Workshop on using AI and OER data – convergence among OER platforms offers unprecedented opportunities

UNESCO Chairs in Open Educational Resources (OER)  and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have partnered with the Slovenian Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, in a pivotal project addressing the use of AI as a frontier technology for OERs.  The workshop organiser, Knowledge 4 All Foundation is looking to partner with early adopters of the platform in the Global South.

Within X5GON we have developed an extensive architecture, where state-of-the-art machine learning and recommender algorithms are deployed to crawl, classify and understand OER resources so that we can then determine how best to help people learn in a way most suited to them. We, therefore, have succeeded in harvesting OER data and creating the first AI-powered platform for OERs that will allow teachers and students, businesses and educational institutions to access OER from everywhere at any time in various formats such as video, text or pictures, different topics and languages.

The workshop will have two objectives:

1. Technical solution: ML/AI researchers will present the results of the project – platform with robust API – to international stakeholders with the specific goal to attract MS Delegations, National Commissions, researchers and policymakers in facilitating impact by engaging startups and innovation communities outside of the project consortium, who will be better placed to attract communities of adopters, developers and hackers. This can be achieved particularly by utilising existing partners’ governmental initiatives with startup ecosystems.  Involving the engagement of startups and innovation communities to use the data provided by the platform will be an immense innovation in the space of OER, as traditionally governments who are the main founders of open access materials cannot capitalise on the value of the materials or introduce innovation.
2. Policy solution: The Ministry will present the policy framework – OER Recommendation and implementation of the Ljubljana OER Action Plan – that will allow the introduction of such frontier technologies into governments and in this way create value on top of OER.  The X5GON partners are leading the draft text formulation for the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources further to the adoption of Resolution 44 ‘Desirability of a standard-setting instrument on international collaboration in the field of Open Educational Resources at the 39th Session of the UNESCO General Conference. The Ministry will describe in detail the barriers it is facing by introducing AI and OER into its policy context and implementation in the Slovenian education system.