About

About the sponsors for the OCL4Ed 13.09 mOOC
The OER Foundation (OERF) is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that provides leadership, international networking and support for educational institutions to achieve their objectives through open education. The OER university is a flagship project of the Foundation.
The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. The COL has adopted an OER policy and established two honorary Chairs in OER. This workshop is sponsored through the COL Chairs in OER programme.
Otago Polytechnic is the oldest Institute of Technology in New Zealand. Otago Polytechnic is the first post-secondary institution in the world to adopt a default Creative Commons Attribution intellectual property policy. Otago Polytechnic is a founding anchor partner of the OERu and hosts the COL Chair in OER.
Athabasca University as Canada’s Open University, is dedicated to the removal of barriers that restrict access to and success in university-level study and to increasing equality of educational opportunity for adult learners worldwide. Athabasca University is a founding anchor partner of the OERu and hosts the UNESCO-COL Chair in OER.

History of OCL4Ed

The course materials for OCL4Ed 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.

To the best of our knowledge, OCL4Ed was the fist comprehensive open course on OERs, copyright and Creative Commons designed for educators where all course materials were published under a Creative Commons Attribution license and developed openly as a collaborative open design project.

You will be joining thousands of educators from more than 100 countries who have benefited from the OCL4Ed course resources. The pilot course was first offered to 332 participants from 60 different countries in March 2011. The OCL4Ed 12.01 course attracted 1067 registered students from 90 countries and currently holds the record for the highest number of registrations for a single cohort (see abridged statistics). The OER Foundation has implemented an iterative design model integrating a number of technology refinements with each offering.

OCL4Ed will now provide additional participation and certification alternatives. As an open course, OCL4Ed has now been incorporated into the Open Education Practice elective of the Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education as a micro course. OCL4Ed now offers optional assessment services leading to official course credit for learners interested in formal academic credit. Participants will also be able to earn digital badges and/or Certificates of Participation. We look forward to a growing number of institutions who will incorporate OCL4Ed into their formal courses to join our parallel learning university of free OERu learners.