UNESCO IITE article on OER in Russia

The monograph “Open Educational Resources: Policy, Costs, Transformation” is out of press. It was published in English in 2016 by UNESCO and the Commonwealth of Learning. The chapter “Open Access to Educational Resources Through Federal Portals and OER in Russia” was co-authored by Dr. Svetlana Knyazeva (UNESCO IITE), and Mr. Alexey Sigalov. This chapter focuses on the analysis of a series of intertwined projects implemented in the Russian Federation to establish a system of national educational portals. One of the major purposes of this initiative was to support wider use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher and secondary education institutions. The projects were funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and implemented by leading Russian universities and research centres. A series of new projects in open education that follow the concept of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were initiated in 2014. Dozens of open online courses oriented towards different categories of learners have been developed in Russia. The amendments to the Russian legislation related to the intellectual property rights enforced in 2014 made open licenses legally valid, which enables open licensing of the content of the national portals. Considerable effort would be needed to receive the permission of authors and rights holders, but this would enable wider opportunities for the use of the resources, particularly to ensure their legitimate use in online courses both for open education and for corporate eLearning systems at higher education institutions.