Otago Polytechnic/National Symposium on Open Education/Symposium report

Sector participation
Designed as an open national symposium, invitations were extended to sector stakeholders in New Zealand and advertised on a number of public lists. Places were allocated to all individuals who expressed an interest to attend the symposium. The confirmed list of participants provided a good mix of senior leaders, government agencies and educational practitioners representing the compulsory school sector and the tertiary education sector. Results from the pre-seminar survey indicated that: 44% of attendees identified as senior leaders, 40% as educational practitioners, 16% as state agency officials and 8% as interested people and representatives from the non-governmental agency sector. 35% of respondents reported that the compulsory school sector was their main focus of interest. The planning, agenda and workshop resources were developed transparently and hosted on the WikiEducator website.

First session: Introduction and international context comparison of participant views and perceptions
Professor Asha Kanwar, President and Chief Executive of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) welcomed participants and explained COL's perspective on open education: COL believes that knowledge is the common wealth of humankind and that all educational content developed with public funds must be made available under open licenses so that more people are able to benefit from the initial investment.

Professor Kanwar highlighted the 2012 Paris OER Declaration which was developed in collaboration with the COL. She also referenced the communiqué from the 18th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers which emphasised the "need to set up a common platform for OER materials for harmonisation and ease of access." Kanwar suggests that open education is likely to receive increased attention because governments tend to take international agreed documents seriously.

Symposium participants were invited to complete the fair and reasonable practice survey to gauge New Zealand opinion on sharing educational materials which was compared to international data collected from +800 educators worldwide. Survey participants were invited to respond anonymously in their individual capacities. The pre-symposium survey achieved a 76% response rate. A summary of the New Zealand survey data was compared with international averages.

The overwhelming majority of respondents (96%) agree that educational content funded by taxpayer revenue should be released freely for use by everyone in accordance with the principles of the New Zealand Government Open Access Licensing Framework (NZGOAL). Moreover, 88% of New Zealand respondents do not think that education institutions who give away teaching materials will loose competitive advantage through reduced student enrolment.

Recording of opportunities, barriers and policy issues
Drawing on ideas generated from the two national and two international case studies, participants were invited to identify a maximum of two opportunities, two barriers and two policy issues. These contributions have been recorded in the wiki. The following categories have emerged from the issues identified by the participants:


 * 1) Opportunities
 * 2) *Teaching and learning for educators and students
 * 3) *Fiscal sustainability and effeciency
 * 4) *Open philanthropy and society
 * 5) *Learning resources
 * 6) Challenges and barriers
 * 7) * Institutional
 * 8) * System
 * 9) * Technology and infrastructure
 * 10) * Advocacy, awareness and staff capability
 * 11) * Social and cultural
 * 12) * Quality
 * 13) Policy issues
 * 14) * Funding models
 * 15) * Open policy
 * 16) * Education system
 * 17) * Assessment, accreditation and qualifications
 * 18) * Quality

Third session: Proposals for action
The final session was designed to focus on strategic planning issues, specifically taking the the opportunities, affordances, challenges and policy issues for open education in New Zealand as the starting point for a plan of action. Participants commenced work on open “proposals for action” as the first step towards planning the way forward for a sector-wide response to open education in New Zealand.

In an open plenary session the group identified five proposals for action and initiated fist drafts in the wiki for ongoing refinement and implementation:


 * 1) Creative Commons Policies for the compulsory sector (schools)
 * 2) A national framework for open educational resources
 * 3) Piloting a qualification(s) based on OER
 * 4) Open networked model for professional development for educators using OER
 * 5) Funding flexibility for tertiary institutes