The third OER World Congress was held in Dubai on 19 and 20 November 2024.
The first one took place in Paris in 2010 and enabled UNESCO to take a position on the issue of OER. In 2017, in Ljubljana, the Congress launched the process leading to the adoption of the UNESCO recommendation in 2019. Seven years on, the initial ambition is to analyze the current situation and come up with a declaration (known as the “Dubai Declaration”) strongly affirming the values of open education.
The first day of this type of event is very formal. The ministers have the floor at UNESCO (from 10:00), to present what has been achieved since 2019. I have been invited to moderate a session on the links between artificial intelligence and open educational resources, with particular reference to digital inclusion (from 2:30).
Dr Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is a former Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of South Africa. She talks to us about gender issues, noting how AI and OER, because they allow a degree of flexibility, are able to contribute to the educational issues of women and girls.
Mr Seizo Onoe, from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), aimed at convincing us of the benefits of standardisation: the ITU plays an essential role in network access.
Mr Kevin Chan is director for Global Policy Campaign Strategies at Meta. He spoke in favour of open LLMs: he believes that these are the models that should be favoured. This raises the question of “virtuous” chatbots and virtual assistants that are as open as possible.
As moderator of the round table, I was able to gauge the number of essential subjects that need to be addressed when looking at the issues of open education and artificial intelligence together. I was also able to use my ‘right to conclude’ to make a proposal on behalf of the UNITWIN UNOE network that we coordinate from Nantes.
Session on AI, OER and inequalities – photography under CC0 licence
Curiously enough, while UNESCO is asking Member States to apply the 2019 recommendation, and while it systematically publishes its own reports under a Creative Commons licence, there are no rules for the 1,000 or so UNESCO Chairs and 100 UNITWIN networks.
I have therefore proposed, on behalf of the UNOE network, that publishing openly should become the rule. The text of the proposal can be found here. Initial feedback from the major international OER players and UNESCO is already very positive. We will, of course, publish the results on this blog.
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