Resources

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 aims to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education’. Open Educational Resources (OER) have the potential to support the removal of barriers to accessing resources and supporting inclusiveness (facilitated by digital literacy and information and communication technology). There are concerns about the quality aspect of OER, and how this is ensured for users and content creators. In addition, inclusion requires OER to be available in languages in which users prefer to access and use them.

This toolkit introduces the concept of open licensing for educational materials, explores the use of open licences for these materials, provides a practical ‘how to’ guide for teams and government staff, and presents issues to consider before using open licences in World Bank and other education operations. Although all levels of education are considered in this toolkit, the focus is on OER in early childhood education and primary education project

In 2018 we published an open licensing primer for early literacy publishers on open licensing, with a brief section for authors and illustrators. So much has changed since then that we decided to take a fresh look at the issues and challenges, this time giving full attention to content creators, such as publishers, authors, illustrators, and teacher, all of whom have a stake in producing high quality and cost effective materials for education.

This infographic provides an explanation of open licensing and how to use open licensing to increase access to high-quality teaching and learning materials, including textbooks and storybooks. 

The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) have published Guidelines on open and distance learning for youth and adult literacy to support literacy providers around the world in planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating their open and distance learning-based (ODL) literacy programmes.

The Global E-Schools and Communities Initiative (Gesci), in collaboration with the African Union Commission (AUC) and other partners, developed an African Leaders in ICT (ALICT) capacity-building programme. The first phase of the programme ran from 2012-2013, focusing on leadership capacitybuilding in twelve countries (Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia).

The Global E-Schools and Communities Initiative (Gesci), in collaboration with the African Union Commission (AUC) and other partners, developed an African Leaders in ICT (ALICT) capacity-building programme. The first phase of the programme ran from 2012-2013, focusing on leadership capacitybuilding in twelve countries (Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia).

Openly licensed resources are ‘free’ to access, but there can be significant user, creation, adaptation, and production costs. The long-term sustainability of African publishing in local languages requires that these costs be met fairly and completely, using models that will encourage people to establish, grow, and sustain excellent content creation organizations.