What an agenda is, and is not
An agenda is a list of things worth doing, in rough order of importance. No body has the authority to impose one on the whole open education movement, which is made up of independent schools, governments, libraries, publishers and volunteers. The priorities below reflect themes that recur in public declarations and policy discussions, such as the 2012 Paris OER Declaration and UNESCO’s 2019 Recommendation on Open Educational Resources. They are offered as points for discussion, not instructions, and the order is arguable.
1. Sustainable funding
Open content needs people to write, review, translate and maintain it. Grants that end after two or three years leave materials unmaintained. A realistic agenda would encourage funders to pay for upkeep, not only creation, and would test mixed funding models, such as shared contributions from institutions.
Trade-off: Long-term commitments require stable budgets, and governments face competing demands. Savings for students may come at the cost of public spending, which should be stated openly.
2. Shared standards and interoperability
Materials are easier to find, combine and reuse if they use consistent descriptions, common licenses and open standards for formats. Without them, resources become locked in particular systems.
Trade-off: Standards need agreement among many parties and can lag behind technology. Over-rigid rules can discourage small contributors.
3. Teacher support and training
Materials are only useful if teachers can find, judge and adapt them. Training in licensing, search, evaluation and adaptation, together with time to apply it, is often cited as the most effective step. Teacher training programs could include open practice as a regular topic.
Trade-off: Training costs money and time, and teachers already face heavy workloads. Support that adds burdens can backfire.
4. Access and connectivity
Open content does not help people who cannot reach it. Priorities include affordable connectivity, devices, power, and offline distribution on local servers or portable storage for areas with poor networks. Libraries and community centers can serve as access points.
Trade-off: Infrastructure sits outside education budgets, so coordination across sectors is necessary and slow.
5. Language and cultural relevance
Most online educational material is available in a small number of languages. A global agenda would support translation, local authorship and respect for local knowledge, with communities leading decisions about how their knowledge is represented.
Trade-off: Translation takes funding, and machine translation can introduce errors. Quality checks by fluent speakers remain important.
6. Accessibility for people with disabilities
Materials should be designed from the start to work with assistive technologies, include captions and alternative text, and offer editable formats. Adapting after the fact is more costly and less reliable.
Trade-off: Accessibility requires skills and review time that small projects may lack, so training and shared tools help.
7. Quality, evidence and trust
Teachers and learners need ways to judge material. A sensible agenda would support review mechanisms, clear dating and versioning, and research on what works. Evidence on learning outcomes is mixed, so honest evaluation, including of failures, would benefit the field.
Trade-off: Review is slow and expensive. Too much gatekeeping can discourage participation, while too little can erode trust.
8. Recognition and incentives
Creators, adapters and curators need credit. Institutions could count open contributions in promotion and hiring, and funders could value reuse as well as creation.
Trade-off: Changing incentives requires institutional culture change, which is gradual.
Other items worth watching
- Privacy and data protection for learners who use online services, particularly children.
- Responsible use of AI in producing and adapting materials, including clarity about accuracy and licensing.
- Preservation so that valuable resources are not lost when a platform closes.
- Clarity about commercial involvement, so that “open” is not used loosely.
Who acts on an agenda
Different actors can take different parts. Governments can set policy, fund infrastructure and require open licenses for publicly funded work. Institutions can adopt policies, support staff and reward open practice. Libraries can advise on licensing and host collections. Teachers can share and adapt. Funders can support maintenance. Networks can coordinate and exchange practice. No single actor can deliver all of it.
Reality check
Agendas are easy to write and hard to carry out. Priorities compete, resources are limited, and conditions differ greatly between countries. A list that suits a well-connected urban system may not suit a rural one. The agenda should be read as a menu of questions to ask locally: what is the biggest barrier here, who can fix it, and what would count as progress?
Progress is more likely when goals are specific and measurable, and when results are reported honestly. A statement such as “improve access” is less useful than “provide offline copies of the core materials to every participating school by next term”. Setting such targets, and revisiting them, is how an agenda becomes action.