Research on Open Educational Resources for Development in the Global South: Project landscape

The Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project was proposed to investigate in what ways and under what circumstances the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) could address the increasing demand for accessible, relevant, high-quality and affordable education in the Global South. The project was originally intended to focus on post-secondary education, but the scope was expanded to include basic education teachers and government funding when it launched in 2013. In 2014, the research agenda was further expanded to include the potential impact of OER adoption and associated Open Educational Practices (OEP). ROER4D was funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Open Society Foundations (OFS), and built upon prior research undertaken by a previous IDRC-funded initiative, the PAN Asia Networking Distance and Open Resources Access (PANdora) project. This chapter presents the overall context in which the ROER4D project was located and investigated, drawing attention to the key challenges confronting education in the Global South and citing related studies on how OER can help to address these issues. It provides an abbreviated history of the project and a snapshot of the geographic location of the studies it comprises, the constituent research agendas, the methodologies adopted and the research-participant profile. It also provides an overview of the other 15 chapters in this volume and explains the peer review process

Open to interpretation?: productive frameworks for understanding audience engagement with OER

At the core of evolutionary trajectories in the digital networked media and OER landscape, the notions of 'educational and learners' communities' and open 'participatory pedagogy' become more complex. Combining notions of 'mediation' from activity theory and communications studies to analyze a large body of literature and qualitative data offering insights on stakeholders motivations, perceptions, practices or uses, the paper considers the meaning of Open Educational Resources (OERs) as participatory learning media in a global context. It then draws on perceptions and uses of OER and open media by faculty, and structures dimensions of cultural and socio-technical mediation by this particular segment and focusing on two types of users: the teacher as active interpreter and salient user and the teacher as digital publisher. We argue that the socio-technical and pedagogical affordances and OERs, hinder many tensions pertaining: a) the definition of openness; b) quality; and c) moral authority regarding both context and adaptabilit

Open and Free Access to Education for All

Open education has evolved over time and now has different interpretations. Three main versions of open education are considered, namely open universities, open educational resources (OER) and MOOCs. These all aim to increase access to education, but have different approaches for realising this aim. The open education landscape is explored using a citation analysis method, to reveal that there is little cross-fertilisation between the distinct areas. In order to address this, a conceptual model is proposed, and the result of a global survey used to analyse the manner in which different institutions are exploiting aspects of openness to increase access. The author concludes that the diverse interpretations of open education can be seen as a benefit, if it allows institutions to assemble approaches for increased access that are tailored to their context

Women’s empowerment through openness: OER, OEP and the Sustainable Development Goals

This paper explores the potential of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) in helping to achieve women’s empowerment in the developing world – target 5b of the 17 intergovernmental Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that, since September 2015, define the development agenda until 2030. We take as evidence the Open Education Research Hub (OERH) open dataset, comprising survey responses from 7,700 educators, students and informal learners from 175 countries. Although our sample features an overall 51%/48% female/male gender split, there are many more male than female respondents from the Global South, the latter being slightly younger and better educated than female respondents from the Global North. These female respondents are more likely to use OER for professional development and for training others than are female respondents from the Global North and, of particular importance, are much more likely to face technology problems that are a barrier to their using OER in addition to difficulties in finding resources relevant to their subject area and local context. Our findings align with those of other studies finding ‘extreme inequalities in digital empowerment − which seem to parallel wider societal disparities in information-seeking, voice and civic engagement’ (World Wide Web Foundation, 2015, p. 3) while, more positively, indicating the potential for capacity building through women’s use of OER to train others in the developing world. Obviously, our self-selecting sample comprises only people with an Internet connection and some awareness of OER, and does not include women excluded from OER use and OEP due to their lacking internet connectivity and/or ICT equipment. Even so, our study offers persuasive evidence that where technological barriers can be overcome, OER and OEP can give women a voice, access to information and education, and the opportunity to connect with peers, helping to remove social, economic, political and educational unfreedoms (Sen, 1999)

Some Examples of Best Practice in Open Educational Resources

The examples of best practice in Open Educational Resources (OER) that follow typify a change in learning and teaching practices that has been ushered in with the development of and increased access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). These developments have been occurring over the past fifteen to twenty years in tertiary educational institutions around the world. Open courseware, open access, open practices, that use OER, have become a state of the art orientation towards teaching and learning for many teaching and research practitioners and students. This is the case above all in the area of distance education, where online and electronic delivery of courses has become commonplace. Of course, debates have arisen over the nature of open learning, open educational resources, open courseware, open access, open practices. What do such terms mean? What implications does 'open' have for tertiary education, for educators, authors and researchers, and for students? What theory can underpin OER? What does OER mean in relation to distance education? What does online and open education mean for studentlecturer relations (Anderson, 2011)? Such debates are not unusual in educational theory. If they follow the pattern of other educational debates, they will reach their peak, ferment, be dismissed and glossed over, be resurrected, be transformed. Whatever the case, they occupy an important place in the pedagogical imagination, particularly in light of the marketing of education within a global context. And marketing is an important issue in itself: funding, sustainability, advertising and promotion, all have implications for the integrity of teaching and learning, and for attracting students. Along with this is the idea of the student as a consumer or as a client, language transferred across from the consumerist society in which many of us live. OER does not exist in a morally neutral world. This is reflected in the socio-ethical concerns of the four cases of OER practices presented. Each of the four providers of OER is deeply aware of their social obligations to indigenous and/or disadvantaged groups within their sphere of educational influence and interest. A recurring theme is that education ought to be available to everyone, that such education ought to be the best available, and that it ought to be free. This amounts to what could be seen as profound idealism. Such idealism is especially evident in the documentation and web-sites of Athabasca and OpenLearn. That said, the examples of practice in OER discussed here reveal implicit assumptions about the ubiquitous nature of information and communication technologies. It is not the case that information and communication technologies are available equally, or even at all, in every place in the world. Class, race, ethnic and gender distinctions operate in many societies. These distinctions preclude universal availability of education of any kind to every social group, never mind those that rely on computers and computer technologies (themselves dependent on the availability of electricity and other services regarded as basic to the privileged in affluent societies). Nor is it the case that everyone actually wants a tertiary education. These are debates not addressed here. Further information about each subject in these examples of OER adoption can be found by following up the bibliographic information. The examples of practice in OER are an explicit result of the availability of open access to various web-sites and documents on the web. Hence, there is a direct relation between what each institution aims to do and the possibility of producing a document such as this: open-ness in terms of freely available enabled this research and is an indication of what can be done within an educational research environment that is committed to collaboration and dissemination of information and insight. Four examples of best practice in OER are explored in this document. They are: Athabasca Open CourseWare from Athabasca University in Canada, OpenLearn initiative from the Open University in the United Kingdom, Otago Polytechnic OER from the Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, and OpenCourseWare UOC from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalunya) in Spain. Each example follows a similar structure. A rationale for choosing these examples was that these were successful cases of OER adoption at the time of this research. Also, it is believed that these institutions represented a diverse range of educational providers located in different countries and continents. Thus, they also provide a diverse, and so richer, range of insights in relation to the adoption of OER.</p

Can learning be free? : an investigation of open access from a learner perspective

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.This thesis addresses the question of access to education, focussing particularly on the potential opening up of access to higher education that open educational resources (OER) seem to offer. Starting with MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative, continuing with massive open online courses and emerging commercial start-ups, OERs promise free access to anyone, anywhere at any time. I am interested in open access that is expressed as the learner's ability to claim his or her learning (or educational) opportunity to achieve his or her learning goals. My research is conceptualised as a 'project of exploration' (Smith, 2005). I want to know how open access to learning is enabled through open educational resources, from the learner's perspective. I propose three avenues for understanding open access. First, I draw on the little explored history of open learning to chart its development, ground the current discussion and provide a basis for understanding ways in which OERs may help meet today's opportunities and challenges. I explore how openness was then, as it is now, a matter of degree, the importance of the context in which open access becomes enabled and reconsider notions of literacy, technology, time and location. I also highlight the importance of association and stress the significant role that awareness plays. Second, I investigate learner experience with OERs and use analytic autoethnography (Anderson, 2006a) to develop theoretical understandings of access through my own practice. I then move to a macro level perspective and use Institutional Ethnography (Smith, 2005) to analyse that experience in the context of an ambiguously bounded, emerging, global education. I expand on the theoretical discussions around the possibilities afforded by analytic autoethnography and institutional ethnography. The two methodologies in conversation allow me to extend the framework for understanding access and learner profiles. They also throw light on the role of both traditional and new texts in organising experience, unmasking more profound instances of power, as embodied by search engines. These insights challenge me to address a third dimension to examine the imaginary of access as it comes into existence and understand avenues for possible interventions. I examine how media representations come together to produce the imaginary around open access to learning. I also examine how institutional ethnography’s commitment to social justice can be achieved by revealing the complexities of this phenomenon and setting the terms of current debates, if people are to achieve access for themselves

How to Tame a Dragon: Scoping Diversity, Inclusion and Equity in the Context of an OER Project

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are almost taken-for-granted concepts in the broader context of open education, and specifically in the context of Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives, projects and practices. GO-GN, a Global OER Graduate Network, set out to investigate and develop its DEI guidelines. This paper reports on the processes and findings of scoping DEI in the context of GO-GN. It also presents some of the project findings and provide the foundations of GO-GN guidelines for DEI. We then suggest some pointers for other OER practices and practitioners in embracing and foregrounding diversity, inclusion and equity

OER, Open Access and Scholarship in Portuguese Higher Education

Comunicação apresentada em EDEN 2015 Annual Conference, Expanding Learning Scenarios, Barcelona.The present paper is part of a PhD research, which is being developed in the scope of the Doctoral Programme in Education, specialisation in Distance Education and eLearning at Universidade Aberta, the Portuguese Open University. The theoretical framework for the research is Open Education, particularly the specific fields of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA). The main objective of the research is to identify and understand the awareness, knowledge and attitudes of scholars in Portuguese public Higher Education Institutions (HEI), regarding OER and OA and, in particular, to compare scholars’ awareness, attitudes and perceptions towards OER and OA in the context of their teaching and research practices. This will also allow us to represent the Portuguese reality and, consequently, position the Portuguese public higher education practices within the global panorama and also may be able to inform future decisions, whether institutionally, governmentally or even within a broader perspective. The current paper intends to present the research project and also to reflect the literature review carried out so far, in order to contextualise the research problem and also to describe the methodological procedures defined for the study

The open educational resources and open access movements in higher education: the Portuguese case

A importância da partilha de conhecimento e do papel dos sistemas do ensino superior na atual economia global do conhecimento tem sido reconhecida ao longo dos últimos anos, por iniciativas e entidades um pouco por todo o mundo. Neste contexto, têm sido fundamentais na criação de oportunidades de inovação pedagógica os movimentos dos Recursos Educacionais Abertos e do Acesso Aberto, por estarem intimamente relacionados com a carreira dos docentes do ensino superior, nomeadamente nas funções pedagógica e científica.The importance of knowledge sharing and the role of higher education in the current global knowledge economy has been increasingly recognised in the last years, by entities and initiatives spread across the world. In this context, the open education movement has been essential in creating new pedagogical opportunities, particularly the Open Educational Resources and the Open Access movements, as they are closely related to the academic functions that are intrinsically part of scholarly activities: the pedagogical function, regarding teaching activities and the scientific function, regarding research activities. Within this framework, the current research has revisited the concept of scholarship and the changes that have occurred as response to the challenges of the network society and the global movement of openness to knowledge.Este texto resulta da investigação realizada no doutoramento em Educação, especialidade de Educação a Distância e eLearning (EDeL) orientada pela Prof. Lina Morgado e coorientada pelo Prof. António Teixeira. A investigação encontra-se sediada na Linha 1 do Laboratório de Educação a Distância e eLearning (LE@D), Universidade Aberta, unidade de investigação financiada pela FCT, MCTES Portugal. No contexto da linha de investigação referida a tese integrou-se na Rede mundial de doutoramentos sobre Open Educational Resources coordenada pelo Prof. Doutor Fred Mulder†, UNESCO/ICDE Chair Open Educational Resources financiada pela The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Moving forward with TESSA: what is the potential for MOOCs?

Teacher Education in sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) is an educational development project run by The Open University, UK. Working collaboratively with partners in Africa, The Open University published (in 2010) a set Open Educational Resources (OER) which support teachers in developing participatory approaches to learning. With the global focus for education shifting from ‘access’ to ‘quality’ (Sustainable Development Goal, 2015) the TESSA OER remain as relevant as ever; student-centred pedagogy is at the heart of the development of 21st Century skills. In a similar project, Teacher Education through School-based support in India (TESS-India) The Open University developed a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to support teacher educator professional development. The purpose of this paper is to present the TESSA strategy for 2016-2019 and to draw on data from the TESS-India MOOC in order to argue for a MOOC for African teacher educators. The MOOC had an innovative design drawing on socio-cultural theories of learning; it was task-based, with face-to-face facilitation provided in the project’s target states. Data comes from pre-and post- course surveys for the MOOC; weekly surveys conducted during the pilot phase and weekly reports from MOOC facilitators, including some case studies. The response to the MOOC was overwhelmingly positive and a completion rate of 51% was achieved (compared to the average for MOOCs of around 12%). Whilst acknowledging that the African context is different, the TESSA team believe that a MOOC for teacher educators in Africa would support the strategic objective of improving teacher education across the continent