Call for Papers – Special Session
Open Educational Resources (OER)

Overview

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials, delivered in any media, that are under public domain or licensed openly, allowing them to be used or adapted by third parties.

OER had been developed for more than 15 years in the educational field, based on the principles of open movement and inspired by free software. International institutions such as UNESCO or the European Union are making a major effort to develop this concept, which involves not only a new type of resource, but a model of personal, institutional and governmental involvement. OER are seen as an opportunity for teacher innovation through their empowerment as co-creators, who are offered the opportunity to reuse and adapt existing resources. From a practical point of view, the concept of OER is being favored by the development of new applications and solutions that promote the user’s adoption: open formats, open source applications, open licenses such as Creative Commons, social networks, repositories, etc.

Main Goal

OER Special Session seeks to bring together OER researchers, activists, teachers and stakeholders, to present theoretical, methodological, technical or empirical research on OER and related issues. We seek, in particular, a look at OER current main challenges.

OER Special Session it is hoped to be able to give visibility to the actions that in these five strategic areas are being developed in different contexts and languages, giving global diffusion, as well as greater international articulation to them. In that sense, it would be opportune that the OER Special Session should also be considered as an activity that continues the discussions of the 2nd World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress.

Topics of Interest

• Building the capacity of users to find, re-use, create and share OER:
• Building awareness and skills to use OER
• Sharing OER
• Finding OER
• Language and cultural issues:
• Gender-sensitive, culturally and linguistically relevant OER
• Development and adaptation of culturally-sensitive and linguistically accurate OER
• Collaborative development and community engagement
• Strategies for overcoming cultural barriers
• Ensuring inclusive and equitable access to quality OER:
• Accessible inclusive OER use and development
• Quality assurance mechanisms for OER
• Developing sustainability models:
• Strategic opportunities to governments and institutions
• Value added models
• Revenues and sustainability aspects
• Policies, incentives, and recognition practices
• Developing supportive policy environments:
• Policies for publicly funded educational resources
• Sustainable financing models
• OER and development priorities
• Links between OER policies and other open education policies

Important Dates

We kindly invite authors to submit their complete papers (no abstract) for review by 20 November 2017 latest, following the submission guidelines at http://www.educon-conference.org/current/paper_preparation.php .

Program Committee

Chairs

• Ismar Frango, Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, BR
• Martín Llamas, University of Vigo, ES
• Virginia Rodés, Universidad de la República (Udelar), UY

Members

• Adriana Gewerc Barujel, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
• Ana Casali, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina
• André Raabe, Univali, Brazil
• Antonio Fernández Monje, CeDeC, Spain
• Antonio Moreira Texeira, Universidade Aberta de Lisboa, Portugal
• Antonio Silva Sprock, Universidad Central de Venezuela
• Baltasar Fernández-Manjón, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
• Bea de los Arcos, Open University, UK
• Carlos Vaz de Carvalho, ISEP, Portugal
• César Collazos, Universidad del Cauca, Colombia
• Cristian Cechinel, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Brazil
• Edson Pinheiro Pimentel, UFABC, Brazil
• Isabel Azevedo, ISEP, Portugal
• Javiera Atenas, University College London, UK
• Jesús Valverde Berrocoso, Universidad de Extremadura, Spain
• Manuel Freire - Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
• Marcelo Milrad, Linnaeus University, Sweden
• Nelson Piedra, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador
• Patricia Díaz, Universidad de la República, Uruguay
• Tel Amiel, Unicamp, Brazil
• Xavier Ochoa, ESPOL, Ecuador