Open Educational Resources and Open Licensing Policies in the Indian Context- 22 February 2013, IIC, New Delhi
Open Educational Resources and Open Licensing Policies in the Indian Context- 22 February 2013-India International Centre, New Delhi
Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) in association with Creative Commons, USA organized a workshop on “Open Educational Resources and Open Licensing Policies in the Indian Context” on 22 February 2013 at the India International Centre, New Delhi. Mr. Anant Kumar Singh, Jt. Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Govt of India inaugurated the event, while Dr. P. Prakash, Vice Chancellor, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University participated as Guest of honour. Ms. Catherine Casserly, CEO of Creative Commons presided over the inaugural session. Mr. Singh welcomed the initiative of CEMCA and emphasized from a philosophical viewpoint, all educational resources should be available and accessible to all freely beyond national boundaries. As more and more resources are now available online as open educational resources, there is a need to have mechanisms to choose most suitable one to optimize learning time, he said. Mr. Singh, who is also the Govt of India nominee to the Advisory Council of CEMCA and focal point of COL in India, said that the deliberations of the meeting will be useful to develop a roadmap to assist institutions to use open educational resources effectively.
Dr. Prakash emphasized that improving access to quality learning resources as OER provides increase opportunities for the learners to learn from diverse learning materials. As such, this is something that should be looked upon by all educational institutions to create and share to avoid duplication of efforts, he added. Ms. Catherine Casserly while giving an overview of the importance of open licensing emphasized the Creative Commons approach that reduces the ‘permission request’ process to produce educational materials. She said that the event organized in collaboration with CEMCA is a great networking opportunity for Creative Commons to expand its partner-base and looks forward to CEMCA and COL’s leadership role in OER to promote the use of CC licenses in the region.
Besides presentation by the Creative Commons team to orient about the various types of licenses, five institutional experiences on use of OER were also presented by five participants -- National Institute of Open Schooling (Dr. S.S. Jena, Chairman), Acharya Narendra Dev College (Dr. Savitri Singh, Principal), Indira Gandhi National Open University (Prof. Uma Kanjilal), National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Prof. Kushal Sen, IITD), and Pratham Books (Mr. Gautham John). In all 27 participants from different sectors participated in the event. Dr. Sanjaya Mishra, Director, CEMCA facilitated the discussions and presentations. During the discussions, Ms. Jessica Coates and Jane Hornibrooks of Creative Commons team provided answer to different legal questions, and responded to scenarios presented to them. At the end of the discussion, the deliberations of the event were summarized under three groups – what individual teachers should do to promote OER and open licensing, what academic institutions should consider, and where interventions from the Government of India are needed to promote the use of Open Educational Resources. Dr. Mishra emphasized that the Commonwealth of Learning and CEMCA are committed to promote OER through strategic interventions for capacity building and policy development at national and institutional level in its current three year plan, and he informed that CEMCA is working currently to develop a course on OER-based eLearning to train 500 teachers contribute to development of OER.
