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“More than half a million individuals in Malaysia are currently registered as disabled, challenged with visual, auditory, speech, physical or cognitive limitations,” said Dr Noraini Ahmad, Minister of Higher Education of Malaysia in a speech to officially launch Malaysia’s Inclusive Open Educational Resources (iOER) National Policy.

Two years in the making, the new National Policy in Malaysia is envisioned to be applied in education to enable all learners, particularly those with disabilities, to learn according to their individual learning styles and preferences.

The policy, which was welcomed by Tawfik Jelassi, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information as the first of its kind in national-level public policy setting, focuses on developing inclusive and equitable quality OER. This is one of the five areas of action in the UNESCO’s landmark .

As a multistakeholder endeavor, the iOER policy was drafted based on   in close consultation with experts from all 20 Malaysian public universities, civil society groups, the Department of Higher Education, the Malaysia Centre for E-learning (MyCEL), and the Malaysian Council for Public Higher Learning Institutions (MEIPTA). The 2019 Kuala Lumpur consultation was organized by UNESCO and the Centre for e-Learning at the Universiti Sabah Malaysia, through the generous support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

By ensuring quality access to inclusive OER, based upon , Malaysia will be one step closer to providing universal access to high-quality open-licensed education for all Malaysians.

OER are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.  Open license refers to a license that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials. 

During the 40th session of the UNESCO General Conference in 2019, UNESCO Member States adopted the UNESCO OER Recommendation, the only existing normative instrument in the area of technologies and education, calling on the Member States to undertake  actions in five areas: (i) building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER; (ii) developing supportive policy; (iii) encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER; (iv) nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER, and (v) facilitating international cooperation.  

The was established to support governments in implementing the OER Recommendation by promoting and reinforcing international and regional cooperation among all stakeholders.

For more information contact: j.hironaka@unesco.org.