“Open” Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Educational Practices & Open Data Uses in Africa was presented by Kamel Belhamel during OpenCon 2018 Algeria. Kamel is DOAJ Ambassador for North Africa and Middle East

1. “Open” Access, Open Educational
Resources, Open Educational Practices &
Open Data Uses in Africa
Kamel Belhamel
DOAJ Ambassador for North Africa & Middle East
Faculty of Technology, University of Bejaia
@kamelbelhamel
kamel@doaj.org

2. The State of Things
● The concept of OA
● Transition from closed to open
resources
● Open Access , OER , OEP & OD
● OER Initiatives in African Countries
● Case Study of the University of Bejaia

3. Free vs. open
‘Open’ has a wider meaning than just
something that is available for free.
There is a wealth of free-to-view content
available online, but the majority of this
content is not free to reuse.

4. There are a number of reasons why there is an
emphasis on Open Science now!
• The prevalence of digital delivery and the omnipresence of the
internet means that new ways of doing things are possible
• New knowledge is created through global collaborations
involving thousands of people from across the world and from
all walks of life.
• Open Science opens up new ways in which research/
education/innovation are undertaken, archived and curated,
and disseminated across the globe.

5. “I think the locking down of open is dangerous. I think it
draws lines where they need not be, and it reconsolidates
power for those who define it.” - Jim Luke -

6. What is open access?
Open access refers to the practice of
making peer-reviewed scholarly
research and literature freely available
online to anyone interested in reading it
GreenGold

7. Green OAGold OA
• Freely available on platforms
• Open access immediately upon
publication
• Usually associated with an article
processing charge (APC)
• Freely available somewhere other
than the publisher’s website, e.g. in
a subject or university repository, or
the author’s personal website
• No open access fee for authors

8. freegoogleslidestemplates.com 8
• More citations
• More review / control post-publication
• Better quality science
• More efficiency - less double studies
• Everybody can participate in knowledge creation
• More use of innovation potential
Why Open Access?

9. freegoogleslidestemplates.com 9
What About Sharing?
• You don’t loose your work !
• More opportunities for Feedback
• Sharing leads to better Quality
• Sharing leads to more citations
• Sharing leads to reputation
• Sharing leads to more chances for innovation
• Sharing leads to more rapid advances in knowledge
• Sharing leads to reduced costs

10. What can I do to encourage open access?
• If you are a scholar, consider submitting your work
to a journal that is open access.
• If you are doing research about open source, there
are several open access journals to choose from.
• you can explore the Directory of Open Access
Journals ( DOAJ) to find the right journal for you.

11. freegoogleslidestemplates.com 11
DOAJ is an online directory
that indexes and provides
access to quality open
access, peer-reviewed
journals.
www.doaj.org

12. freegoogleslidestemplates.com 12
- Curate, maintain, develop reliable source of online -
open access (OA) scholarly journals
- Verify that entries comply with reasonable standards
- Increase visibility, dissemination, discoverability,
attraction of OA journals
- Enable scholars, libraries, universities, research –
funders, others to benefit from information and
sources
What is the mission of DOAJ ?

13. What is OER ?
● Open educational resources are materials that come with a Creative
Commons or other relevant open license which allows them to be used
freely and repurposed, normally with an appropriate attribution.
● OER enable people independent of geographical location or institution to
find each other, form communities and work together

14. The UNESCO 2012 Paris OER Declaration states that
UNESCO member states should:
• Promote and use OER to widen access to
education at all levels, both formal and non-formal,
in a perspective of lifelong learning
• contributing to social inclusion, gender equity and
special needs education.
• Improve both cost-efficiency and quality of teaching
and learning outcomes through greater use of OER.

15. ● In contrast to traditional education materials, which are constantly
becoming more expensive and less flexible, OER provide everyone,
everywhere, free permission to download, edit, and share them with
others. David Wiley provides another popular definition, stating that
only education materials licensed in a manner that provide the public
with permission to engage in the 5R activities can be considered
OER.
Why is this important ?

16. The 5 Rs include:
● Retain – permission to make, own, and control copies of the content
(e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
● Reuse – permission to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a
class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
● Revise – permission to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself
(e.g., translate the content into another language)
● Remix – permission to combine the original or revised content with
other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content
into a mashup)
● Redistribute – permission to share copies of the original content, your
revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of to a friend)

17. What is the future of OER?
● There will be a growth in national and international repositories or
other means of curating open educational resources.
● The barriers to learning nationally and globally will be broken down.
● New services will emerge using artificial intelligence to harvest and
deliver OER in a much more personalized way.
● Learning materials will increasingly be co-created by teachers and
learners.
● The space that commercial publishers operate in will become a much
more innovative one.

18. Breaking down the wall ?
the Wall, by Kamel Belhamel, licensed CC BY

19. Removing barriers…
● That block visibility: transparency
● That bind us in particular answers & practices:
promoting creativity, multiple approaches & pathways
to learning
● To education & content: access
● To student choice: autonomy
● Between people, places & times
• between students and teachers: shared authority
• connecting to wider networks, contributing to public
knowledge
Social justice
& equity

20. What does “open” add?
Does it help to call such things “open” pedagogy?
Self-directed Learning
Student as Producer
Connected Learning
Students as Partners

21. https://clalliance.org/about-connected-learning/

22. Open Educational Practices
(OEP)

23. Open
Educational
Practices
Open
Pedagogy
Includes “the creation,
use, and reuse of open
educational resources
(OER) as well as open
pedagogies and open
sharing of teaching
practices.”
- Catherine Cronin, National
University of Ireland

24. Some Open Edu Practices
• Use, revision & creation of OER; encouraging others
to do so
• Open reflection on & sharing of teaching ideas,
practices, process
• Open learning
• Open scholarship
-- Open Practices Briefing
Paper (Beetham et al., 2012)
Open access logo from PLoS, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0
on Wikimedia Commons

25. What’s open about these?
Students
producing OER,
public knowledge;
non-disposable
assignments
Student choice,
agency,
autonomy; e.g.,
as co-creators of
curricula
Connecting to
wider networks
in teaching &
learning
Open-ended
problems;
value creativity
& change
Increasing
access:
financial and
other
Transparency in
teaching &
learning, fostering
trust
Equity & social
justice in teaching
& learning
Refection of Prof. Christina Hendricks. From British Columbia - Canada

26. Open Science, Open Data from African Countries
• OA2020
• Dakar declaration on Open Science in Africa (2016)
• Open Data in a Big Data World Accord (2015)
• Salvador Declaration on Open Access Cape Town Declaration
(2010)
• Cape Town Open Education Declaration (2008)
• Kigali Declaration on the Development of an Equitable Information
Society in Africa

27. Open Data Initiatives in Africa
Open Data For Africa
Africa Open Data
Africa Open Data Conference
- Tanzania, 2015
- Ghana, 2017
Burkina Open Data Initiative (BODI)
Africa Open Data Institute
DataFirst - Data Seal of approval

28. https://www.oerafrica.org/oer-initiatives-africa

29. http://schoolofopen.p2pu.org/

30. https://openmedproject.eu/home/

31. The need for an OA Policy for Algeria
SndlSystème National de la documentation en
ligne
• More than 20 Pay database
• More than 30 Open access database
What has been done?

32. Open Access databases on SNDL

35. The University of Bejaia
• Created in October 1983, is a multidisciplinary public institution.
• 45,700 students,
• 1,714 teachers and 1227 technical and administrative staff
• Eight faculties: Technology - Exact Sciences - Law and Legal and
Administrative Sciences - Sciences of Nature and Life - Letters and
Languages - Sciences Human and Social Sciences - Economics,
Management Sciences and Commercial Sciences - Medical Sciences.
UB is a public university:
- Studies are 100% free of charge
- Finance is secured by the government

36. University of Bejaia and OER Vision
• Encourages staff and students to use E-learning to enhance the quality of the
student experience.
• Digitize, curate and share major collections of archives, study and research
• Enable the discovery of these materials to enhance the University’s reputation.
• Launch open access journals

37. http://univ-bejaia.dz/dspace

41. Open Access Journal :
Algerian Journal of Natural Products : http://univ-bejaia.dz/ajnp/
• Hosting: University of Bejaia : Free
• Plateform : ( OJS) Free
• DOI : Zenodo : Free
• Archive : Zenodo : Free
• Indexation : - DOAJ - ScienceOpen.com : Free

46. More Reading
Community voices that have guided us.

47. http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access

48. MERLOT is a free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning
materials and faculty-developed services contributed to and used by an international
education community. Resources have a range of licenses.
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

49. https://www.curriki.org/
With a community of nearly 10 million global users, Curriki encourages
collaboration between teachers, students and parents, using their diverse
experiences to develop freely available “best of breed” learning resources

50. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/
The National Archives Education pages contain award-winning resources for students
and teachers. Users can explore the materials by navigating through the various time
periods presented, including Medieval, early modern, empire and industry, Victorians,
early 20th century

51. https://www.col.org/

52. Open Resource Bank for Interactive Teaching in Science and Mathematics
(ORBIT). Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.
http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/ORBIT
— ORBIT shares existing expertise on teacher education and classroom
teaching that promotes active learning in mathematics and science
Open Resources for English Language Teaching Portal (ORELT).
Commonwealth of Learning.
http://www.colorelt.org/
— Open Resources for English Language Teaching (ORELT) aims to support
teachers in junior secondary schools by providing access to a bank of “open
content” multi-media resources

53. Open Source ICT Computer Science Curriculum. Retrieved October 4,
2014, from http://ictcomputerscience.org/
A computing curriculum for KS3,
PhET. University of Colorado. http://phet.colorado.edu/
PhET provides free online access to interactive, research-based simulations of
physical phenomena. Produced by the University of Colorado and covering a
range of subjects in the sciences and mathematics, PhET’s extensively tested
simulations enable students to make connections between real-life phenomena
and the underlying science.
SEN Teacher., from http://www.senteacher.org/ — The SEN Teacher site has
printable formats, specialist links, software downloads and search tools for all
types and levels of special education. Most SEN Teacher Resources are
provided under a Creative Commons License.

54. Teacher Education in sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA).
http://www.tessafrica.net/pan-african-version
— TESSA is an international research and development initiative bringing
together teachers and teacher educators from across sub-Saharan Africa. It
offers a range of materials (Open Educational Resources) in four languages to
support school-based teacher education and training.
SEN Teacher.,
http://www.senteacher.org/
— The SEN Teacher site has printable formats, specialist links, software
downloads and search tools for all types and levels of special education. Most
SEN Teacher Resources are provided under a Creative Commons License.

55. Thank you
Kamel Belhamel
DOAJ Ambassador for North Africa
& Middle East , Faculty of
Technology, University of Bejaia
Twitter: @kamelbelhamel
E-mail: kamel@doaj.org