ICEM&SIIE 2011 Joint Conference - Universidade de Passo Fundo

Proceedings of ICEM&SIIE‘11 Joint Conference
them to create, adapt, and use OER, as well as training materials for teachers and
other teaching tools
3) Resources to assure the quality of education and educational practices.
Since the realization of opening access to educational materials with the aim of providing
equal educational opportunities for all, a number of issues have had to be dealt with about
these open educational resources. In order to put forward what concerns and priorities
educational institutions might have related to OER, a UNESCO report titled ―Open
Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace‖ (UNESCO, 2009) reports a number
of issues with their priority rank. More than half of over 620 participants, most of whom were
from developing countries and most of whose educational setting was universities and
distance learning institutions, responded to the survey.
Figure 1 – OER Community members by region. Source: (D'antoni, 2009).
Most of the respondents in the survey hold high positions in their organizations whereas
teachers, researchers and project officers form an important part of the participants.
Figure 2 – Occupational profile of respondents. Source: (D'antoni, 2009).
The five most important issues that stand out from the report are: (1) awareness raising and
promotion, (2) communities and networking, (3) capacity development, (4) sustainability, and
(5) quality assurance. However, different countries and regions have different situations and
face different challenges in creation, reuse and adoption of OER. The report points out to the
fact that because there is a considerable amount of OER available in developed countries,
3