Last week the United States government made a major commitment to Open Education with new government initiatives (PDF) to increase awareness and engagement of open education. As David Wiley states in his post on the announcement:
This is a major victory for open education in the US. This win is the result of lots of hard work by many dedicated, talented people. And I’d like to think that our work has contributed to the White House’s recognition that “there is a growing body of evidence improves the quality of teaching and learning.”
There were three new initiatives announced.
- Raise open education awareness and identify new partnerships.
- Pilot new models for using open educational resources to support learning.
- Launch an online skills academy.
These three new initiatives will help the promotion and development of open education resources not only in the U.S., but here in Canada as well. Any new resources created to support these initiatives will be open educational resources, meaning they will be openly licensed resources available for modification and reuse here in Canada. A win for open education in the U.S. translates into a win for open education here in B.C. and indeed, the world.