Open Education Day Morocco 2018 at Cadi Ayyad University

 by Romina Cachia and Javiera Atenas.

 

As part of the OpenMed project, we were invited to participate in the Open Education Day, held at Cadi Ayyad University to celebrate open educational projects and initiatives and to promote the creation and adoption of Open Educational Resources and Open Courses.

One of the key objectives of this forum was to present the Open Education platform of the Centre for Open Education of Cadi Ayyad University, which has been designed to support not only the creation or reuse of Open Educational Resources but to support the University to enhance their teaching, as it aims at promoting innovation at international level, from providing certified professional development courses in a wide range of subjects, to support pedagogical innovation, including blended and flipped learning, innovative assessment and feedback models and academic development. Also this platform acts as platform to provide online teaching such as blended online courses for undergrad and postgrad levels and MOOCs providing online labs, simulation tools and access to mobile learning resources. But also, this forum aimed at sharing good practices on Open Education, which can be seen as follows:

The first sessions were presentations by official authorities in Morocco such as the Presidents of Cadi Ayyad and Ibn Zohr Universities, Dr A. Miraoui, and Dr O. Halli, and Dr S. Amzazi, Président UM5, Dr M. Tahiri, Director of MENFPESRS, and Dr A. El Hajir, from the ICT Programme ISESCO. What it was most interesting is that all the presenters, agreed that Open Education is one of the keys to improve and democratise education in the region.  

The day followed by presentations from Daniel Burgos from UNIR on a presentation on Open Education Policies highlighting that Open education is part of the sustainable We started thinking what is required to design and implement and declaration about Open Education based on the 7 pillars for Open Education: 1) Competence-based approach – Rather than thinking about what I want to do but rather who is going to do the course 2) Course accreditation 3) The credit recognition should be an integration with the formal education, rather than a fight 4) Certified education quality 5) Monetization, sustainability 6) Technology access 7) Open, proper licensing – everything should be open – the creators provide material for free, but under some norms. To close-up he presented the as example of good practice.

He was followed by Mohamed Tahiri, MENFPESRS who presented the MUN (Maroc Université Numérique) [Virtual University Morocco] which is an initiative to provide open online content for the country. He showcased some good practices and provided advice on how to create online courses. And later Lorna Campbell presented  by video conference about the Scottish Open Education Declaration. In the Scottish OE declaration they expanded the remit from the UNESCO. She highlighted that since the launch of the Scottish OE declaration  fourteen countries have made national commitment to open education after the Scottish declaration.

After Lorna, Daniel Burgos showcased the OER OpenMed Training course, which can be understood as one of the main successes in the Openmed project. The course name is Open Education: fundamentals and approaches – A learning journey to open up teaching in higher education. The course’s main target is university teachers / lecturers and the content is provided in in English, Arabic and French. The learning outcomes of this course, is that the learners would understand the potential advantages for adopting OER, search for, reuse and mix, adapt a MOOC to a specific context, etc. The course now is the piloting phase, but from autumn 2018, the course will be open. The idea is to broaden the course and to make it sustainable, so the work done in this project does not fade after the project is finished.

During the day, the presentation that followed were those by  Javiera Atenas [Open Education Working Group, OKI] who gave a presentation about the Open Government Partnership standard for co-creation, to help move the Moroccan OER declaration into a national policy. Then Khalil Berrada [UCA] talked about a project, Experes, about applying ICT for scientific experimentation. Adel Ben Taziri [UVT, Tunisia] about their experience producing OER in Tunisia. Isidro Maya Jariego [University of Sevilla] gave a presentation on user profiles in MOOCS based on a series of different profiles and finally, Ahmed Almakari [University Ibn Zohr] presented the audience the OER Morocco Declaration.


The day was closed with an Open Table discussion where A. Almakari; N. Damil; K. El Hajjaji FMSS, M. Abbad Andaloussi; H. Firadi; K. Berrada; I. Maya Jariego; D. Villar-Onrubia; K. Wimpeny; J.Atenas, R. Cachia  and D. Burgos answered the questions from the participants and help them to clarify doubts and provided advice in good practices for Open Education.

If you want to read more about this event, please see https://www.uca.ma/fr/events/journees-sur-leducation-ouverte-et-le-numerique-a-luniversite (in French).

 

**** We thank Khalid Berrada for the pictures

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