Introducing OER for Teacher Development in African Universities

Greig Krull and Tony MaysUNISA ODL Conference

5 September 2012

Outline

• Challenges• Initiative• Assumptions• Capacity-building Engagements• Lessons Learned• Future Work• Q&A

Challenges

• Need to increase teacher enrolments and throughput

• Static or declining state subsidies• Keep teaching at the cutting edge

of the discipline• Need to constantly update

learning resources

Initiative

• Support African Universities to make greater use of OERs• Individual and collaborative support to create and share high

quality OER materials for teaching and learning • Access to evaluating, adapting, using and sharing of

quality educational resource materials• Creation and use of a sustainable OER support

infrastructure• Creation and sustainability of OER networks and

communities• Application of relevant educational technologies

Initiative Assumptions

Structured engagement with OER provides opportunities to

improve the quality of higher education

provision

OER can be sourced and adapted to meet

specific curriculum needs of African

institutions

Institutions can establish conditions that enable them to

publish OER for further adaptation and use

African institutions can apt and use OER

published by other African institutions

OERs can potentially reduce the time and

other resources needed to service curriculum needs

OER Life Cycle

Find/Get

Create/Remix

Localise/Adapt

Use and Refine

Share/Redistribute

From: Wiley, D. (2008) http://www.wikieducator.org/ OER_Handbook/ educator/ OER_Lifecycle

Pilot Sites

Capacity-building Workshop 1

• Aim: Explore how informed engagement with OER can support curriculum development and renewal processes

• Outline:– Nature of OER – Open licensing possibilities– Find, evaluate and adapt OER– Learner Support in ODL provision (NISTCOL only)

• UDSM outcome: Process for the development and review of courses and materials

• NISTCOL outcome: Process to prioritise the development and review of courses and materials

Capacity-building Workshop 2

• Aim: Build capacity for academics to design elearning materials, incorporating OERs

• Outline:– Rethinking teacher education, assessment and learning activities– Search for and incorporate OERs– Implement course design elements in Moodle

• UDSM outcome: Implementation Plan to develop, review and publish pilot courses as OERs

• NISTCOL outcome: Implementation Plan to develop, review and publish Education Leadership and Management Programme (migrate from diploma to degree level)

Lessons Learned

• Practical engagement and concrete examples• Better to work from the premise of OER integration from the start than to

‘reverse engineer’• Need to revisit issues of copyright/ fair use/ licensing• OER in service of curriculum needs; not an end in themselves …• Part of a natural progression from information transmission lectures to

problem- and resource-based learning (and increasingly ODL provision)• Integration of different media for different learning purposes and needs• Iterative processes: formative peer feedback for improvement• Hence: Opened discussion at a deep philosophical and pedagogical level on

ODL provision, elearning and learning communities

Future Work• Refine and publish courses as OERs• Already published: NISTCOL module on

Numeracy• In process: NISTCOL resources in

Science and Social Science Ed• In process: UDSM MUCE resources in

MST and SS and Language• Inter-institutional interest group

discussion fora through OER Africa website – ECD, Maths, Science, SS, ELM, SNE

• Moving locus of responsibility from OER Africa to interest group leaders across multiple institutions

Q&A

Thank you

Tony Mays and Greig Krulltonymays@vodamail.co.za

greigk@saide.org.za

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.