Open educational resources policy

Open educational resource policies (OER policies) are principles or tenets adopted by governing bodies in support of the use of open content—specifically open educational resources (OER) -- and practices in educational institutions. Such policies are emerging increasingly at the national, state/province, and local levels.Creative Commons defines (OER) policies as "legislation, institutional policies, and/or funder mandates that lead to the creation, increased use, and/or support for improving OER." OER are learning materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.

Creative Commons hosts an open educational resources policy registry which lists 112 current and proposed open education policies from around the world.

Another resource for finding OER policies is the Open Educational Quality Initiative OPAL Best Practice Clearing House. The OPAL Initiative is a partnership between seven organizations including the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE), UNESCO, European Foundation for Quality, the Open University UK, Aalto University and the Catholic University Portugal. Led by the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, it is partly funded by the European Commission.

On Friday 22 June 2012, the UNESCO World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress released the 2012 Paris OER Declaration which called on governments to openly license publicly funded educational materials.

UNESCO member states unanimously approved the declaration, which highlights the importance of open educational resources and gives recommendations to governments and institutions around the globe.

On January 17, 2014, the Council on Higher Education in South Africa published a White Paper for Post-School Education and Training. This paper emphasized open learning principles and set the stage for supporting national efforts to design and develop high-quality open educational resources. In response the University of South Africa (UNISA)—one of the founding partners of the OERu network and a member of the 2012 Unesco OER conference in Paris—approved an Open Educational Resource (OER) Strategy in March 2014.

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