Brasília, August 19, 2015
Congressman Félix Mendonça Júnior
Chairman of the Commission on Culture
Brasília - DF
Congressman José Saraiva Felipe
Chairman of the Commission on Education
Brasília – DF
cc Renato Janine Ribeiro – Minister of Education (MEC)
cc Juana Nunes – Sefac – Ministry of Culture (Minc)
cc Margarida Salomão – Congresswoman and Rapporteur of PL 1513/2011 in the Commission on Culture
cc Professora Dorinha Seabra Rezende – Congresswoman
Ref: Concluding letter from the International Seminar on Open Educational Resources
Your excellencies, Members of Congress,
The International Seminar on Open Educational Resources (OER) organized by both of the commissions and held on August, 19 in the Nereu Ramos auditorium in the House of Deputies, was of great importance to strengthen the promotion of Open Education in the fields of Culture and Education in Brazil. Open education covers the following concepts which are essential for accessing knowledge in today’s contemporary society:
- New compositions and teaching/learning spaces which can go beyond the rigid classroom format with rows of desks;
- Accessibility for people with special needs;
- Appreciation of different places to learn (including digital devices) and of the varied and autonomous learning pathways;
- Open Education Resources (OER) and free software that allow changes and adaptations for teachers and students.
The seminar in question looked at the last concept, about the OERs, in particular depth. According to the UNESCO definition, OERs are learning materials, teaching or research that are in the public domain or under an open licence, to allow free use, adaptation and distribution, preferably in open formats. Since 2008, the OER-Brazil Community has been working for the cause in the country, organizing events, meetings and publications about the importance of open education.
It was the OER-Brazil Community – made up of teachers, researchers, lawyers, engineers and journalists among other professions, and supported by a global community – that was responsible for international speakers at the Seminar and for the mixture of subjects covered at the event, organized into the following topics:
- The Seminar showed that a considerable debate is needed in Brazil to spread knowledge about open education and reduce implementation barriers for projects in the public domain;
- It is fundamental to promote access to knowledge to every Brazilian citizen creating social justice and helping overcome inequalities;
- Digital culture has brought attention to the need for flexible usage rights for educational resources in order to facilitate access for educators and students. Since way back when the photocopier was one of the only alternatives, people copied, adapted, remixed and shared, however under law these actions are subject to punishment;
- The adoption and creation of OER have contributed to methodological innovation in education, creating leading roles for teachers, students and school;
- The OERs can create other types of peer review, more horizontal and that guarantee the quality of materials. The authors themselves will give special attention to the resource deposited in repositories because they know that a there is a huge potential for there to be lots of accesses;
- The OERs may inspire new business models, based on the concepts of network society and collaborative economy;
- The main point identified for the difficulty in adopting the OERs lays on the cultural character. People still don’t realize the dimension of the impact that working with the context of open knowledge has socially and how this creates equality and empowerment.
After the considerations above, we request the approval of Bill 1513/2011, which establishes a clear policy in which educational materials developed or acquired with public funding should be openly available to the public, under a flexible copyright licence, like for example, the Creative Commons licenses, to guarantee the taxpayers free and unequivocal access to educational resources and increase universal access to knowledge.
As we could learn from the Seminar, similar policies have already been approved in different countries, such as The United States of America, Canada, Slovakia and Poland for example. Research shows that these policies bring lots of positives as a resulting impact both to the government budget, which will save public money for investment on Education and Culture the medium and long term, and in the creation of access opportunities to knowledge for all citizens, including those that are not in formal education, as well as providing new forms of ownership, enabling the freedom to use, copy, remix and share.
Brazil has already been cited internationally as a reference in the domain of public policy, with the signing of Decree 52.681/2011, which established a public policy of OER in the Municipal Department of Education for Sao Paulo. The OERs are also present in two goals of the National Education Plan, sanctioned in 2014 (goals 5 and 7). Additionally, organized civil society and the Brazilian universities have also contributed with the growth of this movement in Brazil through research, implementation of institutional repositories, developing projects in different areas of knowledge and training of student and teacher authors.
Also of note are the projects of international cooperation on the subject, such as the Emundus project, funded by the European Union, which develops research on Open Education use. Brazil is a partner in Emundus, together with Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, Canada, New Zealand, Belgium, Italy and Holland. The main aims of the project are to map the state of the art MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in higher education and contribute towards the sharing of knowledge, tools and practices of MOOC and of Virtual Mobility (VM) developed mainly in Brazilian universities.
The Federal Government invests millions of reals of tax-payers money each year in programs which include purchasing teaching books, digital learning objects and software, through grants, contracts and other agreements of cooperation. We recognize that these investments contribute towards the learning of thousands of Brazilians of all ages. However, despite all this material being acquired for collective use, it is generally closed, restricted to public use.
Another important point to highlight with the adoption of OER is the possibility of encouraging educators and students to take a leading role in the creation of their own educational materials, thus promoting more than access to a comprehensive education, but also the responsibility for their own teaching-learning process. In this sense, educators and students become part of the entire process with the production of teaching materials, which will range from simple resources to be used, to copyright resources full of significance and symbols resulting from the local, regional and national productions, also seeking to incorporate the rights of accessibility in their production, favouring the use by people with disabilities.
It is a cause in promotion of equality of access to knowledge, a right to education, stimulating creativity and innovation and better use of public resources. In June 2012, during the World Open Educational Resources Congress organized by UNESCO in Paris, the participating nations signed the Paris OER declaration, which represents a major step forward in a movement that was started over ten years ago, when the term OER was adopted by UNESCO.
We are writing now to express our profound support and to appeal for the approval of Bill No. 1513/11, which strives for the establishment of a clear policy for Open Educational Resources and we are willing to collaborate on this journey.
OER Community – Brazil