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3rd UNESCO World OER Congress Digital Public Goods: Open Solutions and AI for Inclusive Access to Knowledge

 - The 3rd UNESCO World OER Congress explored how the implementation of the UNESCO 2019 Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) can enhance global digital cooperation. This congress aims to promote collaboration and innovation in OER, contributing to the United Nations Secretary General’s Road Map for Digital Cooperation and the Global Digital Compact.  The Congress concludes with the Dubai Declaration on OER, which examined how theUNESCO 2019 Recommendation on OER can optimize openly licensed content to address the challenges and opportunities posed by emerging technologies, 19-20 November 2024.
 
I attended and contributed to a session, invited by UNESCO at their 3rd UNESCO OER Congress, and was even honored to have been invited as well to the previous two ones in APrsi and Ljubljana, 2012 and 2017
For me, this was the third time for the UNESCO OER Congresses, and it has been a great pleasure and honor to follow the process and progress. The previous two congresses, held in Paris in 2012, and Ljubljana in 2017, resulted in the Paris OER Declaration and the Ljubljana OER Action Plan, which was the forerunner of the 2019 UNESCO Recommendation on OER.
 

The theme of the Dubai congress was “Digital Public Goods: Open Solutions and AI for Inclusive Access to Knowledge”. Digital public goods (DPG) are defined by the UN’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, as

“open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the sustainable digital goals (SDGs)”.

In this context open education resources are regarded as digital public goods that “support the enrichment of the global knowledge commons”.

In addition to the Sustainable Development Goals, the UNESCO Recommendation on OER, and the Road Map for Digital Cooperation, the Dubai Declaration also references Commitment 7 of Our Common Agenda: to “Improve digital cooperation”.

The output of the 3rd OER Congress is the Draft Dubai Declaration on OER
In preparation for the 3rd UNESCO World OER Congress, six Regional Consultations on OER were organized with the generous support of the Hewlett Foundation and the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF). These regional consultations were held online and in hybrid format, as follows: the Africa Consultation (hybrid, at eLearning Africa 2024, 31 May 2024); the Caribbean Consultation (online, 10 July 2024); the Asia and the Pacific Consultation (online, 30 July 2024); the Europe and North America  Consultation (hybrid at Digital Learning Week, UNESCO on 4 September 2024); the Latin America Consultation (online, 8 October 2024); and the Arab States Consultation (online, 21 October 2024). Full program and Concept note4 can be found here 

The objectives of this 3rd UNESCO World OER Congress were to: 

1) Share best practices and innovations in the implementation of the UNESCO 2019 Recommendation on OER in the five years since its adoption;

2) Identify strategies for supporting the implementation of the UNESCO 2019 Recommendation on OER to meet emerging challenges;

3) Identify collaborative mechanisms to mobilize more stakeholders to implement the UNESCO 2019 Recommendation on OER, and to expand access to quality, free, accessible, openly licensed learning resources in support of the Global Digital Compact and the Transforming Education Summit 2023 Call for Action.

Recommendations

"Emerging technologies, including AI, provide opportunities to advance the UNESCO 2019 OER Recommendation. Beyond the creation of new openly licensed content, potential applications include: facilitating the detection of existing openly licensed content online; developing techniques for effective OER curation; translating OER into multiple languages; and facilitating content indexing through the recommendation of descriptive metadata. Other emerging technologies, such as blockchain-based services and applications, could potentially ensure the provenance, integrity, and lawful use of OER. 

Legal frameworks are then not up to date with technological advancements such as these. In the realm of intellectual property rights (IPR), the key to OER, this can lead to ambiguities on what constitutes legal use as well as issues regarding how exceptions and limitations to copyright law may be used even when a work is not openly licensed. Developing clear guidelines and policies that address these issues can help protect the rights of content creators, ensure proper attribution, and create innovative technology spaces for the public good.

The Global Digital Compact, and UNESCO’s ROAM-X principles, which are Rights-based, Open, Accessible, and promote Multi-stakeholder Participation based on cross-cutting principles, and in particular Gender Equity, can inform policies for OER by providing a comprehensive framework that ensures inclusivity, equity, and collaboration in the development and implementation of Open Educational Resource. 

These frameworks and principles, alongside the UNESCO 2019 Recommendation on OER, provide a robust foundation for developing OER. The stakeholders addressed in this document are those in the UNESCO 2019 Recommendation on OER[1] . With regard to Generative AI, it is important to underscore that these recommendations apply both to the inputs and outputs of LLMs. Furthermore, the principle of human centered use of technology prevails in all recommendations. The principles of transparency and knowledge sharing  are fundamental for the implementation of these recommendations. The below guidelines aim to provide actions to harness the opportunities posed by emerging technologies, such as AI, for expanding knowledge sharing and creation through the implementation of the 2019 Recommendation on OER. 

[1] teachers, educators, learners, governmental bodies, parents, educational providers and institutions, education support personnel, teacher trainers, educational policy makers, cultural institutions (such as libraries, archives and museums) and their users, information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure providers, researchers, research institutions, civil society organizations (including professional and student associations), publishers, the public and private sectors, intergovernmental organizations, copyright holders and authors, media and broadcasting groups and funding bodies.