Developing Open Educational Resources for Distance and Open Learning

Commonwealth of Learning (COL)’s regional centre CEMCA organised a workshop on the theme: Developing Open Educational Resources for Distance and Open Learning on 14-15 June 2022 in India. This workshop was aimed at the faculty members of Directorates of Distance Education and Open Universities who are responsible for developing courses for use in their respective universities by curating and using Open Educational Resources (OER).

A total of 23 faculty members from 20 ODL institutions took part in this event.

Professor Nageshwar Rao, Vice-Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University who delivered the inaugural address spoke about the role of CEMCA in promoting OER in the country and stressed the need for the development of policies at the institutional levels.

With the University Grants Commission (UGC)’s Online and Open and Distance Learning Programmes Regulations, 2020, allowing up to 40 percent of course content from OER sources to be used for quality learning, this timely initiative of CEMCA, undertaken in India with reference to National Education Policy 2020 was commendable, he said.

The two-day event offered a hands-on learning experience for each of the participants to engage with Open Educational Resources (OER) online, and to work with the necessary tools for sourcing, remixing, and contextualising learning material for their requirements. The participants were also exposed to the open- source tools for sharing their own institutional OER contents and to also attach appropriate creative commons (CC) licenses to the new material developed.

As a way forward, COL shall set up a helpdesk to handhold and support the stakeholders of OER. COL shall also consider organising follow-up workshops in the regions in collaboration with host institutions. Several institutions have also requested support from the Commonwealth of Learning for finalisation and implementation of their institutional OER policies.