Where resources are hosted on UCT OpenContent

Someone asked me recently; UCT OpenContent has grown quite significantly over the past year (we now have 164 OER's shared from UCT!), where are all of these resources hosted? Since we don't yet have a formal institutional repository here at UCT we don't have all of our resources stored in one central location. This adds a significant amount of complexity to managing our collection, but there are reasons for not putting all of our eggs in one basket. A decision made very early in the OER project was to host resources wherever they made most sense to host. I ran a quick analysis of the web locations of the resources currently in UCT OpenContent

eLearning / Education Conferences in Southern Africa 2012

I was asked recently about elearning or educational technology conferences in South Africa in 2012. My colleague Tony Carr pointed me to a global list of conferences compiled by Clayton R. Wright shared on the eLearning Technology blog. I have extracted the conferences which are in the South African region

Chapter 04. Framework to understand postgraduate students' adaption of academics' teaching materials as OER

This chapter addresses a way of responding to one of the key challenges of OER contribution, namely academics' lack of time to re-purpose teaching materials originally intended for campus-based face-to-face lectures as stand-alone Open Educational Resources (OER). It describes how masters' students, tutors and interns at the University of Cape Town have been engaged to support the innovative practice of adapting academics' existing teaching materials into OER

The role of postgraduate students in co-authoring open educational resources to promote social inclusion: a case study at the University of Cape Town

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Distance Education on 24 Jul 2012, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01587919.2012.692052.Like many universities worldwide, the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa has joined the open educational resources (OER) movement, making a selection of teaching and learning materials available through its OER directory, UCT OpenContent. However, persuading and then supporting busy academics to share their teaching materials as OER still remains a challenge. In this article, we report on an empirical study of how UCT postgraduate students have assisted in the process of reworking the academics' teaching materials as OER. Using the concept of contradictions (Engeström, 2001), we endeavor to surface the various disturbances or conflicts with which the postgraduate students had to engage to make OER socially inclusive, as well as Engeström's “layers of causality" (2011, p. 609) to explain postgraduate students' growing sense of agency as they experienced the OER development process as being socially inclusive

Empowering Future Educators: Leveraging Openness by Design when Integrating Technology in Teacher Education Programs

Teacher educators who design and teach educational technology courses have an important role to play in developing thoughtful approaches to using educational technology in teaching and learning through the development of digital literacies that make use of accessible, meaningful, and pedagogically appropriate technology. Several researchers have argued that K-12 teachers are well suited to both adopt and develop aspects of open education by growing awareness of open educational resources and practices. This paper aims to articulate the potential, gaps, and opportunities for teacher educator programs to bring aspects of open education into teacher training. Based upon a small survey with students in a teacher education program in British Columbia Canada, gaps in knowledge among teacher candidates are identified and reflections from participants provides motivation to consider how open educational resources and practices might be further integrated into teacher education programs. Kahle’s (2008) design philosophy approach is recommended and discussed based on the results with a focus on using technology to prioritize openness that aligns well to prominent themes in teacher education programs

The GO-GN Fellowship reflections report

This document summarises the experience of the Global OER Graduate Network (GOGN) fellowship scheme 2020-2022 drawing on the reflections of the nine GO-GN alumni and fellows

Hydrogen storage in complex hydrides: past activities and new trends

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Metallic and complex hydride-based electrochemical storage of energy

The development of efficient storage systems is one of the keys to the success of the energy transition. There are many ways to store energy, but among them, electrochemical storage is particularly valuable because it can store electrons produced by renewable energies with a very good efficiency. However, the solutions currently available on the market remain unsuitable in terms of storage capacity, recharging kinetics, durability, and cost. Technological breakthroughs are therefore expected to meet the growing need for energy storage. Within the framework of the Hydrogen Technology Collaboration Program—H2TCP Task-40, IEA\u27s expert researchers have developed innovative materials based on hydrides (metallic or complex) offering new solutions in the field of solid electrolytes and anodes for alkaline and ionic batteries. This review presents the state of the art of research in this field, from the most fundamental aspects to the applications in battery prototypes

Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using individual testimonies, which may also be taken as living narratives, to reveal the value of Openness in Education as a praxis. Such testimonies serve as rich, personal narratives, critical introspections, and experience-based accounts that function as sources of data. The data gleaned from these narratives points to the understanding of Openness in Education as a complex, multilayered concept intricately woven into an array of values. These range from aspects such as sharing, access, flexibility, affordability, enlightenment, barrier-removal, empowerment, care, individual agency, trust, innovation, sustainability, collaboration, co-creation, social justice, equity, transparency, inclusivity, decolonization, democratisation, participation, liberty, and respect for diversity. This editorial, as a product of collective endeavour, invites its readers to independently engage with individual narratives, fostering the creation of unique interpretations. This call stems from the distinctive character of each narrative as they voice individual researchers’ perspectives from around the globe, articulating their insights within their unique situational contexts