The third annual meeting of the UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (ICT-CFT) OER Network focused on the importance of Open Educational Resources (OER) to address COVID-19 challenges worldwide, leveraging the UNESCO OER Recommendation adopted in 2019. The meeting, held on 10 February 2021, brought together 25 experts representing over 13 Ministries of Education and tertiary education institutions providing teacher training to 12 countries.
This online meeting was organized by UNESCO and involved experts and governmental representatives from Djibouti, Egypt, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, the Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey and the United States of America, as well as representatives from UNESCO Field Offices in Cairo, Dakar and Yaoundé.
COVID exposed the education ‘deficit’, particularly in terms of the use of ICT. COVID forced many to rethink systemic issues, infrastructure and capacity building.
Participants to the meeting highlighted that during the past year, online availability of the Network’s resources, as well as capacity building to create, use, re-use and adapt OERs to support teacher training based on UNESCO’s ICT Competency Framework, has played a key role to ensure continuity of teaching and learning during the pandemic, as education institutions worldwide have been forced to close while adapting to new educational realities.
Dr Melinda Bandalaria, Chancellor and Professor at the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU), highlighted that OER had been proved particularly valuable in this regard for teacher-training courses at OPOU.
Dr Ilyas Ahmed, Professor, University of Djibouti echoed that experience, and emphasized the increased use and expansion of OER-based resources to meet the challenges of the pandemic, by providing training for teachers in Djibouti on using technologies effectively. Dr Ndlovu Nokulunga, Lecturer, University of Witwaterstrand, South Africa, underscored that the interest in OER has grown substantially at her institution since the outbreak of COVID-19, and that the challenge is now to ensure greater access to this content to all stakeholders.
With regard to the formulation of the Network’s 2021 workplan, participants formulated strategies to align their activities more closely to the UNESCO OER Recommendation 2019 and its implementation, including by sharing best practices to support national contextualization of the Recommendation and its action areas. In addition, meeting participants agreed increase focus on sharing experiences in the development and implementation of digital strategies at national and institutional levels.
The presentations at the meeting further underscored the clear links between the work of the ICT-CFT/OER Project and the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. Meeting participants also concluded that this project is important to support stakeholders in harnessing OER worldwide, to share learning and knowledge openly with a view to building more resilient and inclusive knowledge societies.
The UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (ICT-CFT) OER Network was created in 2013 to support Member States' efforts in ICT teacher training by contextualizing the ICT Competency Framework. It aims to support the realization of national objectives related to ICT in education, develop teacher training materials based on OER, and implement teacher training exercises based on these materials.
The ICT-CFT is a guidance tool for pre- and in-service teacher education that to help teachers integrate ICT into their practice and professional development, to advance student learning.