Brazilian Project on OER: Challenges and Perspectives
The Brazilian Project on Open Educational Resources: Challenges and Perspectives is a project that works to leverage the international discussion around Open Educational Resources to the Brazilians’ reality and perspectives. The objectives of the project include developing a Green Paper mapping the situation of OER in Brazil trying to understand how the educational policy is favorable to OER and how the public money flows into educational materials, creating a toolkit focus in OER to be later distributed and promoted in Brazil, contributing to the development of a network of international initiatives and Brazilian initiatives on open educational resources, and holding a conference to show results, discuss recommendations, and present international and national OER projects.
The initial recommendations arising from the Green Paper include the following: publicly funded educational materials should be considered to be public goods and made available under the international definitions of OER; data and metrics regarding the success of the OER policy should be available to all; public funds for ICT infrastructure investment should be conditioned on the recipient being able to educate teachers and other stakeholders with regard to OER. The OER-Brazil project has been asked by members of Congress there to help draft a bill which would mandate public access to publicly funded educational materials following a joint Congressional hearing before the Commission on Education and the Commission on Technology and Innovations.
