Third National Conference on Open Educational Resources in Viet Nam

The third National OER Conference with the theme of "Implementing Open Education Resources: Copyright and License" was organized by the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH) in coordination with UNESCO. More than 70 participants attended the Conference, including representatives from the Ministry of Information and Communications, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Science and Technology, institutions of higher education, library associations, international and national NGOs and organizations.

Speaking at the Conference, Dr Do Van Hung from the USSH announced that after more than two months of piloting OERs in USSH and Thang Long University, 1057 OERs were produced and uploaded to the newly constructed OER Repositories. During the piloting, the repositories received more than 3500 hits, indicating the high level of interest on OERs and 11 publications of which 10 are UNESCO guidelines, documents, and resources were translated and shared with the public.

In addition to these efforts, more than 1000 participants have received training on OER policy advocacy, production of OERs, technical infrastructure, and OER sharing. The participants were trained through workshops and OER roadshows on Open Access organized throughout the country by OER volunteer groups, research centers, universities and NGOs.

At the Conference, participants voiced challenges on Open Access and copyright issues with consideration to relevant legislations, regulations and management systems. Participants also presented international and national practices concerning copyrights, including those of Creative Commons, a recent development of the OER movement in the world and in Viet Nam.

With a unanimous view on the benefits that OERs provide to education, participants made the following recommendations to help advance OERs in Viet Nam:

• to raise awareness on OERs among policy-makers particularly the Ministry of Education and Training, leaders of institutions of higher education, libraries, lecturers, and students among other stakeholders;
• to continue advocacy for national policy, unified and coordinated mechanisms and concrete guidelines regulating in detail the roll-out of OERs on a large scale;
• the establishment of a National Committee for OERs to rally and coordinate the movement;
• to provide more capacity building opportunities for OER producers and users in both technology and content;
• to establish greater linkage of the OER movement in Viet Nam with that of the world for better knowledge sharing and opportunities;
• to address legal bottlenecks in copyrights of OERs; and
• to involve more stakeholders to create synergies among OERs in Viet Nam.

Closing the Conference, participants expressed their commitment to work together and with UNESCO to further develop OERs in Viet Nam based on these recommendations as well as the 2017 Ljubljana OER Action Plan adopted in September to support quality open educational resources. Following the Conference, an Open Access Week will be conducted in Ho Chi Minh City where the project core team will visit universities to raise awareness on OERs and Open Access.

For more information, please contact Ms Hoang Minh Nguyet, Communication and Information Programme Coordinator, at hm.nguyet(at)unesco.org