On 16 – 17 March 2009 IITE in cooperation with the Moscow Institute of open education carried out an international seminar and expert meeting “Open educational resources and technologies”.

The main goal of the seminar was promoting policy dialogue and contributing to the educational policy formulation aimed at new open educational resources and technologies development and dissemination.

The seminar was attended by the representatives of the ministries of education and leading national educational institutions from ten countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Russian Federation, and Ukraine, Latvia and Mongolia) as well as international experts on open education from UK and Finland (see list of participants).

Agenda of the seminar included specialists’ reports devoted to the issues of open educational resources development, dissemination and systematization.

In the report of professor Tapio Varis (dean of Education Department and head of Chair of World Electronic Education of UNESCO University in Tampere) issues concerning content, tools and resources of new educational culture appearing while common information space is being shaped were mentioned.

The report of Mr. Niall Sclater (director of Division of innovations in education of Open University of Great Britain) was devoted to problems of developing and disseminating open educational technologies, in particular, perspectives of their usage in CIS, Baltic and Central Asian states.

During the seminar the participants had a possibility to present the advanced open educational technologies elaborated in their countries as well as to exchange successful experience of their integration into educational system.

In order to develop effective educational policy and plan the further activities in CIS, Baltic and Central Asian states an expert meeting was held. The following issues were presented for discussion:

• the ways of awareness raising among the educators and methods of information disseminating among the citizens in regard to open educational resources and technologies;
• the means of promoting professional communities of developers and educators as well as civil communities of learners using open educational resources and technologies;
• tools for open educational resources and technologies development and the ways of developers motivating;
• quality assessment and certification of the open educational resources and technologies;
• the ways of strengthening state support for the advanced projects implementation;

The main issues discussed during the expert meeting were presented in its final document – Resolution of the expert meeting.