1 OER Africa Seminar on Open Learning in South African Universities ( Department of Higher Education & Training, South Africa, Tuesday 23 rd July 2013 )

2 Who we are OER Africa - an innovative initiative of Saide, headquartered in Nairobi. Established to play a leading role in driving the development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) to the benefit of Africas higher education systems.

3 The OER Concept Freely available Choose how to share No royalties contextualisation Allows contextualisation of existing quality resources Show-case African intellectual property – yes we can and yes we do generate knowledge!

4 Use / Possible use of OER in South African universities (1) To openly share learning objects, modules, courses, programs, OA research or other relevant OER across institutions and thus: realise economies of scale encourage joint development of curriculum and courseware provide faculty and students with a similar standard (high quality) of educational content encourage student-centred learning

5 Use / Possible use of OER (2) To openly share skills-based relevant OER across institutions and thus: Encourage the development of 21 st century skills amongst students in-school and potential out-of-school students / life- long learners to new Ways of thinking. Creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and learning Ways of working. Communication and collaboration Tools for working. Information and communications technology (ICT) and information literacy Skills for living in the world. Citizenship, life and career, and personal and social responsibility Encourage faculty to incorporate the above within their teaching and thereby raise the standard and profile of SA HEIs across the continent and internationally.

6 What is your institution doing / your involvement in OER? Working with pan-African and international networks to promote the use and re-use of OER amongst membership Working with institutions, e.g. UP, to promote use and re- use of OER by faculty – (see: under development) Promoting policy development and implementation at national and institutional level Promoting use of blended learning with OER at the centre Advocacy

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12 What are the barriers in using OER? Absence of enabling policy infrastructure (IT / graphics personnel, dedicated time, recognition of effort (grants / awards), IP, etc.) Lack of enabling physical infrastructure (e.g. affordable bandwidth, networked computers) Lack of IP / ICT skills (knowledge of OER, of how to search, of relevant data-bases, etc.) Fear! (Why change the way Ive always done things? What if I get found out?)

13 What processes and mechanisms should be put into place to enable the use of OER? Policy: national, institutional Advocacy: grow awareness of alternatives available to improve teaching and learning Training: Pedagogical skills, ICT literacy Practice: Proof of Concept pilots Carrot and Stick: policy, reward, penalty – know your audience Consistency: vacillation breeds indifference

14 Questions ?

15 Thank you Catherine Ngugi Project Director, OER Africa This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.