NEW INITIATIVES TO ADVANCE EDUCATIONAL EQUALITY AND OPPORTUNITY AROUND THE WORLD
Open education drives innovation in global higher education
LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA and NEWTON, MA – The OpenCourseWare Consortium today announced its new name: The Open Education Consortium. The new name embraces trends in higher education globally towards open sharing and scaling access to education through technology, tools and open content.
“Open Education presents many opportunities to develop 21st century teaching and learning”, said Mary Lou Forward, Executive Director of the Open Education Consortium. “We are excited that governments, institutions, educators and learners around the world are showing increased interest in open education and committed to helping build a future where sharing knowledge openly becomes standard everyday practice.”
The Open Education Consortium’s annual conference is taking place this week in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The conference opened with the Slovenian Minster of Education Jernej Pikalo announcing the Opening Up Slovenia program, a priority initiative to incorporate open education at all levels of the Slovenian educational system. Slovenia’s national open education initiative will serve as a role model to stimulate cross-boarder conversations and collaborations in building the future of European education. Immediately following, European Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou described the importance of the European Commission’s Opening Up Education program, asserting that greater equality, access and effectiveness in education is essential to Europe’s future.
“The Open Education Consortium Global Conference is very pleased to be the forum in which such an important initiative is announced,” said Larry Cooperman, President of the Open Education Consortium’s Board of Directors. “We look forward to collaborating on transformative projects that bring greater educational opportunities to all.”
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About the Open Education Consortium
The Open Education Consortium (www.openedconsortium.org) envisions a world in which the desire to learn is fully met by the opportunity to do so anywhere in the world, where everyone, everywhere is able to access affordable, educationally and culturally appropriate opportunities to gain whatever knowledge or training they desire. The Open Education Consortium acts to expand access to education and promote open sharing of knowledge. It does this by leveraging its sources of expert opinion, its global network and its position as the principal voice of open education.