#359 Presentation

Wednesday 18 April 14:00 - 14:30 Armitage Room

Government Policy for OER: case study of Korea

Youngsup Kim, Handong Global University, South Korea

Conference Theme: Impact

Summary: This paper examines the policies and their impact on higher education institutions in Korea.

Abstract: In many Asian countries, government policy forms and mandates what higher educational institutions do. It is only natural that universities in Korea would not voluntarily start OCW projects unless there was some kind of incentives offered by the Ministry of Education. Under the current administration, many policies have been enacted by the Ministry of Education to support OER in higher education institutions. This paper examines the policies and their impact on higher education institutions in Korea.
There are three projects/funding schemes talked about in this paper. The first is K-OCW by KERIS. KERIS is a government subsidized organization that executes all policies regarding e-learning. The K-OCW project by KERIS mandates that all universities that produces OER on public grant should be open contents. 
The second is the ACE project, which is a grant program by the Ministry of Education. Whereas most grants were concentrated on research, this is the first grant by the university to improve the quality of teaching and learning practices. Korea’s rapid economic development was partly due to the investment by the government on STEM and research. Now, the focus is slowly moving to teaching and learning. There are 20 universities that are awarded this grant, and all 20 are to start an OCW project as an indictor of their successful teaching and learning practices.
The third is UUOOI project, which is funded by the Korean government, and executed among the UNESCO UNITWIN institutions. It is a project to promote creation and use of OER in developing countries. So far, the project is kicking off in Asian, African and Black Sea Regions.
The three programs are very different in color, but they all support OER. This paper will discuss what is a good policy for OER, and what we should ask our government to do.