35,000 learners. Large organizations were now in a position to migrate to Moodle with the evidence of a large scale deployment that would support their students at an enterprise production level. Government's eLearning Collaborative Development Fund also financed a collaborative venture involving Massey University, Auckland University of Technology, The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, and Victoria University of Wellington to develop the popular Mahara open source e-portfolio system, which is also increasingly being used in the New Zealand school sector.

This project represented a relatively small investment from Government, but the requirement for collaboration and sharing of outputs as a condition of funding has contributed to sector-wide adoption of open technologies. Today, 77% of New Zealand's tertiary education institutions in the formal sector have migrated to Moodle, compared with the global market penetration of 10% using the Moodle learning management system in 2010 (see Moodle, 2011).

Open policy

In October 2007, Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand working under the auspices of Te Whāinga Aronui The Council for the Humanities successfully ported the Creative Commons suite of licences for New Zealand law (Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand 2007). The New Zealand affiliate of Creative Commons is now hosted by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

The State Services Commission and the Department of Internal Affairs led work to develop the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL). Following two years of research and consultation, the NZGOAL framework was approved by Cabinet on 5 July, 2010, becoming the first government in the world to implement a Creative Commons licensing framework for public sector information.

The NZGOAL framework encompasses a series of policy principles that embrace concepts of open access, open licensing, creativity, and open formats. In short, all public service departments are directed to license copyrighted works under open terms and implement the principles of NZGOAL. Other Crown entities are strongly encouraged to do likewise, while school boards of trustees are invited to implement the NZGOAL principles. Unfortunately, though, tertiary education institutions have been excluded from NZGOAL. The principle recommendation of NZGOAL is that:

“	State Services agencies should make their copyright works which are or may be of interest or use to people available for re-use on the most open of licensing terms available within NZGOAL (the Open Licensing Principle). To the greatest extent practicable, such works should be made available online. The most open of licensing terms available within NZGOAL is the Creative Commons Attribution (BY) licence.	”
—State Services Commission

The State Services Commission has developed a series of support resources, including guidelines for agencies and for users intending to reuse public sector information. An impressive online decision tool has been developed, which produces a detailed report containing recommendations on licence alternatives and recommendations for agencies implementing the framework. These resources are available on the NZGOAL website, and licensed under the most open Creative Commons license (see: http://nzgoal.info).

A growing number of School Boards of Trustees are adopting Creative Commons open licence policies in response to NZGOAL. At the time of writing this report, over forty schools have approved Creative Commons policies (Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand 2014(a)).

Following a two-year consultation and revision process, Otago Polytechnic adopted an open intellectual property policy in February 2009. The policy provides for dual ownership of intellectual property by the institution and its creators, on condition that it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Otago Polytechnic was the first post-secondary institution in the world to adopt a default Creative Commons Attribution licensing policy.

In 2013, Lincoln University approved an Open Access Policy covering research outputs, research data, teaching materials, and public records (Lincoln University 2013). The policy encourages content produced by staff, and in some instances postgraduate students, to be openly shared on the web, and encourages applying a Creative Commons license to determine how material may be shared, reused, and remixed.

In 2014, the University of Waikato approved a mandate around open access to academics’ publications (University of Waikato 2014). Under the mandate, University of Waikato staff are encouraged to deposit the full text of their peer-reviewed academic publications into the University's digital repository. However, the mandate does not require open licensing.

OER initiatives

New Zealand’s major OER initiative is convened by the OER Foundation through the implementation of the OERu. The OERu is an international consortium of post-secondary institutions collaborating on the assembly of OER courses which will provide free learning opportunities to all students worldwide. OERu partner institutions will offer assessment and credentialing services on a fee-for-service basis leading to formal academic credit towards recognised qualifications. The implementation of the OERu is a designated project of the UNESCO-COL OER Chair network. The following New Zealand institutions have contributed to the OERu collaboration as partners:

• Ako Aotearoa
• Lincoln University
• Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology
• NorthTec
• Open Polytechnic
• Otago Polytechnic
• Unitec Institute of Technology
• E-Learning Lab, University of Canterbury (former OERu anchor partner)
• Waikato Institute of Technology

Responding to the global need for upgrading teacher and trainers’ skills in vocational education, Otago Polytechnic announced the development and implementation of a Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education (OERu 2012). The Graduate Diploma will also be offered as a full credential for the OERu network based solely on OER resources. This is the first credential in New Zealand to be implemented using OER and will provide more affordable opportunities for thousands of educators worldwide who want to upgrade their qualifications and skills.

The OER Foundation has been supporting professional development in OER by offering free and open online courses on OERs, copyright the open licensing. The course materials for the Open Content Licensing for Educators (OCL4Ed) course were originally developed as a collaborative project by volunteers from the OER Foundation, WikiEducator, the OpenCourseWare Consortium and Creative Commons with funding support from the UNESCO Office for the Pacific States. Since 2011, this initiative has offered free training to 2,980 educators worldwide.

The OER Foundation and Otago Polytechnic have also been proactive in advocacy work for open education and convened the New Zealand National Symposium on Open Education in December 2012 (WikiEducator 2012). The symposium brought together educational leaders and policy makers to consider the strategic opportunities for OER in New Zealand and to explore policy enablers and practices for harnessing the potential of open education approaches for the benefit of the formal education sector in New Zealand. Proposal for action included: promoting adoption of Creative Commons Policies in Schools; piloting qualifications in the higher education sector based on OER; utilising OER approaches for collaborative professional development of staff in the tertiary sector; and raising awareness of the potential of OER at all levels including government, tertiary, industry and community and to make the case for OER as a matter of public policy.

The uptake of open textbook developments in New Zealand has been slow. However, with support from a small grant from Creative Commons, the University of Otago lead the development of an open textbook in Media Studies (Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand 2014(b)). The project adopted a “book sprint” approach where participants across New Zealand and Australia came together for a weekend to populate the first draft of the text. The project will also develop a “cook book” providing guidelines and lessons learned for future open textbook developments using this approach.

MOOCs in New Zealand

Opinion within the New Zealand university sector regarding the potential of the mainstream adoption of MOOCs mirrors the diversity of international opinion ranging from conservative skepticism to proactive implementation.

The Vice Chancellor at the University of Otago, after careful consideration of the MOOC phenomenon, for example, has confirmed the University’s commitment to core values, namely that: “As the only truly residential university in New Zealand, we will continue to deploy our resources, including our human capital, to ensure that current and future generations of Otago students have the opportunity to learn directly from teachers and directly from peers” (University of Otago 2013). Conversely, the OERu collaboration is proactively incorporating MOOC approaches using credit bearing micro Open Online Courses leading to formal academic credit towards university-level credentials.

The following table summarises MOOC activity in the New Zealand tertiary education sector at the time of publication:

Institution	MOOC Network	Course	Date of 1st delivery	Open licensing	Type	Academic credit
Otago Polytechnic	OERu	Open Content Licensing for Educators	March 2011	Yes CC-BY	Parallel mode mOOC	Yes (for all learners)
University of Canterbury	OERu	Scenario Planning for Educators	July 2013	Yes CC-BY-SA	Parallel mode mOOC	Yes (for registered full-fee students)
University of Waikato	N/A (self hosted)	Data Mining with Weka MOOC	September 2013	Yes CC-BY-NC-SA	cMOOC	No
University of Waikato	N/A (self hosted)	More Data Mining with Weka MOOC	April 2014	Yes CC-BY-NC-SA	cMOOC	No
Massey University	Open2Study	Agriculture and the World We Live In	March 2014	No	xMOOC	No
Massey University	Open2Study	Emergency Management	March 2014	No	xMOOC	No
University of Auckland	Future Learn	To be announced	To be announced	No	xMOOC	No

Key

1. Parallel mode: Refers to an open online course offered to full-fee registered students in parallel with free learners participating in the same course.
2. mOOC: micro Open Online Course is a concept used by the OERu network where micro refers to a subcomponent of a full credit bearing course.
3. cMOOC: Open online course drawing on connectivist design approaches.
4. xMOOC: Commercial MOOC equivalents administered by the commercial MOOC startups typically integrating short video instruction into the delivery model.

Virtual mobility developments

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In the context of this report, virtual mobility refers to the ability for learners and educators to study and teach outside their normal country of residence using online modalities. It is distinct from physical mobility where learners or teachers study or teach face-to-face outside of their normal country of residence.

In the case of the OERu network where partners have agreed to award formal academic credit for open online courses, virtual mobility with regards to credit transfer and course articulation across international boundaries is a priority focus. The UNESCO-COL Chair in OER programme with funding support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada completed an exploratory research study on the Assessment and Accreditation of Learners using OER (Conrad, Mackintosh, McGreal, Murphy and Witthaus 2013). The report has identified a number of reuse and remix scenarios for accreditation when unbundling teaching, assessment and credentialing. This report will be used as the foundation for a dedicated OERu working group who will develop practical guidelines for credit transfer and course articulation for virtual mobility of learners within the OERu network.

Legal frameworks and regulations

COL's Transnational Qualifications Framework

A distinctive feature of the OERu collaboration is that partner institutes retain decision-making autonomy regarding all aspects of course articulation and accreditation within the network. As a result, the OERu operates within existing policy protocols. With reference to the New Zealand partners the following frameworks and regulations are important:

• The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (http://www.nzqa.govt.nz), the quality agency which oversees the approval of all qualifications outside of the university sector.
• Committee on University Academic Programmes (CUAP) established by Universities New Zealand (the former New Zealand Vice-Chancellor’s Committee) which approves qualifications in the university sector.
• The Academic Quality Agency for New Zealand Universities which undertake institutional audits of quality for the delivery of approved qualifications.

The OERu partners have agreed to incorporate the Transnational Qualifications Framework (TQF) developed by the Commonwealth of Learning into the guidelines and procedures to be developed by the OERu network for credit transfer and course articulation.

Examples of open education enhanced Higher Education collaboration

The OERu convened by the OER Foundation in New Zealand provides a good example of open education enhanced collaboration in higher education. The OERu network aims to provide more affordable access to higher education, especially for learners excluded from the privilege of access to higher education using open education approaches. As on April 2014, the OERu network consists of thirty one institutions from five continents:

Africa

• University of South Africa (South Africa)
• North-West University (South Africa)

Asia

• S.N.D.T Women's University (India)

Europe

• Institute of Technology Sligo (Ireland)
• Open University of Catalonia (Spain)
• University of South Wales (United Kingdom)

North America

• Athabasca University (Canada)
• BCcampus (Non teaching partner – Canada)
• Contact North | Contact Nord (Non teaching partner – Canada)
• eCampusAlberta (Non teaching partner - Canada)
• Empire State College (SUNY) (USA)
• Excelsior College (USA)
• Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Canada)
• Portage College (Canada)
• Southern New Hampshire University (USA)
• Thompson Rivers University (Canada)
• Thomas Edison State College (USA)

Oceania

• Ako Aotearoa (Non teaching partner – New Zealand)
• Charles Sturt University (Australia)
• Lincoln University (New Zealand)
• Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (New Zealand)
• NorthTec (New Zealand)
• OER Foundation (Non teaching partner - New Zealand)
• Open Polytechnic (New Zealand)
• Otago Polytechnic (New Zealand)
• Unitec Institute of Technology (New Zealand)
• University of Southern Queensland (Australia)
• University of the South Pacific (Regional University - 12 Pacific Island States)
• University of Tasmania (Australia)
• University of Wollongong (Australia)
• Waikato Institute of Technology (New Zealand)

Russia

Country ID Card

Location of the Russian Federation

The education system in Russia has deep traditions that have been forming for several centuries. The Constitution of the Russian Federation (RF) enables all Russian citizens to receive education, regardless of their nationality, social status and religion.

The Russian education system comprises five levels:

• pre-school education;
• primary education;
• secondary education;
• higher education;
• postgraduate/additional education.

The pre-school level provides for the education of children aged 2-7. At the age of 6-7, children start their education in a primary school, where they spend 4 years, and then proceed to a secondary school.

After the primary education, children start their secondary education, which lasts for 9 years. Upon completion of the 9th grade, students undergo the State Final Attestation, i.e. they pass final exams and are awarded a Certificate of Basic General Education. 9th grade graduates may continue their education at school or apply for entrance to a vocational and technical school, college or technical school. A Certificate of Secondary Complete General Education shall be awarded upon completion of the 11th grade and delivery of final examinations (the Unified State Exam). This Certificate of Secondary Complete General Education and successfully passed examinations allow students to continue to higher education. As already mentioned, persons having secondary general education shall be eligible for mastering Bachelor’s or Specialist’s programs. Persons having higher education of any level shall be eligible for mastering the Master’s programs.

Further education under academic personnel training programs in postgraduate studies (military post-graduate studies), residency programs, assistant/ trainee programs shall be allowed for persons with at least higher education (Specialist’s or Master’s degree) and shall involve obtaining a relevant academic degree — the Candidate of Sciences (equivalent to Ph.D.).

Today, Russia has a developed system of higher professional education consisting of two conflicting education subsystems: a historically established training of graduates under 441 specialities (majors) of higher professional education (studies usually last for 5 years) and a tiered training of graduates (conventional in Europe) that provides for the implementation of educational programs by degrees of higher professional education with awarding a Bachelor’s degree (qualification) (4-year studies) and a Master’s degree (qualification) (6-year studies) to a graduate in 120 areas of higher professional education.

In practice, these subsystems in Russia are implemented according to different schemes:

• independent education paths in Bachelor and Specialist subsystems without shared parts; and
• combined education paths during the first years (1st to 2nd or 3rd year of studies) with the subsequent separation of Specialists and Bachelors.

Currently, Bachelor’s and Master’s programs are included in all educational areas of higher professional education, except for medicine and information security areas.

In recent years, there have been significant changes in the Russian education system in terms of financing, structure and state standards. If within 2000-2010 Russia was experiencing a sustained increase in the number of higher professional education institutions, from 2010 onwards, the trend has gained the reverse direction. In 2013, the total number of higher education institutions decreased and amounted to 969 units, which almost corresponds to the level of 2000 (965 units) . Respectively, the number of state and municipal higher education institutions decreased by 31 units as compared to the previous reporting period, and the number of private education organizations decreased by 46 units. This process of reducing the higher professional education institutions occurs as part of the state policy for the optimization (reduction of inefficient education organizations) and merger of higher education institutions (“VUZ”) to create federal universities — major national research centers.

Russian Education System

In 2013, the number of professional education organizations that provide training of secondary professionals fell 9% to 2,703 units. Reduction in the number of professional education organizations occurred both among state and municipal professional education organizations and among private ones. As compared to 2012, the number of state and municipal professional education institutions decreased by 8.7% and amounted to 2,488 units; the number of private professional education institutions decreased by 16% and totaled 215 units.

There is a tendency of reducing the share of secondary vocational education as a whole in the Russian educational space: as compared to 2000, when one student of a secondary specialized education institution (“SSUZ”) accounted for 2 students of a higher education institution, in 2013, this ratio was 1:2.84 (5,646,700 VUZ students and 1,982,100 SSUZ students).
In general, we may give evidence of a tendency towards the elimination of basic vocational education in Russia (where graduates are mainly low-skilled workforce) and a gradual rapprochement and blurring of the boundary between the secondary vocational education and higher professional education (Applied Baccalaureate).

Funding of Education in Russia

The Russian higher education system is characterized by a historically prevailing share of public funding, both in terms of a large number of students studying under programs with a full tuition refund (in 2013, they accounted for 60.6%) and in terms of the direct ratio of budgetary and extra-budgetary funds.

When referring to the public expenditure on education as the most significant part, we can speak of their constant increase in absolute terms (from 214.7 million RUB in 2000 to 2.2318 billion RUB in 2013) and of a more complex dynamics as a percentage:

There is a continuous growth trend in the public expenditure per student (in constant 2000 prices): from 8 thousand RUB for secondary vocational education and 12.1 thousand RUB for higher professional education in 2000 to 20.2 thousand RUB for secondary vocational education and 48.8 thousand RUB for higher professional education in 2011.

The Russian education system undergoes the process of reforming, when the emphasis is on the quality of educational services and the international integration of Russian universities.

State of the Art of Open Education

General OE policy

Since the early 1990s, the Russian Federation has given much attention to the education informatization, evolution of telecommunications networks and development of electronic educational resources. The first step was the establishment (in the framework of the “Universities of Russia” State Program) of the Russian research and education network , which has been formed as a nation-wide network of universities and large research institutions. Through regional research and educational networks shaped within federal and regional programs and initiative projects, thousands of educational, research and cultural institutions were connected to RUNNet. This telecommunication infrastructure became the core of an integral informational and educational environment and provided educational institutions with an access to Russian and foreign research and educational resources.

Setting up the system of federal educational portals, which included the Federal Portal “Russian Education” and thematic portals in various fields of knowledge and directions of educational activity, was an important step in the development of educational content of the Russian Internet.

Educational portals, which were the first to collect and systematize dozens of thousands of educational resources of various purposes, were established within the Federal Targeted Program “Development of the Integrated Educational Information Environment for 2001-2005”. A prerequisite for the successful implementation of new educational technologies in the educational process is training and advanced training of teaching, administrative and engineering and technical personnel. Over the years of the program implementation, 42 regional distance-learning centers for teachers with a dedicated Internet access were established. By 2010, 400,000 Russian teachers had completed their courses on the development of basic ICT competence and had the opportunity to obtain the ICT consulting support.

In 2005-2008, the National Training Foundation (the NTF) implemented a project called “Informatization of the Education System” (the IES). Main directions of the education informatization are as follows:

• informational and educational resources (content);
• research and education network infrastructure (network access);
• information systems and educational process support tools;
• industry management information systems;
• hardware and software (computers, system and applied software);
• teaching, administrative and engineering and technical personnel;
• system-wide school informatization.

The major result of the IES Project is the elaboration of common models for the interschool informational environment in seven regions as an integral infrastructure involving all teachers and schools of each region with a single coordinating core of the system — a regional coordination center (the RCC). To ensure access to the integrated interschool informational and educational environment for pupils in regions, arrangements for the systematic integration of the secondary education into a system for network connectivity of all schools and methodological services in each region were completed. Instead of ICT classes, a special role in this environment is played by ICT workbenches of teachers of various disciplines that are equipped with extra digital labs for specific subjects.

During the same period, the Priority National Project “Education” was launched. The goal of this project was to ensure mass connection of schools to the Internet, to shape pedagogical community of creative teachers — winners of the PNPE contest and PNPE innovative schools, to support gifted and talented children, and to expand the system of competitions and contests for schoolchildren, including Internet contests. Between 2006 and 2010, under the Federal Targeted Program of Education Development, rural schools were equipped with new computer classes, schools were equipped with computerized workplaces for administrators and teachers, Internet collections of educational materials for all subjects of the national curriculum were developed, information systems for school administration and workflow, as well as informational support of schools, were deployed (a network of regional educational portals). In 2006–2010, about 20,000 modules of new-generation digital educational resources (the DER) were developed to support the implementation of educational programs in secondary general education for the following disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, English, geography, culture and art, history, Russian, literature, natural sciences, mathematics, informatics and for the most demanded occupations of basic vocational education and specialties of secondary vocational education. All generated electronic educational resources are made publicly available on the website of the Federal Centre for Information and Educational Resources.

In 2007-2009, in order to ensure the software license clarity, a project called “Ensuring the License Support for the Standard (Basic) Software Package to Be Used in General Education Institutions of the Russian Federation” was implemented. In 2007, as part of this project, a purchase of a three-year license for the use of the software included in the standard (basic) licensed software package (the “SBSP”) to be installed on school PCs was funded by the federal budget. The “First Aid” SBSP installed on school PCs includes 56 software products.

OER

Information and communication technologies (ICT) and free access to information are essential prerequisites for the creation of the knowledge-based society. To date, the Internet constitutes the most popular source of knowledge, which gives access to diverse information sources presented in various formats. The number of web pages has reached dozens of billions, and for students and teachers it becomes more and more difficult to select sources of educational and scientific information they need among a growing variety of informational resources.

Since 2002, UNESCO has actively supported initiatives to promote Open Educational Resources (OER) on the Internet, since the use of OER can significantly enhance access to quality higher education and lifelong learning and to ensure the full participation of universities in a rapidly evolving global higher education system (UNESCO Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries, 1-3 July 2002). Over the past decade, the movement for the creation, development and promotion of Open Educational Resources has become widespread in many countries around the world: universities more often make their educational and scientific materials accessible, the creation and development of Open Educational Resources is actively supported at the national and international levels.

UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education (5-8 July 2009, Paris), which was devoted to examining major directions and new trends in the development of higher education in the XXI century, identified the following major trends:

• fundamental changes in the role and function of universities;
• revising lifelong learning requirements;
• strengthening the quality control, accreditation and qualification recognition at the national and international levels.

The need to maintain a more complete ICT integration and to promote to distance learning so as to meet the increasing demand for higher education quality in the perspective of lifelong learning was stressed. The increasing pace of technology development raised new challenges to be addressed by the higher education, Government and industry together in order gain experience, improve the legal framework and to share positive experiences. Special attention was paid to the need to ensure access to quality education, especially Open Educational Resources.

The World Open Educational Resources Congress was held at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 20-22 June 2012. The Congress was attended by the Russian delegation, which included representatives of the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, Federal State Institution State Institute of Information Technologies and Telecommunications (FSI SIIT&T Informika), Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics, Moscow Institute of Open Education. The objectives of the 2012 Congress were to:

• showcase the world’s best practices in OER policies, initiatives and experts;
• release the Paris OER Declaration calling on Governments to support the development and use of OERs; and
• celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 2002 UNESCO Forum that created the term “OER”.

The Congress brought together over 400 delegates including Ministers of Education/Human Resource Development, senior policy makers, expert practitioners, researchers, representatives of educational institutions and other stakeholders to discuss the current situation with OER across countries, OER national policies, achievements and challenges, to share their experience related to successful projects and agree on the final Declaration. As part of an extensive global consultation process, the Congress was preceded by six regional Policy Forums for ministers and officials in the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Arab States.

The Congress adopted the 2012 Paris OER Declaration calling on Governments to support the development and use of Open Educational Resources. One of the major outcomes of the Congress mentioned in the Declaration adopted is that official representatives of member states agreed on the need to adopt such laws that would provide a broad introduction to the practice of “open licenses” — everything that is produced by budgetary institutions or with budgetary funds (in particular, as part of supporting the educational process with education materials, and etc.) shall be made publicly available to all citizens of the country (the world) by posting these materials on various OER portals.

The term “Open Educational Resources” (OER) was first introduced into scientific use at the Forum on Open Courseware for Developing Countries organized by UNESCO in July 2002. As stated in the UNESCO adopted definition: “Open Educational Resources are learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others”.

According to the adopted definition, OER distinctive features are as follows:

• methodological, learning or research focus of materials;
• supporting various formats and media for submission of materials;
• publishing learning and research materials, which reside in the public domain, on an open license basis;
• providing free access, use, processing and redistribution of materials by other users;
• minimum or no restrictions when dealing with OERs;
• open licensing being embedded in the current system of intellectual property rights determined by the relevant international conventions and recognizing the copyright in a work.

Open Educational Resources are any kinds of publicly accessible educational and research materials that are posted under the “open licenses” allowing to use these materials freely by any user — to copy, modify them, create new resources based thereon. Over the past decade, thousands of collections have been created and posted on the Internet around the world. These collections contain millions of educational resources in the public domain — lecture courses, e-textbooks, courseware, training modules, audio and video materials, tests, software, and other materials that can be used to provide access to knowledge.

As noted in the Policy Brief for UNESCO IITE (Institute for Information Technologies in Education), the initial reason for the OER development is the intention to make knowledge accessible by the maximum possible number of people. Most existing OERs have been developed in higher education institutions by teachers convinced that OER creation activities expand horizons of the higher education mission, promoting the acquisition of new knowledge and the dissemination of those already existing. Building upon the achievements of the Open Access Publishing initiative launched several years earlier, OERs play a key role in the implementation of open education, principles of which were outlined in the Cape Town Declaration.

Open educational resources can include both individual and/or different combinations of the following elements:

• complete e-learning course;
• methodological materials;
• learning modules;
• teaching guides, workshops;
• video and audio materials;
• tests, control assignments;
• software;
• other materials, tools or technologies to ensure (support) the access to knowledge.

Thus, OERs represent the special educational content that enables Internet users to explore learning courses and other teaching materials of leading universities and teachers or individual elements of these courses.

The OER is not an end in itself but a tool to receive quality education that is the goal of many people. The main advantage of OERs is their ability to promote changes in educational policies and practices for the benefit of students, teachers and education institutions.

The concept of Open Educational Resources emerged in 2001 when Massachusetts Institute of Technology initiated the establishment of the OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) allowing Internet users to freely use developed educational materials free of charge. Professor Steven Lerman, a co-founder of the MIT OCW, noted that “selling content for profit, or trying in some ways to commercialize one of the core intellectual activities of the university seemed less attractive to people at a deep level than finding ways to disseminate it as broadly as possible”. In 2002, Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched the MIT OCW server becoming a flagship of the OER creation and dissemination movement.

A few years later, the initiative of Massachusetts Institute of Technology was supported by influential educational institutions and organizations in Europe: the UK Open University, the Open University of the Netherlands and the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU). In 2005, MIT hosted the first meeting of the OCW Consortium members. Now, the Consortium includes higher education institutions from 50 countries that have developed and posted over 13,000 courses in various subjects in the public domain.

OpenCourseWare project participants do not think that they give away their materials by providing free Internet access to these. On the contrary, OER developers are convinced that the availability of open resources is relevant and necessary to meet the challenges of contemporary higher education.

The following arguments speak in favor of the OER creation:

1. Publicly funded educational institutions are obliged to ensure free access and use of their materials, as these materials are partially created with the use of taxes of citizens and thus have already been paid by the society;
2. The limited access to materials may lead to the duplication of efforts, which also entails extra costs on the part of the society;
3. The OER posting creates a positive image of the university, which helps to attract students and funding from non-governmental foundations.

OERs should be considered not just as a trendy phenomenon in education but, primarily, as an absolutely obligatory direction for the development of education institutions, in particular, and education as a whole. The OER expanded use increasingly erases the boundaries between the so-called formal and informal learning, proposes fundamentally new approaches to the dissemination of knowledge. This happens just at the time when the effective use of knowledge is becoming a key factor for economic success, both for individuals and institutions in general. Open Education projects make it possible to get absolutely free access to quality online educational resources and therefore undoubtedly contribute to the OER broader participation in higher education and the further promotion of education.

As a motivation for the production, distribution and use of OERs, the following major factors can be distinguished: technological, economic, social and legal ones. Technological and economic factors include the improved, cheaper and user-friendlier infrastructure, i.e. the network, hardware and software. The creation and further use of learning content becomes less expensive. There appear new economic models and legal agreements for the content distribution and reuse. An increasing willingness of educational content developers to provide their resources for distribution in the public domain is noted as social factors.

The economic factor remains a major barrier to investments in hardware and software for the development and dissemination of OERs. Researchers attribute constraints like that one to factors that dramatically hamper the development of countries. However, both Governments and individuals have already faced the need to participate in open education projects. It becomes more and more evident that as the social development clearly manifests itself, knowledge, innovations and ways of its practical use more often act as a source of profit. The fact that knowledge starts to take up key positions in the economic development drastically changes the place of education in the social life structure, the ratio of its spheres such as education and economy. The acquisition of new knowledge, information, skills, orientation approval for its update and development become determinative competencies of society members. Users other than teachers or students comprise the major part of the OER audience.

MOOCs

The creation and publication of Open Educational Resources (OER) is a past stage for flagships of the Open Educational Resources development movement. A promising avenue for development of Open Educational Resources is to create Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), where an Internet user gets access not only to educational content, but also to e-learning technologies (adaptive elements, tests, simulations) and gains guidance support from teachers of leading universities.

The use of ICTs allows to satisfy growing demands of our society for quality education in a lifelong learning perspective. However, the education system itself must undergo qualitative changes through altering both its actual content and teaching methods and tools, environments and ways to disseminate knowledge.

With the continuous growth of volumes and speed of knowledge update, the task of organizing independent exploring and research activities by students and further application of received knowledge to address specific problems become particularly relevant. A determinative avenue for the information educational environment development is to create an integrated environment with a high intellectual component. These are exactly the objectives pursued by the organization of professional communities based on modern information technologies ensuring the instructional model transformation, which will allow to move from ICT studies to learning through ICTs.

Professional communities of experts in various fields of human activities have existed throughout the history of civilization in one form or another. However, the XXI century marked the birth of a qualitatively new form of such communities involving the concentration of information as MOOCs, rather than of people in one place (a virtual one). As an Internet-deployed community, MOOCs may accumulate, evaluate and sort information from a variety of sources and therefore can serve as a tool for quick and efficient creation and dissemination of new knowledge. The creation of professional communities meets the trends of a modern information society, knowledge society, the distinctive feature of which is the active use of new knowledge located in Open Educational Resources and other Internet sources.

Such a formulation of the problem necessitates the use of active and up-to-date content. This global problem can never be solved without promoting the development and use of MOOCs.

Virtual Mobility

A new “Net Generation” of citizens (students) has entered adulthood. For them, tools and approaches to cognition have changed. The effect of spending a few days in a library by the reader is comparable to the effect of making one search query in the global network. The main objective of the new education model is to create an environment that provides the highest possible level of competitive education through the development of the student’s knowledge and skills required by the modern information society: cooperation, communication, social responsibility, critical thinking, efficient and high quality problem solving.

The easiest way for students to obtain competencies required by the modern society is to get involved in the virtual mobility. Virtual mobility implies several opportunities: International Mobility that allows students to join a study group of a foreign university online; Occupational Mobility as an opportunity to take a course on a related or another professional subject. There can be other types of virtual mobility, allowing not only to take the course, but also to gain skills of efficient performance in a virtual environment, interaction with remote participants — course partners.

Legal frameworks and regulations

Currently, the Russian leadership pays special attention to the modernization of the education system of the Russian Federation.

Programs and concepts for the modernization of education in the Russian Federation have been approved at the legislative level.

• RF Government Instruction of November 17, 2008 No.1662-r “On the Concept of Long-term Social and Economic Development of the Russian Federation up to 2020”, where it is determined that a prerequisite for the formation of an innovative economy is the modernization of the education system being a basis of the dynamic economic growth and social development, the factor of the wellbeing of citizens and national security.
• RF Government Instruction of January 19, 2006 No. 38-r “On the Social and Economic Development Program of the Russian Federation in the Medium Term (for 2006-2008)”, that states that educational priorities of the Government of the Russian Federation are as follows: supporting the Russian education system modernization on a legislative level, bringing the content and structure of professional training in line with current needs of the labor market, increasing the availability of quality educational services, establishing an independent education quality control evaluation system .
• In the RF President’s messages to the Federal Assembly and the President’s instructions of December 12, 2013, Mr. Vladimir Putin notes that the adoption of legal instruments enabling Russian higher education institutions to actively develop the massive distance learning, which is also primarily focused on our fellow citizens and citizens of the CIS, should be accelerated.
• Certain programs have been developed at the regional level; thus, in January-March 2007, the first competition was held among subjects of the Russian Federation deploying integrated projects of education modernization. 53 subjects of the Russian Federation applied for this competition .

At the federal level, innovative development programs have been established: there have been approved the Information Society Development Strategy in the Russian Federation, according to which one of the priorities is to participate in the development of international standards in the field of information and telecommunications technologies, alignment of the national system of standards and certification in this field with the international system and the State Program of the Russian Federation “Development of Education” in 2013-2020.

RF Government Decree of February 07, 2011 No. 61 (as amended on December 27, 2012) approved the Federal Targeted Program of Education Development for 2011-2015. Under this Program, one of the expected outcomes is the implementation and effective use of new information services, systems and learning technologies, e-learning resources of the new generation.

Pursuant to RF Government Instruction of February 07, 2011 No. 163-r “On the Concept of the Federal Targeted Program of Education Development for 2011-2015”, the strategic goal of the state education policy is to improve access to quality education that meets requirements of the innovative economic development, needs of the modern society and each citizen.

There has been adopted a number of federal laws aimed at modernizing the education, including: Federal Law of December 29, 2012 No. 273-FZ “On Education in the Russian Federation”, Federal Law of November 03, 2006 No. 174-FZ “On Autonomous Institutions”, Federal Law of November 10, 2009 No. 259-FZ “On Lomonosov Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University” (as amended by Federal laws of May 07, 2013 No. 84-FZ, of July 02, 2013 No. 185-FZ). Regulations on the establishment of university-based innovative enterprises are in force. There has been adopted RF Government Decree of August 05, 2013 No. 661 “On Approving the Rules for Developing, Approving and Amending Federal State Educational Standards”.

On September 01, 2014, the new Federal Law of December 29, 2012 No. 273-FZ “On Education in the Russian Federation” came into effect.

The Law highlights individual legal norms devoted to:

• online interaction in implementing educational programs, including a mechanism for crediting results of mastering separate parts of the educational program in third-party entities;
• e-learning and the use of distance learning technologies in the educational process;
• studying under integrated educational programs — educational and informational resources within the educational process and etc.;
• regulated environment for carrying out experimental and innovative activities in education.

The law sets forth requirements for the implementation of educational programs (Article 13).

The current Federal Law No. 273-FZ “On Education in the Russian Federation” provides organizations engaged in educational activities with an opportunity to use e-learning, distance learning technologies in the implementation of educational programs according to the procedure established by the federal executive body responsible for formulating the state policy and the regulatory environment in the field of education. Under this procedure, educational organizations may use distance learning in all forms of education or their combination.

The main purpose of the Federal Law “On Education in the Russian Federation” is to ensure a comprehensive modernization of the legal framework of the Russian Federation in the field of education aimed at bringing it in line with new social relations arising in the field of education, to enhance efficiency of the legal regulatory mechanism, to establish the legal environment for the update and development of the Russian education system in accordance with current demands of the individual, society and the state, innovative economy development needs, international commitments of the Russian Federation in the field of education.

On December 26, 2012, the Interdepartmental Working Group on the development of e-learning, distance learning technologies in the implementation of educational programs in educational institutions was established. The e-learning development action plan for 2013-2015 included the following:

• designing an e-learning development program in Russia;
• implementing pilot projects in higher educational institutions and professional education organizations;
• developing the e-learning infrastructure;
• professional retraining and advanced training in the use of e-learning; and
• creating a crowdsourcing (expert) e-learning development platform.

Amendments introduced to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation were aimed at regulating the labor of remote employees. On April 19, 2013, Federal Law of April 5, 2013 No. 60-FZ “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” came into force. This Law has adjusted relations established in the modern practice, when employers hire employees who work outside the territory of the employer's premises.

Barriers and success factors for the adoption of open practices of academic cooperation

The current state of the Russian education system is characterized by after-effects of the administrative command system and planned economy principles. The bureaucratization, which has been accumulated for decades at all governance levels in scientific and educational fields, has dramatically reduced their flexibility and responsiveness.

General Concern of the Education Development

The first of existing and most important problems the Russian education system faces (this also refers to the open education) is its low mobility. National education in Russia is embedded in the Russian social and cultural reality at an isolated level, corresponds to the national mentality and developed national educational traditions, where its own achievements have certainly been achieved. However, the traditional isolation of the Russian educational space, the language barrier and the geographical remoteness from world civilization centers impede the integration of a substantial part of Russian education in the global space of research and education and hamper its efficient development in the global competitive environment. The current situation creates conditions under which it takes too much time for any innovations in this industry to have any progress, for instance, the e-learning that which was launched about 20 years ago, while the first law governing this issue was issued only in 2013. The same situation pertains to Open Educational Resources: only private initiatives of individual organizations can be distinguished, and so far this issue cannot be discussed at the national level since the transformation of the entire education system has just started, and this process may take much time.

Open Education Project Funding

In 2014, the funding of education will decrease by 88 billion RUB (i.e. 12.9% of the 2013 level). The current state of the Russian education is typically characterized primarily from the standpoint of insufficient budgetary funds allocated by the state to ensure the functioning of this field. In these circumstances, all other problems related to the content and quality of education, access to quality education for various social groups (to which the concept of open education pertains), a more complete satisfaction of student inquiries, promotion of ties with the labor market and etc. are sidelined and even fade into insignificance. Although many higher education institutions are willing to lead in modern teaching techniques and methods, the reassignment of funds between traditional and open education systems will hardly be supported on a large scale.

Naturally, the Ministry of Education does not have sufficient funds to finance all higher education institutions willing to introduce an open education system. Plus, these actions are largely meaningless, as so far there is simply nothing to introduce. You first need to set up a system, to conduct a pilot operation within a real academic process, to eliminate shortcomings and errors, and only then to replicate it. In this case, it would be appropriate to entrust several higher education institutions, which already have a reserve, some experience and positive outcomes, to develop and carry out a pilot operation and fine-tuning of their systems without limiting them with any standards.

Training of Teachers and Lecturers

A separate issue of the open education development is the training of teachers in this industry. Certainly, if we speak of the open education only within OERs, this issue is automatically eliminated as the content with its minimum processing is made publicly available and is not accompanied by a teacher. However, current trends show that MOOCs represent the next step of OER development and, in this event, the teacher’s support becomes truly vital. E-learning culture in Russia virtually starts to emerge, and few organizations have more or less mature practices in this area. So that a teacher could effectively teach a subject within the same MOOCs, he/she should, first, know this subject in a professional manner; second, precisely and clearly understand the e-learning methodology and features; third, master e-learning tools in a professional manner and, fourth, have extensive experience of the student distance learning. It should be noted that in Russia only few education organizations have such professionals employed on their staff.

Distrust of Open Resources

The following issue is closely related to the first of the above problems — this is the student’s mentality. Ever since the days of the Soviet Union, the education proved by the awarded state-recognized diploma (regardless of the knowledge obtained by the student upon graduation and the question of whether he/she obtained that knowledge at all) has been considered to be the only quality education. Now, even if educational organizations receive funding and start to make terabytes of content publicly available, the popularity of open education is unlikely to show a significant growth precisely because of the end user’s distrust. For example, only 2.2% of Russian students took courses at the Coursera project in 2013. However, it should be noted that attempts made to alter the course of the Russian education towards its informatization and transition to e-learning should deliver benefits in the development of Open Educational Resources.

Copyright Issue

7 years ago Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics (MESI) launched a project on the joint development of teaching materials. As part of this project, there has been developed a resource where teachers from the parent organization and its branches should have placed their groundwork on this or that subject to be later transformed into a training course. A few years later, this project was recognized as a failure for a variety of reasons, among which was the unwillingness of teachers to provide shared access to their own groundwork, even considering the fact that this work was funded and the access to materials was provided only within this organization. This example properly illustrates the general problem of copyright in the educational content developed in Russia, which undoubtedly constitutes a barrier to the promotion of open education, where the content “openness” is one of the key elements.

Examples of OE-enhanced Academic Collaboration

OER

Almost all education management levels in Russia, including the regional and institutional ones, supported the OER creation and dissemination movement. Universities, government organizations, private companies as well as individual authors became developers of Open Educational Resources

Universities

The leading role in forming OERs is played by universities — recognized and authoritative sources of educational and research materials in the modern society. Placement of educational and other resources of universities in the public domain constitutes a timely and relevant achievement of the academic community, especially against the background of critical issues regarding the quality and reliability of data available on the Internet.

Most members of the academic community share the idea that information and knowledge should be disseminated freely, which serves as the basis for developing scientific disciplines and improving the quality of educational services around the world.

Leading Russian universities have their own open educational environments, where they post educational resources.

Table 1. Developers Community of Open Educational Resources

Institution	Description	Type	Academic credit
National Open University "INTUIT" http://www.intuit.ru/	Organization providing services for several educational programs, many of which relate to information technology. The web-server contains hundreds of open educational courses for the passage of which you can get free electronic certificate. Also maybe pay for certificates of professional development	MOOC, OER	Yes (for registered full-fee students)
UNESCO IITE E-Courses http://lms.iite.unesco.org/	In accordance with the Charter of IITE activities focus on the implementation of one of the fundamental objectives of UNESCO - to facilitate the development and implementation of programs on the use of information and communication technologies in education. On this subject can be found online publications and electronic courses.	Open courses	No
Open courses of Moscow Architectural Institute http://www.open-marhi.ru/index.php	All courses correspond to the principle of originality, they were created by teachers MARCHI observe copyright. To use the courses do not require special registration, provision of educational documents, payment or other conditions.	OER	No
Hexlet https://hexlet.org/	Free online university provides free courses in computer science and related disciplines. Video lectures, tests, exercises, homework assignments and active community of students - Hexlet components. Site features: the active participation of teachers, live chat with students and focus on practical issues.	MOOCs	No
ALT Linux http://moodle.altlinux.ru/	Distance learning server, organized and supported by the community ALT Linux. The main objective of this site is to share experiences of learning the basics of information technology users.	Open Courses	No
Lectoriy of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) http://lectoriy.mipt.ru/	Video lectures and open educational materials of MIPT. The project aims to create an archive of educational videos.	Video lectures, open courses	No
Businesslearning.ru http://www.businesslearning.ru/	Distance learning server provides remotes business education to improve skills in the field of entrepreneurship.	Open courses	No
OpenCourseWare по-русски http://ruocw.org/	RuOCW – project aims to support OCW Russian-language OER.	OER, OpenCourseWare	No
Online professors  http://professorjournal.ru/web/guest	The lecturers from leading Russian universities are invited to design and promote their website about training courses. The web server consist of websites devoted to various academic disciplines. Each site - independent educational resource that teachers and students use the learning process. Lectures, presentations, workshops, tests and examinations - all this can be found on the websites	OER, Open courses	No
UniverTV http://univertv.ru/	Open educational video portal provides access to: educational films on various topics; lectures by the leading Russian and foreign universities; scientific conferences or scientific and popular lectures on issues of interest; samples of school teaching complex topics in the "School".	Video lectures	No
Wikiversity http://ru.wikiversity.org	Fund project "Wikimedia", positioning itself as a new form of interactive education and conducting research projects open. Wikiversity aims to promote the discovery and dissemination of knowledge in the most natural way: helping people learn and share educational materials.	OER	No
Computer online video class http://compteacher.ru/	Video tutorials for different categories of users related to computer topics	OER	No
Academia http://tvkultura.ru/brand/show/brand_id/20898/	Educational project "Academia", which started in 2010 in one of the Russian TV channels. In the framework of eminent Russian scientists read popular science lectures for all comers, and their videos are laid out on the Internet. Each edition of the program - a lecture on one of the basic sciences.	OER	No

An important role in the OER development is played by OER operators completing the following tasks:

• combining OER information stored on scattered web servers;
• creating an OER catalog (by topic and/or by educational level);
  creating search tools to find OERs; and
  promoting OERs in the academic environment.

OER operators develop and maintain information systems that integrate information (metadata) on OERs obtained from different sources. Such information systems enable to conduct a quick search for OERs, get information on the targeted discipline about the number of OERs and their developers, as well as about their access conditions.
OER operators create a unified information environment for teachers and students at one of the following levels:

• national level;
• international level.

Educational and research materials of Russian higher educational institutions are presented in information systems of FSI SIIT&T Informika. The following information systems with free access to educational and research resources have been created.

Table 2. Integrators of open educational resources

Institution	Description	Type
The Federal Centre for Informational and Educational Resources (FCIER) http://fcior.edu.ru/	FCIER is one of the flagship projects of the Federal Targeted Programme for the Development of Education (2006- 2010) aimed at creation of the informational and educational environment and infrastructure in the Russian Federation.	Catalogue of OER and search engines for OER
Federal Portal “Russian Education” http://www.edu.ru/index.php	The educational portals have evolved as an integrated system of educational Internet projects. The Federal Portal “Russian Education” is a backbone component, an “entry point” to the system. It contains not only a list of all the portals and links to them, but also provides information on approaches, standards, and technologies. There are also publications on the development of the system of portals. To unify metadata of resources according to international standards (IMS/LOM), the standard “Metadata of informational and educational resources for Internet catalogues” was developed by “Informika” (2004) and adopted by the community of portal developers. In particular, this standard suggests an integrated approach to classification of resources based on a “four-dimension” subject heading list: by the level of education, target audience, type of resources and subject field.	Catalogue of OER and search engines for OER
Educational resources online http://edu-top.ru/katalog/	The catalog of online Educational Resources for basic and secondary (complete) general education" is based on the printed version and is an information system that includes the following categories: Federal and regional educational resources; Educational publishing and educational media; Conferences, exhibitions, competitions, contests; Software tools; Digital libraries, dictionaries, encyclopaedias.	Catalogue of OER
Single-Entry Window http://window.edu.ru/	The integrated catalogue of resources contains metadata of educational Internet resources: descriptions of materials of the digital library of the Single-Entry Window portal and external resources published at other portals and websites. The catalogue is indexed according to the following criteria: the level of education: pre-school, general, vocational and extended education; the target audience: university enrollee, researcher, manager, teacher, and student; resource type: educational sites, learning, instructional, reference, illustrative, research materials, regulatory documents, etc.; the subject field within general and vocational education.	Catalogue of OER and search engines for OER

MOOCs

Currently, Russian higher education institutions have joined the OER dissemination movement, providing access to their educational programs, workshops or teaching guides and even e-learning courses. In today’s educational environment, granting free access only to the educational content will not create any significant competitive advantages for the Russian education system in general and higher education institutions in particular. With the active development of foreign MOOC promotion programs, Russian higher education institutions noticeably lose out to foreign universities in terms of attracting the Internet users attention.

The analysis of international experience demonstrates that universities cooperate in order to promote MOOCs carrying out a joint design and development of the environment for open educational courses and providing joint training on MOOCs.

The Russian system of professional education needs to have its own MOOC environment to develop and promote the Russian education.

The MOOC popularity among Russian-speaking Internet users indicates the importance of establishing the Russian MOOC learning environment. Development of the MOOC learning environment will open up new horizons for the Russian system of professional education:

• free competition of e-learning courses and educational institutions;
• new quality of education and educational services;
• unprecedented opportunities for access to high quality educational courses;
• creation of a new educational environment for the development of education; and
• creation of an educational program comprising courses from different developers.

Table 3. Developers of MOOCs

Institution	Description	Type	Academic credit
Massive Open Online Courses MESI http://lms.mesi.ru/	The initiative of the Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics provides e-learning services for internet users. Self-registration on the site and on the record provided by the courses accessible to everyone. Today for their own student enrollment in courses available for 3 categories: Economics and Finance; Russian as a Foreign Language; Computer Science and Applied Informatics.	MOOCs (English language)	Yes (for registered full-fee students)
Universarium http://universarium.org/	Universarium is the platform for training courses of Russian universities focused on broad audiences implements several functions: • Provide access to quality and affordable education for everyone • Increasing the attractiveness of education • Preservation of national identity of the Russian educational space • Provide additional opportunities and vocational training for Russian citizens living in remote and inaccessible areas • Ensuring access to education for people with disabilities • Strengthening the position of the Russian language as a basic language of communication in the Russia	MOOCs	Yes (for registered full-fee students)
UniWeb http://uniweb.ru/	Online courses leading Russian universities	MOOCs	Yes (for registered full-fee students)

Virtual mobility

Instances of virtual mobility practices are few among Russian universities due to legal constraints and several other factors. The first examples of the virtual mobility are found in educational programs for high-tech areas.

Table 4. Virtual mobility initiatives

Institution	Description	Keywords
Postgraduate Training Network in Biotechnology of Neurosciences BioN http://www.neurobiotech.ru/ru/main	BioN is the first National Educational Network in Neurosciences. BioN creates advanced courses, organizes students’ placements in European universities, conducts seminars and schools. BioN is the first Russian national level network of postgraduate schools in natural sciences and, in a larger context, as an intellectual innovation initiative to develop biotechnology applications in Russian life sciences. BioN is designed as a network of leading centers in different fields of neuroscience associated with the partner universities and research institutes. BioN promotes a number of coordinated activities, introduces common standards and practices and improves the quality of postgraduate education in the Russian Federation.	Postgraduate, Neuroscience
EduNano http://www.edunano.ru/view_doc.html?mode=doc&doc_id=5939810668730923089	Interuniversity program of training engineers for the innovative economy of Moscow - is highly skilled engineers and technicians who are ready to participate in a professional high-tech innovation companies. - The program is based on the interaction of the leading technical universities in Moscow (Master implementation of training programs in network ); high-tech companies (practical activities students project companies) and expertise of the business community (providing advice and mentoring support project work students). In the pilot phase of the program will use the results of successful case study: developed in 2011-2013. at the Department of Technological Entrepreneurship MIPT - RUSNANO model of skilled manpower for nanotechnology-based enterprises.	Technical University, Interuniversity program