Opening up and sharing education is necessary if we are going to solve the world’s most pressing challenges!

To solve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, every person must acquire the knowledge, global citizenship values, and 21st century skills critical to tackling our shared challenges and to promoting a future of equitable, inclusive, and resilient societies. Education is a crucial enabler of this transformation. It is the basis for cultivating the best in ourselves and our communities, and is the key for learning to live together and work together for a better world.

The Open Education program at Creative Commons works to support the CC mission through education, advocacy and outreach on using open licenses and open licensing policies to maximize the benefits of open education (content, practices and policy). We work closely with governments, educational institutions and organizations to open up knowledge for everyone.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and adaptation by others.

UNESCO Recommendation on OER
Our open education team has worked with UNESCO since it coined the term “OER” in 2002. We worked with UNESCO and open education experts around the world to help craft the 2012 UNESCO Paris OER Declaration and the 2019 UNESCO Recommendation on OER. To help governments and organizations understand CC licenses and the importance of using CC licenses when implementing the 2019 UNESCO Recommendation on OER, we created the following resources:

• Video: Importance of Open Licenses for OER
• Creative Commons: The Licenses (digital sharing)
• Creative Commons: The Licenses (print handout)
• Creative Commons: The Organization (digital sharing)
• Creative Commons: The Organization (print handout)

Get involved

We invite you to join us in our current efforts, or otherwise propose an idea for collaboration:

• Join the CC Open Education Platform: Stay connected to global actions in open education resources, practice, and policy. Identify, plan and coordinate multi-national open education content, practices and policy projects to collaboratively solve education challenges with an amazing group of open education leaders from around the world.
• Take the Creative Commons Certificate: The Certificate is an in-depth course about CC licenses, open practices and the ethos of the Commons.
• Openly license your work: Want to add a CC license to your project?
• Fund OER: Want to incorporate CC into your education funding policy? See Funder Policies for how to understand and implement CC licenses.
• Promote your project: Want to highlight your CC education project? Send a note to communications@creativecommons.org
• Share open policies: Know of an open education policy in your jurisdiction? Send a note to communications@creativecommons.org
• Stay up-to-date: Read to the CC blog or just our posts tagged with Open Education.